Forum:Noble/Royal Titles

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Will's introduction

I for one am very interested in Royalty and Nobility and this includes their genealogy. I know there are already some pages started with these individuals but I thought I would start a discussion about a standard way of naming. If this has already been discussed please forgive me. Here are a few points that I see: (Examples are fictitious).

1) For individuals whose title and last name are the same examples could be:

Thomas Lovelace (?-?), 2nd Lord Lovelace
Thomas, 2nd Lord Lovelace (?-?)

In this case the 1st example seems to me to be more usable, but then we could get some interesting xamples when we go to other national titles:

Hermann von Hessen (?-?), Landgraf von Hessen
Hermann, Landgraf von Hessen (?-?)

In this one, the latter seems to look nicer in my opinion. But I really do think it would be better to have one standard.

2) What language should the title be in? Do we call a German Graf a Count? or leave it Graf? As an example.

3) Royalty with "surnames" is another point. Do we want to include their surname or just their title?

Paul Plantagenet (?-?), King of England
Paul, King of England (?-?)

Georg von Hohenzollern (?-?), Koenig von Preussen
Georg, Koenig von Pruessen (?-?)

Anyway, these are just some problems I see with titled individuals and just wanted to know what everyone else thought. Thanks Will 21:51, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Responses

Robin's first set of responses

Good subject for discussion, Will! I don't remember it being seriously addressed here before. We all have such ancestors (though some contributors, poor chaps, can't trace the links!).

Format: for simplicity, I'd recommend that we start with the English-language Wikipedia page name (which is likely to exist for nearly all such people soon if not already); but after creating a matching page here (to catch links from other ex-WP articles) we redirect it by adding our standard " (YOB-YOD)" right at the end.

Language: as above for anything that's on the English-language Wikipedia. We've not progressed far into becoming multilingual; when we do, we may well have corresponding pages in other languages as do some existing Wikia. That will be a whole new field for us and we can learn from the other Wikia how to make it work. Freeciv is an example.) Until we go that way, I suggest inviting people to use whatever language seems appropriate but to redirect to the "standard" where there is a WP article as above.

Royalty: covered in the above two responses.

Robin Patterson 06:02, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Overdue update, April 2010

As noted on Forum:Royalty- Surname encoding last month, we still have no agreed scheme for these, and it has led to duplication.

Case study:

2009-12-07: User A "Created page with '{{showfacts person |globals= |short_name = Ludwig IV von Wittelsbach ..." showing "Ludwig II von Wittelsbach (1229-1294)" as the (red-linked) father. The "von Wittelsbach" is a generally accepted form of that family's "surname", although the page has not made clear what the "IV" and "II" refer to. See wikipedia:House of Wittelsbach.
2009-12-07 about 8 hours later: User B edited that page, leaving the edit summary "(Fix kids)".
On the following day User B edited it three more times.
Less than 80 minutes after his last edit to Ludwig IV, User B created a page called "Ludwig II. von Bayern (1229-1294)", including links to Ludwig IV von Wittelsbach (1282-1347) and three other children. Somehow User B neither noticed nor remembered that Ludwig IV had a red-linked father whose name was not "Ludwig II. von Bayern". User B gave no obvious indication of where his name for Ludwig II came from: it's not the person name (wikipedia:Louis II, Duke of Bavaria) in the English Wikipedia (which User B generally follows). It's not the person name (Ludwig der Strenge) in the German Wikipedia (though it can be constructed by putting together two parts of the opening sentence from that), nor the name (Ludwig II Duke Of Upper BAVARIA) given by FamilySearch.org, though for both of those a link was provided by User B. It runs a risk of confusion with a popular king who reigned six centuries later and has his own pages on Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, and answers.com and is the subject of threads on Flickr as "Koenig Ludwig II. von Bayern"!

