Talk:Henry III of France

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: no consensus to move this page to the proposed title, and no consensus to impose consistency on similar titles at this time, per the discussion below. Dekimasuよ! 01:31, 9 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

PS: I have not gone through every single French bio category; I mostly went trawling through Category:Dukes of France and all its many subcats, same for counts, princes, etc. I've ignored Luxembourg, Belgium, Rhenish Franconia, etc.; focus on France for now.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:09, 21 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

• Proposal: All of the ones that are French, broadly speaking (e.g. not clearlyGerman with a stray French style/title), and not also bearing English titles, should be moved to "Henri" per WP:CONSISTENCY policy. Even if they have English titles in there somewhere, if the title given in our article title is a title in France not Britain, use Henri unless they have some clear connection to English history on the English side of it. Employ the KISS principle.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:09, 21 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Both forms get used, but I'd be inclined to go with SMcC on this one in favour of Henri, which seems to be the preference of current quality sources. Hchc2009 (talk) 07:18, 21 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose - These articles should remain under the name Henry. Let's not begin pushing the French language on English language Wikipedia. PS - Yes, if it were up to me, the Louis articles would be moved to Lewis, though sources wouldn't allow that. Like it not, there's inconsistencies among monarchs of the same countries. In Spain: They use Philip until the current king, which uses Felipe. In Denmark: They've got Margaret & Frederick, yet the current queen uses Margrethe & next king uses Frederik. GoodDay (talk) 07:51, 21 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Who the hell refers to the French kings as Lewis?! Shakespeare sometimes did, it's true. But in the last century (at least)? Really? -- Necrothesp (talk) 14:06, 21 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

    Macaulay. Not a current reference....Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:04, 2 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

    • Will we next be changing the article name for Earl Mountbatten of Burma to "Lewis Mountbatten" for fear his name has been irreperably "frenchified". Contaldo80 (talk) 15:52, 21 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • Yeah, I was too stunned by GoodDay's response to even reply to it. I thought maybe it was some kind of joke.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:06, 21 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

My point, even historically, there's inconsistency in how the English language handles the names of monarchs. Even within one country. GoodDay (talk) 21:41, 21 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Which relates in no way to changing French kings' names to "Lewis".  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:50, 21 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• This seems straightforward, but is not. How about kings of Navarre in the late middle ages, a Basque country that spanned the border of modern France and Spain? Or the rulers of Barcelona, where if we go by the French analogy we would have to change to Castilian versions (the national language) over English, then if/when a few years from now the geopolitical situation is altered, we have to change them all to the Catalan version? What about Swiss people - which of the four national languages do we use? And it becomes a quagmire for someone like Queen Richeza, who was born in Poland then lived with three husbands where the languages were Galician, Castilian Spanish and Mozarabic (depending on which part of the realm she happened to be in at the time), Franco-Provençal and, what would it be? West Upper German? Any choice of the right form for her name based on geography would be completely arbitrary. The only thing we should be consistent about is that we should consistently use the forms that are most common in better recent English language sources, no matter how inconsistent a pattern that produces. If you can show me data that over the past 20 years, most English-language historians have used Henri, so be it. Otherwise, I see no reason to change, and good reasons not to establish the precedent. Agricolae (talk) 09:41, 21 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Style matters are going to be arbitrary at one level or another no matter what. I'd prefer a system that made a choice toward consistency, on the basis of something, however imperfect, than the present condition which is just utter randomness.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:04, 21 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • I think consistency is overrated when it comes to name forms. I can see wanting to use the same form for most monarchs of a single country, but aiming for the same name form for everyone who ever lived in the geographical area that is now encompassed by a modern country? no. Agricolae (talk) 15:08, 22 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• I see nothing wrong with the present title of this article. The man even signed himself Henry. Surtsicna (talk) 10:40, 21 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Then perhaps make an exception for him. I'm not sure this is a good one, though. By its reasoning, we'd move most pre-modern, post-Christianization European rulers' and nobles' (and clergymen's, and ...) names to Latin, because they more often used that when writing. I think what's happening here is a confusion between use of "Henry" 700 years ago or whenever and the modern English-language habit of applying "Henry" to everyone named "Henri", "Enrique", "Heinrich", etc., etc. (and similar habits in Spanish of changing them all to "Enrique", and so on). They're not the same thing, just in the case of some subjects we'll end up with the same string by coincidence because they were in a narrow window in which the "Henry" spelling sometimes occurred in French (long before orthography stabilized). I would almost bet real money that Henr[i|y] IV spelled his name multiple different ways, just like Shakespeare. Whaleyland, below, articulates the issue much better than I am.

