Talk:Étienne Balazs

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Requested move 24 June 2018

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: page moved. Mahveotm (talk) 08:40, 2 July 2018 (UTC)

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Étienne Balázs → Étienne Balazs – He was based in Paris, and published mainly in French and English. I've encountered his name quite a bit in my readings, but never have I seen Étienne Balázs. It's always either Étienne Balazs or Etienne Balazs. (This can be verified by a simple Google Search.) I don't doubt that Balázs is correct as far as Hungarian goes, but if he became a French citizen shouldn't we use the "French spelling" so to speak? Edit: Google Ngram shows a graph for Etienne Balazs only... Does Ngram work with diacritics? Timmyshin (talk) 02:41, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

• Support per nomination. Balazs left Hungary as a teenager and his entire notability rests upon his activities outside Hungary. His surname, as it appears on the covers of his books as well as referenced elsewhere, is most frequently Balazs, not Balázs. As for his given name, it is usually rendered in the English-speaking world as Etienne, not as Étienne.    Roman Spinner (talk • contribs) 03:13, 24 June 2018 (UTC)
• Support. While á isn't a non-French character, Balazs appears to have dropped it. Every book title I can find in French and English is without á (while almost all are with É – I only found one that's not). Hungarian editions preserved the á (e.g.: [1]). The "Étienne Balázs" spelling can be found in English-language RS [2], but it seems genuinely uncommon, and it's not impossible they got it from us. I'd be utterly opposed to Etienne Balazs, because Étienne Balazs is very common in English sources, and we have a decade and a half of strong precedent against "dumbing down" by removing diacritics in mimicry of lazy English-language sources, the publishers of which often have jingoistic internal house style guides against including diacritics (this is especially common among American newspapers – outside Louisiana and the US Southwest, where French and Spanish names, respectively, are common). The very fact that we don't pretend diacritics don't exist just because some English-language publishers do is a strong reason not to do it just because some French ones do. However, this is turns out to be an WP:ABOUTSELF matter; if Balazs himself didn't use the á character – and he clearly did not except on Hungarian editions – it would be weird original research to impose it. This is the same test we routinely employ for other subjects (e.g., it's Stana Katic, not "Stana Katič", and Utada Hikaru not Hikaru Utada).
  PS: Another reason to not use "Etienne" is that the acute is especially meaningful; it's doing double linguistic duty. In French, a leading ét- in this kind of construction indicates a contraction of [e]st- where the s has become silent through the process of assimilating foreign [e]st- words and names into French, or alteration of Middle French est- along the way to Modern French (especially western French – Étienne from Stephen/Stephanus/Esteban may be Stephane in eastern France due to influence of German Stefan); e.g. étoile from Middle French esteile from Latin stella 'star', and étrange from MFr estrange (whence English strange) from Latin extrāneus. We shouldn't establish some kind of bogus RM precedent where it's "okay" to dump this diacritic, since it might lead to confusing or flat-out wrong titles, especially if an ét- word has an et- counterpart with a different meaning.
   — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:10, 24 June 2018 (UTC); linguistic note added, because I was bored, at 19:10, 24 June 2018 (UTC)
• Support WP:FRMOS In ictu oculi (talk) 07:32, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

Discussion

​​​Since this discussion has editors focused on the issue, what about "Péter Eötvös"? He was born Eötvös Péter but now styles his name as Peter Eötvös (without the accent on the e but with umlauts on the os). Should it be moved as well? —  AjaxSmack  18:22, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

"Eötvös Péter" is just traditional Hungarian name order; as with modern Japanese and Chinese names, they're usually given the other way around in English (see Talk:Utada Hikaru/Archive 4 for an exception and what it can take to prove one – usually insistence by the subject on the non-Western order even in Western media). I'm at least initially skeptical of a Péter → Peter move, absent a statement of subject preference (like we recently got for CCH Pounder), because he's apparently usually credited as Péter in film scores and such (IMDb is pretty careful about that, and will do "as Peter Eötvös" in the cases where he's not, though it is in part a user-edited site) [3], I see him as Péter in an English-language academic source [4], and in general music-related ones, e.g. [5], Péter on an album cover [6], Péter in a BBC Symphony Orchestra announcement [7], and has primarily worked in Continental Europe – entirely non-hostile to diacritics – except for a three-year stint at the BBC. Lots of stuff is put out in English about him in Hungary (where he's a "famous son"), always with Péter, e.g. [8], [9], etc. (and the second of these reads like a self-authored official bio). The hurdle is higher here. It is fairly odd that the umlauts are retained by many sources that drop the acute, so it might be worth looking into whether he's "officially" dropped the acute. Maybe check credits manually, look for autobiographical and other "official" material in English, including more album covers, concert posters, etc. (especially ones in neither English nor Hungarian; he did a lot of work in France and Germany, and if he was usually not Péter in either, that's probably a tie-breaker). As in the Utada case, it can take a while to build up a complete picture.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:44, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

​Thanks for taking the time to comment. I'm not itching to move the article; I just noticed the lack of an accent on some of his output that I have as well as his website, and was wondering. —  AjaxSmack  01:49, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

Péter Eötvös is 100% Hungarian and has never worn a skirt or played tennis. Why even discuss it? In ictu oculi (talk) 07:30, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

The website may be good ABOUTSELF evidence, but it may depend on how much editorial control he's exerting. E.g., in the Utada case, she was letting other people write it, and they were late to catch up on her name order change. Some musician websites are run by record labels or PR companies, others by fans paid a stipend, with little input from the subject. Others are micromanaged by the subject down to the last detail. It's hard to tell. PS: I see that he's also a professor; how do the university roster, etc., list him? There may be a distinction between how his name is spelled in music/film-industry marketing materials vs. how he's presented as an academic.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:09, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.