2010-04-24 User C had been adding ancestors of Brooke Shields and noticed that Ludwig II von Wittelsbach (1229-1294) appeared as a red link in the list of ancestors on a sensor page. Although a little tired after a long chain of creations, User C decided that that was an important enough gap to deserve filling while all relevant windows were open. So he created the page, forgetting to check whether Ludwig already appeared under another name. Then he checked some relative's page or decided to do a belated check, and discovered the duplication. He resolved to integrate the two pages in one of his next big editing sessions.
2010-04-24 User A, who had been spot-checking User C's work on the Brooke Shields ancestors and making the occasional useful addition, missed the new duplication but (amusingly for people who know the background) in the same hour made two edits to Ludwig II. von Bayern (1229-1294).

I have suggested that we use precisely the name used by an appropriate-language Wikipedia (adding our parenthetical date reference). Our SMW-designer agrees with that. It makes for easier checking for duplicates. However, two or more of our most prolific contributors disagree with that idea or pay it only lip service. So I suggest we:

use the family name wherever there is one unless it's seldom used by others; follow it with a place if that's a recognized part of the name (e.g. Victoria Mary of Teck (1867-1953)); if there's a title (not just a consort position), add that (the title, not just the place) after a comma; if there are two or more titles, use only the most important.
add titles as above if there's no family name or there is but it's seldom used; not just the "number" and place as in Elizabeth I of England (1533-1603) but with the title (e.g. Ranulf I, Duke of Aquitaine (820-866)); Elizabeth II, Queen of the United Kingdom (1926) rather than Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom (1926), with the same addition for Elizabeth I.
Search on birth year and death year before creating any new person page for which we have both years; if we have only one year, combine it and the name least likely to be varied.

— Robin Patterson (Talk) 04:48, April 24, 2010 (UTC)

I strongly disagree. We do not call people "John Smith, Plumber in Reading" so we should not call people "Elisabeth of Windsor, Queen of the United Kingdom" either. Besides, Elisabeth has many jobs. She's Queen of Australia too (and of 16 other countries). She's Duchess of Normandy and Lancaster, and duchess-consort of Edinburgh. Her previous jobs were Princess of York and later Princess of Wales. What job to pick? While this is a simple case, how would we call William the Conqueror? English-speaking people think of him as the King of England, but he saw himself primarily as the Duke of Normandy -- as indeed did his contemporaries and successors for three or more centuries. Indeed, Elisabeth II still styles herself as Duke of Normandy.

Just give people their family name. If this is obscure, call them "of primary property".

This is the rule sort-of-agreed in a previous discussion on this forum, and it is the rule (poorly enforced) on Wikipedia. rtol 06:20, April 24, 2010 (UTC)

Please explain your subsequent "Ludwig II von Wittelsbach (1229-1294) ‎ (Redirected page to Ludwig II. von Bayern (1229-1294))" in relation to the above. — Robin Patterson (Talk) 11:55, April 28, 2010 (UTC)

I redirected the inferior article to the superior one. rtol 04:54, April 29, 2010 (UTC)

Please explain "superior". The one with the (property-based) family name von Wittelsbach is superior to the ruled-place name von Bayern, according to your argument and my opinion. — Robin Patterson (Talk) 02:47, July 5, 2010 (UTC)

Possible confusion between queens and princesses etc

If we do not mention the title and just say, for example, "Elisabeth of Windsor (YOB-)", we run some risk of confusing queens with princesses and duchesses, etc, especially when dates are mere estimates. Is that of real concern to anyone? — Robin Patterson (Talk) 02:47, July 5, 2010 (UTC)

Use in forms and categories

Moving away from the precise form of the page name with or without mention of the title, we are moving towards a situation where we can show a person's title as an SMW "fact" and possibly get an automatic categorization from it. See rtol's recent improvement of a page about a king of Scotland: http://familypedia.wikia.com/index.php?title=Duff_of_Scotland_%28-967%29&s=wldiff&diff=0&oldid=544889

Fact

"title=..." is the "fact". When Form:Person is better developed, those of us who use it in a direct manner may be able to insert the title after just a few tab and click operations while going through the form-filling. Are we ready to develop the form in that direction? — Robin Patterson (Talk) 01:50, September 11, 2010 (UTC)