    Our general approach is to follow the sources, meaning modern ones. (We can't even use ancient manuscripts as sources directly, only cite modern publications that contain them.) There is no question that contemporary English-language sources frequently use "Henri" and also frequently use "Henry" (more frequently for certain subjects). Obviously, One thing we can do is veer back-and-forth from article to article – we're presently doing it. The point of the list of article history I amassed is that there's overwhelming evidence that no rationale is being applied, no analysis being done, i.e. no actual following of sources in any way, just insertion of personal preference. Alternatively we can say "picking different renderings on a per-bio basis is a mess; it's more useful to the project to use Henry for the English figures and Henri for the [broadly] French ones" (and presumably Heirich for the Germans and so on), since they're certainly attested in RS, and the result is more consistent, i.e. better fits the

    WP:CRITERIA. The current "anti-system" we're using does not. Even if it were based on following the sources to different conclusions pretty much by accident from article to article, that would be undesirable, and seems like a form of wikilayering or loophole exploitation rather than applying common sense toward a better experience for readers and increased maintainability for editors.
     — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:04, 21 February 2018 (UTC)[reply
    ]

• talk) 11:47, 21 February 2018 (UTC)[reply
  ]

I had not considered the evolution of the French language from Middle to Modern and its effect on a signature, but in the Kings of France we debate both personal and regnal names. The name of a reign should reflect the period, no? Consider me neutral on the matter. -

talk) 23:31, 21 February 2018 (UTC)[reply

]

• Is one variant
  more commonly used in English language sources (histories and biographies)? if so... we should use that variant. Blueboar (talk) 12:41, 21 February 2018 (UTC)[reply
  ]
• I agree with Agricolae, we should use the most common spelling in modern sources, particularly academic sources. Generally, more famous individuals (particularly royals and saints) are more likely to have their name Anglicized in a uniform way based on conventions that developed some time ago and are still largely kept, while less famous individuals are written about in English only more recently when writers are less likely to Anglicize. I think that inconsistency is just something we have to live with. Smmurphy^(Talk) 13:53, 21 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Except the whole point is that we don't. Examples: We have a general consensus to use diacritics in names which properly contain them, even when the majority of English-language sources on a subject lazily drop them (especially newspapers, entertainment magazines, and sports federations) unless (per
    WP:ABOUTSELF) the subject has dropped the marks from their own name. We have a consensus to not capitalize the vernacular names of species, even though the majority of RS within certain narrow fields do it habitually. We have a consensus to not capitalize job titles except when directly adhered to a name, even though near-universal practice in business English is to capitalize all of them. Etc., etc. I could probably generate over 100 examples like this. Style and titles on WP are determined by consensus not by imitation of off-site writing the follows others' in-house style guides.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:50, 21 February 2018 (UTC)[reply
    ]
    • I meant my comment to only apply to figures about which historians write, not to living people who write their name differently from expected or to species. I also was only thinking about titles for articles, not job titles. My thinking is that in cases where their is a consensus in the writings among English language historians, we should follow that. Whaleyland points out that the concensus is changing for French monarchs. If that is so, great, at a certain point I think we should change with it. At this point, I'm not sure the consensus has changed, compare google scholar searches of the two titles since 2013: in my searches, I see 224 results for "Henry III of France" and 95 results for "Henri III of France". Smmurphy^(Talk) 23:04, 21 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • My gut feeling is the same - there is a general trend among English-Language historians to render names less in standardized modern-English forms, but I haven't looked at French histories written over the past decade to see if it has gotten to the French monarchs yet. As to SMcCandlish's comment on the use of diacritics, I know that has become popular to do this, but I am not a fan, that we insist on calling one king García, with the diacritic of Castilian Spanish even though most historians omit it, while we are perfectly happy rendering his father's name in fully English form, Ferdinand - that I do find a jarring inconsistency. Agricolae (talk) 15:08, 22 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

