Talk:Francis, Duke of Guise

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Untitled[edit]

Should this be at François, Duke of Guise? What are our standards for anglicizing, here? john k 23:26, 27 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

King Francis II?[edit]

Under Wars of Religion, end of first paragraph - is it meant to be King Henri II instead? The rest of the text seems to imply this. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.223.60.87 (talk) 04:38, 15 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move 13 March 2024[edit]

– Requesting move of these articles per WP:COMMONNAME. I will begin my argument with ngrams, even though I find them largely overcrowded by noise. Please see [1] [2] [3] [4]

Moving beyond ngrams, my argument revolves around the English literature that focuses on the family, the era of the Italian Wars, and the era French Wars of Religion, both areas of which they played a central role in and are therefore not an incidental mention in.

Stuart Carroll (2011) Martyr's and Murderers: The Guise Family and the Making of Europe, is the most recent English language biography of the family - it refers to the second duke of Guise as François, his son the third duke as Henri and the fifth duke of Guise as Henri II (also the seventh duke of Guise as François-Joseph though that Wikipedia article is already at François-Joseph, so does not require changing.) The other recent English book which discusses them in the title is Mark Konnert's (2006) Local Politics in the French Wars of Religion: The Towns of Champagne, the duc de Guise and the Catholic League (1560-1595) - it refers to François, and Henri.

I will now briefly survey English academics who have written on this area in the last couple of decades, and their various positions on the names. Gould (2006) = François; Roelker (1968) = François, Henri; Knecht (2014) = François, Henri; Diefendorf (1991) = François, Henri; Roberts (2013) = François, Henri; Sutherland (1962) = François, Henri; Tullchin (2012) = François, Henri; Roelker (1996) = François, Henri; Baumgartner (1986) = Henri; Harding (1978) = François, Henri; Heller (2003) = Henri; Potter (1997) = François, Henri; Carroll (2005) = François, Henri; Bernstein (2004) = Henri; Konnert (1997) = François, Henri; Benedict (2003) = François, Henri; Salmon (1979) = François, Henri; Shaw (2019) [only English language survey of the Italian Wars] = François; Pitts (2012) = François, Henri; Neuschel (1989) = François; Kingdon (1967) = François, Henri; Greengrass (1988) = François; Conner (2000) = François, Spangler (2016) = Henri

Tingle (2006) is a little unusual, refers to François, and Henry; likewise Shimizu (1970) refers to Francis, and Henri

Holt (2002) = Francis, Henry, he is the only French Wars of Religion era academic I am aware of who throughout all his works consistently calls them this way.

