Talk:Danaïdes/Archive 1

Archive 1

Discussion preliminary to move proposal

NB. The material below was copied from Wikipedia Talk:WikiProject Classical Greece and Rome  davidiad { t }

... My proposing a move would force me to actually learn a policy, so it would be great if an inthegnow editor wanted to do it. If not, I'll try to deal with it Saturday, along with the Danaids.  davidiad { t } 02:55, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

Going off on a tangent, I think that article should be under Danaïdes, not Danaids, which looks like an Anglicization (and specifically an Americanization) to me. The latter should redirect to it. File under "how do you spell relief?" P Aculeius (talk) 11:47, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

Hold on, now I'd have to read policy and do research! In my experience this Anglicization to Danaids straddles the Atlantic, though German scholarship is more likely to offer a straight transliteration. I'll be sure to figure out what's most common before proposing anything.  davidiad { t } 12:21, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

The DGRBM uses Danaides as a headword, but Danaïdes in the article (typographical issue, apparently). Harper's uses Danaïdes for both. Fairbanks' Mythology of Greece and Rome uses neither, referring to them as the "Daughters of Danaüs." The OCD 2nd Ed. uses Danaids, as does Brill's New Pauly (in English), but the original Pauly has Danaĭdes (using a breve for pronunciation) as the headword and Danaíden (with an acute accent) in the article (German), and the full RE has Danaïdes. I'm sure one could make the argument that Danaids is the "modern" form in English, but most literary and artistic references use Danaïdes, which probably explains why a Google search listed about 50,000 hits for Danaids and about 144,000 for Danaïdes, despite the number of Wikipedia clones that would automatically have used Danaids.

Perhaps this will fall on deaf ears, but if a high percentage of readers will look for the Danaïdes after encountering the name in literary or artistic contexts, and that form was until recently preferred in English-language classical scholarship, I think it should prevail... besides which, Danaids would still redirect to it, and would be included in the list of forms at the beginning of the article. It just irks me that in this age of word processors with infinite variations for typography, we're respelling historic names for no better reason than that the typewriters of the previous generation weren't equipped for accent marks, and most Americans don't seem to know what they're for. P Aculeius (talk) 16:25, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

I remember there being some big fight over diacritics in article titles over the past few months, but I can't remember how the dust settled. I'll try to track that down, too, before doing anything.  davidiad { t } 17:05, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

For what it's worth, in DGRBM the heading "Danaides" followed by "Danaids" in the text is probably not a typo. Smith favoured Latin for titles. Thereafter, since he was writing in English, he would have used what he felt was the English form in running text. I don't feel strongly, but I think Danaids is still the English name. Andrew Dalby 17:23, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

That's not the case here. The headword is DANAIDES, but Danaïdes is used consistently throughout the article, at least five times. The typesetter probably didn't have the appropriate character for a diaeresis over a capital 'I', or else it would have looked strange or caused issues with spacing. In other words, the headword has no diacritics for typographical reasons, not because the author preferred not to use them. This has nothing to do with "using Latin for titles but writing in English." And, as this article is signed, we know that it was written by Leonhard Schmitz (Rector of the High School of Edinburgh). William Smith was the editor, not the author of the encyclopedia; he only wrote the unsigned articles.

Meanwhile, in popular culture, we have:

• Les Danaïdes, the opera by Antonio Salieri,
• Les Petites Danaïdes, a ballet by Jean-Antoine Petipa,
• The Labour of the Danaïdes, a painting by John Reinhard Weguelin,
• Danaïdes, a painting by John William Waterhouse,
• The Danaïdes, another painting by Waterhouse,
• Le tonneau des danaïdes, an early motion picture,
• La Fontaine des Danaïdes, a sculpture by Jean-Baptiste Hugues,
• Les Danaïdes, a novel by Camille Mauclair, illustrated by Antonio de La Gandara,
• The Danaïdes, a fresco by John Singer Sargent,
• Le tonneau des danaïdes, a 2008 motion picture directed by David Guiraud
• Danaïdes, a 2012 album by Australian Jazz group "The Alcohotlicks"

Which I think demonstrates two things: first, that Danaïdes was and remains current in English, even if there's a recent trend of Anglicizing or Americanizing Greek names by omitting diacritical marks and changing -es to -s; and second, that people are quite likely to encounter the Danaïdes for the first time in works of art, literature, or music, and thus be expecting that spelling of the name. P Aculeius (talk) 03:28, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, I misread your report of the usage in DGRBM. Andrew Dalby 07:58, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

It's my fault that this discussion has continued here when it should go on at the article's talk page, and folks are already making spirited and valid arguments. We should discuss it there and hopefully arrive at consensus on what title we wish to propose before nominating the move, since I think we need to nominate a specific title and can't throw out a list of options in the formal process. I'll pop by there tomorrow. If anyone else wants to start the discussion, please do.  davidiad { t } 03:45, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

David, you might want to consider coping the relevant portions of the above to that pages' talk page. Paul August ☎ 16:50, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

In my cursory review of this online, I couldn't determine the relative weight of Danaids and Danaides, but it did seem fairly clear that in post-1970 English sources, the ï was less common—although I do understand P Ac's point about it how it might disappear in the era of manual typesetting and typewriters, and then be forgotten (except, of course, by the dieresis-mad New Yorker editors—63 comments, which NYer readers will recognize as an unusually high number). I hope this means we're agreed on Pausanias? Cynwolfe (talk) 15:37, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

End of copied text.  davidiad { t } 18:28, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

• So would someone like to make a formal move proposal? It should probably be framed as "to Danaids or Danaides or Danaïdes"—options to be discussed. I'm only assuming that no one will defend "Daughters of Danaus". Cynwolfe (talk) 18:59, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

Proposed Renaming

Alright, as Cynwolfe suggests, I'll get the ball rolling. I propose renaming the awkwardly-titled Daughters of Danaus to Danaïdes, with the lead sentence reading something like this:

• "In Greek mythology, the Danaïdes or Danaids were the fifty daughters of Danaüs..."