        I tend to agree that's jarring, but it's an odd outlier, a mix-and-matching of styles in the same name or set of names in the same passage. I don't think it relates, even to the general pattern and its effect. A convention is not bad because one can find one failure among hundreds or thousands of successes, especially when the alternative is utter chaos and article-by-article constant strife. Which is a risk with these Henri/Henry articles; the only reason we've not seen more of it than I've already documented is the relative obscurity and the small number of editors working on them at present.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:14, 22 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• The Victoria and Albert's opinion. Pldx1 (talk) 19:12, 21 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

  

• To provide some context for the "Henry" signature argument, Old and Middle French did not differentiate between the letters "y" and "i" in many contexts, so they are basically interchangeable until the eighteenth century when linguistic standards began to be adopted more widely in French. That being said, I feel the person's signature is a bit of a red herring. John of England spelled his name "Jehan", which was the Middle French spelling. William the Conquerer would have certainly signed his name (if he signed it at all) as "Guillaume", or some permutation of it. Stephen of Blois would have gone by "Estienne" (modern "Étienne"). None are satisfactory for modern readers. I strongly feel that French monarchs should be given their name according to modern French spelling conventions. So "Hugues" not "Hugh", "Jean" not "John", "Philippe" not "Philip", and "Henri" not "Henry". This is increasingly the standard adopted by English-language historians and I see no compelling reason why it should not be adopted. As argued, the inconsistency of allowing "Louis" (which in Middle French was "Loys") rather than "Lewis," but then using English names everywhere else makes no logical sense.  – Whaleyland (Talk • Contributions) 21:30, 21 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The signature argument was meant to prevent silly discussions about the subject's "real" name. As for using modern French spellings, that would leave us with articles such as

Philippe IV of France, etc. These definitely do not reflect common English usage, not even common 21st century English usage. Surtsicna (talk) 15:50, 22 February 2018 (UTC)[reply

]