Wood (2002) never refers to either duke by their first name. sovietblobfish (talk) 11:21, 13 March 2024 (UTC) — Relisting. Robertus Pius (Talk • Contribs) 19:24, 20 March 2024 (UTC) — Relisting. asilvering (talk) 00:28, 30 March 2024 (UTC) — Relisting. BilledMammal (talk) 04:21, 7 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  • Oppose. Wikipedia is written for general readers, not academics. There is a recent fashion for academics to nativize all names, which may work for their specialized audiences in their narrower isolated context. But general works use their English names. If I enter "Duke of Guise" and "index" on Googlebooks, the overwhelming majority of results show up as anglicized Francis & Henry. e.g. [5],[6], [7], [8], [9], [10], [11], [12], [13], [14], [15], etc. Walrasiad (talk) 18:34, 13 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Hi Walrasiad,
    Of the examples you have provided, one of them is from an author I've already mentioned (Holt) 4 of them are from the early 20th century, two of them are from the 19th century, and the rest of them are from authors who are just as 'academic' as the authors I have provided though with more tangential relationships to the topic (academic works on English political and cultural history, including one about Shakespeare)
    Moreover, I have not provided only specialist academic work. Carroll's biography of the family is not academic literature, but rather a popular piece. Knecht likewise writes popularly published biographies. The Pitts book I have provided is a popularly published biography, Roelker 1968 is a popularly published biography. If I had cited Baumgartner 1988 instead of 1986 that would have been a popularly published biography that uses François. Regardless, the dukes of Guise are hardly a popular topic, the majority of discussion concerning them is going to be in academic works, or academic adjacent works, therefore it hardly seems right to me to throw all these out as being for 'specialised audiences'. Nor am I aware of that being policy to do so when assessing general usage. 19:47, 13 March 2024 (UTC) sovietblobfish.
*shrug* it's just a sample of what showed up in Googlebooks. I could find more if you want. Biographies of the family are still specialized works for isolated audiences narrowly interested in them. But the Guises show up in wide variety of works that are not focused on them, e.g. assorted general histories of Scotland, bios of Elizabethan courtiers, histories of Protestantism, the papacy, art history, Restoration literature, etc. Readers who come across these names unexpectedly in random spots are the ones most likely to come to Wikipedia to learn more about who they are. They need to be able to recognize the name that they're searching for. Those who already have focused family bios or academic papers in hand don't need to come here, and certainly won't be confused. The benefit of the doubt should always go to more general works. Walrasiad (talk) 21:52, 13 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Most of the books (and they are books in almost all cases, not journal articles) I have provided are not exclusively about them either. We have general histories of the French Wars of Religion, a general history of the Italian Wars (which are weirdly rare in English, not sure why), we have biographies of the famous French figures (Henri II (Baumgartner 1988), Jeanne d'Albret (Roelker 1968), Catherine de Medici (Knecht 2014), Henri III (not used in my examples, but Knechts recent biography follows the pattern), Henri IV (Pitts 2012)) we have regional histories of various French provinces, towns, and institutions during this era. The notion that readers of these would not wish to follow up their reading with a perusal of his Wikipedia page feels like it is asserting too much to me.
Let us look at google scholar more statistically (though of course, I have already done ngram searches that support my position) for François, to see what name for the duke the general reader will be coming from in recent years. I want the results to reflect a roughly modern consensus, so will only be considering works published in the last 25 years.
François, Duke of Guise - 75 results
François, Duc de Guise - 156 results
François de Lorraine, Duke of Guise - 20 results
François de Guise, Duke of Guise - 0 results
François de Lorraine, Duc de Guise - 231 results
François de Guise, Duc de Guise - 1 result
Francis, Duke of Guise - 104 results
Francis, Duc de Guise - 5 results
Francis of Lorraine, Duke of Guise - 8 result
Francis of Guise, Duke of Guise - 0 results
Francis of Lorraine, Duc de Guise - 0 results
Francis of Guise, Duc de Guise - 0 results
Total for François = 483; Total for Francis = 117. I could illustrate the same for Henri. I understand your concern about some readers navigating to the article. But it would still be a redirect that allows them to find it via the search function, and moreover could be in brackets as an 'also known as' in the bold text at the front of the articles so google searches would also deliver it quite easily. Moreover for a majority of those reading contemporary English works, it is the present situation which presents more difficulty. sovietblobfish (talk) 22:54, 13 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'd toss out any that refer to "Duc de Guise" as effectively non-English. Proving once more that those articles are not for general readers. That leaves Francis in a majority. And with Henry even more starkly so. I'm sorry, but this is English-language Wikipedia, and its purpose is to communicate to general readers, and that is done far more effectively. We should not expect readers to understand foreign language terms, nor are we here to show off or test their pronunciations. I write a lot of history articles, but what I write for a specialized audience is not what I write for a general one. Sometimes I am forced to use native terms because English ones simply don't exist. But English ones clearly exist for this case and are commonly used. I will stick with my opposition to the proposal. Francis & Henry are perfectly fine and fit WP:COMMONNAME and WP:USEENGLISH better. Walrasiad (talk) 00:01, 14 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Well yes. if we toss out the majority of English texts that use François, on the (in my opinion) very bold assertion that they must not be for general readers because they have non English words in them, then we are left with Francis as a majority (though even then its a slim majority of 112-95). I don't personally think we can just dismiss all English texts that happen to have some other French vocabulary in them.
There is no 'showing off' or 'pronunciation testing', I am simply trying to bring these articles into line with WP:COMMONNAME and WP:USEENGLISH by establishing their names as they are in the majority of contemporary English texts.
Our positions are not going to converge but that is life. Have a good week :) sovietblobfish (talk) 00:19, 14 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Relisting comment: Currently, there is no consensus. I’m relisting to gain further input from other editors. Robertus Pius (Talk • Contribs) 19:24, 20 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The combination of French name and English title is least popular. So long as our title includes "Duke of", we should not look at the given name in isolation. Srnec (talk) 03:18, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Please see the google scholar results I did limited to the past 25 years in my discussion with Walrasiad. François is the most popular in recent years meeting WP:COMMONNAME, but we will avoid using 'duc de Guise' in the article title per WP:USEENGLISH. The two don't have to be tied to one another. sovietblobfish (talk) 07:39, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That doesn't make sense to me. If recent English RS use 'duc', why wouldn't we? If UE applies to 'duc', why not to 'François'? If we should ignore recent English RS usage because of UE in the case of the title, we can certainly do so in the case of the name. Srnec (talk) 15:50, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There are two separate elements to this article title in my opinion. His name, and his title. As these are separate we can consider them separately.
As far as his name is concerned we have a clear majority in favour of François in the recent English literature.
As far as his title is concerned, we have a majority in favour of 'duc' also however I think one could argue that 'duc' is not immediately apparent to an English reader without a grounding in French without a bracket following the first use of the term explaining what it means. Therefore as I see it UE applies to it in a way it would not to François, which is just a name that no English reader is going to be confused by.
I think a separate discussion could also be had to adopt duc into the article title, but I'd like to establish the simple matter of his name for now and then move from there. sovietblobfish (talk) 16:04, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. The general trend, in both academic and general works, away from translating proper names is sufficiently well established that we should clearly be following it in this case, as shown by the well-researched nomination. Rosbif73 (talk) 07:58, 19 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Francis,_Duke_of_Guise&oldid=1219692465"