Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/First name

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was redirect to Given name. (non-admin closure) sst✈ 05:28, 18 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

First name[edit]

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This is a fork of Given name and creates the incorrect impression that there is some difference between a given name and a first name, other than the former term being more suited to cultures that put the family name in the first position. Jc3s5h (talk) 13:09, 11 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Redirect As the nominator I suggest this be redirected to Given name as it was before the recent edits. Jc3s5h (talk) 13:13, 11 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Redirect to given name per WP:CONTENTFORK. -- Notecardforfree (talk) 18:40, 11 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Language-related deletion discussions. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 18:51, 11 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Redirect for now. Article author here. Returning to a redirect is reasonable. I was probably been too hasty in creating this article... more research is required, which I'm continuing to undertake... it's possibly true that this article should exist, but I don't yet have the refs to properly defend it.

FWIW the nominator's description of an "incorrect impression that there is some difference between a given name and a first name", while reasonable, is quite possibly itself wrong. We go mostly by usage... It is very clear that many people (by which, de facto, is meant mainly newspaper/magazine/book/website writers and editors) do indeed use "first name" and "pet name/nickname/hypocorism" interchangeably, like it or not. If enough people do that it's not incorrect anymore. I'm still looking into this, but I think I might well find that "given name" and "first name", while identical and interchangeable in most reference works (which matters a little, but not much), are not so in actual usage. If I do find that, I'll have to recreate some version of the article, and I'll have the ref to defend it. Until then, you can return it to a redirect if you like, and quite possibly should. Herostratus (talk) 04:00, 13 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps the present structure does reflect too much the reference works rather than popular usage. But I see two problems trying to reflect popular usage. First, the articles at present attempt to describe the whole world, and English-speaking editors are ill-equipped to understand or find sources about popular usage in non-English speaking countries, especially non-European counties. Second, some nicknames are so informal that they are only used in isolation, never together with the family name. For example, John Smith Jr. might be addressed as "Junior" among his family, but never "Junior Smith". So if it's never used together with the last name, is it a first name? Jc3s5h (talk) 13:59, 13 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Well, nicknames. There are two kinds of nicknames I think: those that replace the entire personal name and those that replace just the given name. Consider Ted Williams. His nickname was The Kid. But it was never The Kid Williams or even Kid Williams; it was Ted (or Ted Williams) or The Kid. "Junior" in your case is like that: a nickname (used sometimes) that replaces the entire name. Other nicknames replace just the given name, e.g. "Bunny Berrigan" and so on. Herostratus (talk) 01:14, 14 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.