Category talk:English-language surnames

Surnames of English language origin

This category should not contain name and/or generic disambiguation pages, where some entries may be anglicized, transliterated into English, or from England or another English-speaking country by ancestry, culture, ethnicity, or nationality.

Badagnani (talk · contribs · count · logs · block log · lu · rfa · rfb · arb · rfc · lta · socks) has repeatedly removed the {{surnames by language}} template, removing the consensus of multiple editors.
--William Allen Simpson (talk) 22:05, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

The stipulation is illogical on several counts. If it were logical, it would be perfectly fine to include. Badagnani (talk) 02:39, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

I too find the wording of the header utterly bizarre. Apparently this is because a template parameter gets mechanically combined with some conditional boilerplate text. The full text as displayed is:

"Surnames of English language origin. This category should not contain name and/or generic disambiguation pages, where some entries may be anglicized, transliterated into English, or from England or another English-speaking country by ancestry, culture, ethnicity, or nationality."

Now, what could this possibly be intended to mean? It just makes no sense whatsoever. Note that the purple parts above are the parameter, and the green parts are what the template adds if the parameter is present. Can somebody reword this so it makes some sense? Fut.Perf. ☼ 08:09, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

What exactly do you not understand?

1. "anglicized" – Do we need a parenthetical definition? That seemed overkill, as most everybody knows the meaning. It was added because folks gaming the system were moving Gaelic names into English language, claiming that they had ceased to be of Gaelic origin after they were anglicized. That's not the usual meaning of the term. The origin has not changed.
2. "transliterated into English" – Again, this was added because folks gaming the system were moving Russian names into English language, claiming that they had ceased to be of Russian origin, because they were not written in cyrillic.
3. "from England (or another English-speaking country)" – as mentioned in the previous discussion at Category talk:Surnames (and at WP:CFD), just because somebody moves to a country does not make their name part of that language.

This is not a telephone directory.
--William Allen Simpson (talk) 13:26, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

I've wiki-linked the words.
--William Allen Simpson (talk) 13:49, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

How about (brainstorming): "Surnames of English language origin. This category should contain only pages about names that are linguistically of English origin. Pages should not be added to it merely because the name is also carried by people from English-speaking societies, if the name itself is of different origin." But don't ask me how to best cut that up into template and parameter parts. Fut.Perf. ☼ 09:15, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

1. Repetitious – "English language origin" – "linguistically of English origin"
2. Redundant and poorly phrased – "This category should contain only pages about names" – "if the name itself is of different origin."
3. Imprecise – too open to interpretation and gaming the system, as we've already seen. The template has the linked words "ancestry, culture, ethnicity, or nationality" because those 4 are explicitly prohibited from this category.

The one word that seems possibly useful to me is changing "countries" to "societies". The previous debates have all been about countries, because the mass deletion was "by country" categories and that colored the thinking. Of course, there are English speaking societies that are not countries. Should that change be made?
--William Allen Simpson (talk) 13:49, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

This is not a particularly good place for this discussion, as the master discussion is at Category talk:Surnames.
--William Allen Simpson (talk) 13:26, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

Well, do with it what you want, but the existing wording just doesn't work. You've now seen two otherwise intelligent people who just can't make any sense of it. Fut.Perf. ☼ 13:57, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

The phrase "or from England or another English-speaking country by ancestry, culture, ethnicity, or nationality" is inapplicable and illogical because most of these surnames are "from England or another English-speaking country by ancestry, culture, ethnicity, or nationality." Further, where is the term "English-language surname" found in the literature? If nowhere, this term is an example of WP:OR, and thus to be eschewed at our encyclopedia. Badagnani (talk) 16:49, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

template

I'm going to remove William Allen Simpson's template, as it is causing some problems. I had assumed these language cats are for names from certain languages. So if we had an article on Simpson it'd go in 'English-language surnames'; MacShimidh would go in 'Scottish Gaelic-language surnames'; and Simonsen would go in 'Swedish-language surnames', 'Danish-language surnames'; and on like that.--Brianann MacAmhlaidh (talk) 06:12, 2 December 2009 (UTC)