I don't believe the diacritic will cause any difficulty with searches, because both Danaides with no diacritic and Danaids would redirect to it, as, I suppose, would Daughters of Danaüs. I think several factors mitigate in favour of the form Danaïdes instead of Danaids as the title, although I have no objection to providing the latter as an alternate form in the lead sentence:

1. Danaïdes more closely approximates the Greek pronunciation, since it indicates three or four syllables (depending on how one treats the 'e'), separating the middle vowels, as both Greek and Latin speakers would have done. I'm not a stickler for all aspects of pronunciation; I don't particularly care if one treats the vowels as in English, Latin, or Greek. But I have a harder time excusing the reduction of the number of syllables from three or four to two.
2. The form Danaïdes has been the standard rendering of the name from Greek into the Latin alphabet for centuries. It's used more or less universally in Latin, German, and French, and is one of two forms regularly encountered in English; the older literature uniformly prefers it.
3. Other than mythology buffs, readers are most likely to encounter the Danaïdes in works of literature, art, or music. Most significant cultural references use the form Danaïdes, including recent ones in both French and English. There's a list in the previous discussion, above.
4. Scholars referring to the "standard literature" on classical mythology are also likely to encounter the name as Danaïdes, at least a large proportion of the time, since a considerable body of classical scholarship dates to the period before Danaids became widespread (at some point in the mid-20th century, presumably). For example, this is the form used in the Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, Realencyclopädie der Classischen Altertumswissenschaft, and Harper's Dictionary of Classical Antiquities.
5. When providing two forms of a name, it makes sense to provide the older or more technical form first, unless it's become completely obscure, and a newer or simplified form second. Using the same criterion to decide which to use as the title is logically consistent.
6. Lots of Greek words and names require diaeresis when transliterated into the Latin alphabet, because the vowels would normally be treated as diphthongs in languages such as Latin, French, or English. Eliminating them creates more confusion as to how names should be pronounced. The name will have plenty of company. And it looks much cooler.
7. The form Danaids wouldn't be deprecated, since it would be provided in the lead sentence as an alternative. Both forms and the Greek original could be discussed, together with various pronunciations, in a subsection of the article.

I don't know if I marshaled the best possible arguments there, but it's what I was able to come up with tonight. Anybody convinced yet? P Aculeius (talk) 06:12, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

• Support - I have seen "Danaids" in use, but, I now realise, as a name for certain butterflies. I no longer agree with myself (above) that "Danaids" is the common English name for these mythological females. "Danaïdes" is fine. Andrew Dalby 12:13, 27 May 2013 (UTC)
• I don't have time to !vote right now, but in order for this to be legit, I believe we need the template.  davidiad { t } 23:16, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

Not according to the page linked. That template is used to ask admins to perform controversial or potentially-controversial moves. If there's no controversy, we can simply move the article ourselves. So far, only two people have expressed an opinion, and they're both agreed. I presume that "potentially controversial" here means "likely to be contested," not "hypothetically possible that somebody might oppose the move," because then all moves would require an admin's approval, and that's certainly not the case. I think we just need to wait a reasonable time (say, a week) to see if someone is going to voice opposition to the move, and if nobody does we should just go ahead and move it. P Aculeius (talk) 05:08, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

I thought a "controversial" move was any that required discussion.  davidiad { t } 11:58, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

Looking over the page again, I think it's somewhat ambiguous when the template may be used, but I still think that the phrase "requested moves" seems to indicate a more formal procedure than is usually required just to see if there's consensus for a move. In this case I simply started the discussion out of an abundance of caution, since we were already discussing the topic, but I hadn't previously been involved with the article, and (to be perfectly honest), I expected some level of opposition simply because of the diaeresis, since a lot of English speakers just hate anything like accent marks. So far, that looks like needless worry, and if there isn't going to be an argument, we probably don't need a more formal process to move the article. Let's see if any significant opposition materializes by, say, June 3. P Aculeius (talk) 14:03, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

Sounds good, and I've never formally proposed a move anyway, so I don't know what one is supposed to do. Since the destination title is a redlink and thus has no history, we won't have to worry about an administrative closure in any event.  davidiad { t } 23:13, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

• Support. Having poked around, I think P Aculeius is right that outside of classics there are a good number of fields that will have the straight transliteration as a common term, and, since the redirects are there, the diacritic issue is not an issue (Wikipedia:Diacritics#Modified letters). I do hope, however, that we forgo the diaresis in Danaus: putting the wee dots over a thematic ending is a bit too diacritical in my opinion.  davidiad { t } 11:58, 29 May 2013 (UTC)