Well, it's kind of generated those discussions I said, and it's clear that the argument I've presented (for my part at least) has nothing to do with "real" names, but with selecting a consistent approach to this set of topics for the benefit of (primarily) readers. I'm disappointed this has meandered off into dogged insistence on imitating a particular subset of RS who do not follow our style but their own and who are contradicted not only but another subset of RS but one we know for a fact is ascendant. It's rather pathetic to me.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:17, 22 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding ascendance, here is the google books ngram viewer for "Henry III of France" vs "Henri III of France": https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Henry+III+of+France%2C+Henri+III+of+France&year_start=1800&year_end=2018&corpus=15&smoothing=3. I agree that Henri III does seem to be growing in relative use. Smmurphy^(Talk) 16:33, 22 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose - per Surtsicna well reasoned statement. — Coffee // have a ☕️ // beans // 09:17, 23 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose blanket moves, each case should be considered on its own merits. There is no consistency on whether we use foreign language or English variants of foreign royal names, because reliable sources don't treat them with consistency. As with most things,
  Felipe VI of Spain for the present king, even though they share a name and ordinal sequence in common. Thanks  — Amakuru (talk) 09:39, 23 February 2018 (UTC)[reply
  ]
  • We all know that's what we're doing now and what rationale is offered for it. Reiterating that doesn't address this proposal on its merits (and it is explicitly a proposal to set a default then consider each case on its merits in light of that default, not "impose" "blanket moves".  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:56, 24 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose If it ain't broke don't fix it. This is opening a rather sizeable can of worms, why confine it to Henry III and not all four French Henrys? I tend to think we that if in doubt we should anglicise, potentially we could get all sorts of disputes about whether we should go for modern versions of names or historical versions. In some cases it may not be clear which country some historical figures were mainly associated with, and official documents of the time may have mainly used the Latin version of their name. Louis versus Lewis is a red herring, nobody refers to e.g. Lewis XVI of France, and it could be a surprise to many English-speaking people that Lewis is the English version of Louis. PatGallacher (talk) 01:06, 24 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Not responsive. I've laid out why and how it's "broke". That something will be challenging isn't a reason not to do it. All sorts of debates are fine; that's what talk pages are for, and consensus is built on discussion. RM deals every single day with cases that are not entirely clear; we know how to do this (through research and common sense leading to a per-article consensus when necessary). I did intend "Lewis" as humorous hyperbole, but it turns out someone is actually convinced we should be anglicizing that much, so I was in no way wrong to make the comparison.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:56, 24 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Support – My vote is by its very nature an unorthodox suggestion in that it goes directly against
  WP:COMMONNAME policy, but I feel strongly that Wikipedia can be a source of change. Millions of people access the site every day, and while we certainly need to adhere to common standards, that does not mean we should do so blindly. NGRAM is an extremely useful tool, and it makes clear that before the 1820s, Lewis was actually the common name used to refer to the Louis of France in English literature. Shakespeare would have called him Lewis. Trends change and Wikipedia can help lead that change. We can start that process here by initiating a common rule for all European monarchal and aristocratic names. Redirects will still remain for the former spellings, but it is no longer culturally or historically appropriate to be calling the five Henris of France (including Henri, Comte de Chambord) Henry, nor to call Hugues Capet Hugh. Look at any current (1990s+) academic book on French history and they will use their proper name. NGRAM aggregates millions of sources, including reprints of books and articles that date back centuries. It cannot be relied on as the sole source of data to mark this trend. I just completed a doctoral thesis on medieval Capetian monarchs and family members and I had to read hundreds of books and articles for this, and most of the English books used modern French spellings. It is only right. I know I will be in the minority and I know I speak against WP policy, but Wikipedia has grown into an echo chamber of arguments which results in upholding a poor status quo. The fact that there is currently no consistent policy on names is a problem and SMcCandlish has suggested a reasonable and progressive alternative that reflects growing trends on the subject. This debate will continue for years until it is finally implemented. And it will eventually be implemented, on that point I am certain.  – Whaleyland (Talk • Contributions) 07:55, 25 February 2018 (UTC)[reply
  ]

FWIW, it's not Wikipedia's job to

right any perceived wrongs in the world. Its job is merely to reflect what already is. GoodDay (talk) 14:46, 26 February 2018 (UTC)[reply

]

I made clear that my opinion went against WP policy, so I am not sure what you wanted to accomplish by making this statement. If you are accusing me of self-promotion, then outlining my credentials and experience with this topic is not self-promotion, it is laying out my cards. If you are referring to me disapproving of WP policy, that is why I gave my disclaimer. Regardless, my point still stands — historical trends are changing and we do not have to stand on the sidelines just waiting for NGRAM to suddenly flip the statistics.  – Whaleyland (Talk • Contributions) 05:37, 27 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• It is a little unclear what we are now to be supporting/opposing through this discussion as it has become quite wide-ranging. Are we confining ourselves to French monarchs called Henry/Henri, or looking at all French royalty/nobility named Henry/Henri, or are we looking at all Anglicizations of French names including John/Jean, Philip/Phillipe, Francis/Françoise among the royalty/nobility? To my mind, the initial starting point is
  WP:USEENGLISH which we have in respect of the monarchs even taking into account the Louis example because Louis has long been used in English without any Anglicization whereas other French names have not been consistently used in that fashion. Some of the evidence presented above suggests that use in English is transitioning from Anglicization to the French form but I do not consider the evidence strong enough at this point to justify a blanket move among monarchs from the English to French name. Accordingly, I Oppose that. Some consistency among the nobility might be good though. Shadow007 (talk) 01:26, 27 February 2018 (UTC)[reply
  ]
• Oppose, and for the broader issue, support the current Wikipedia standard of "use the common name", which usually means non-Anglicized names past 1900 or so, and Anglicized names when common for nobles from earlier times, aka no change. First of all, if we're playing the cultural imperialism card, it's worth pointing out that it's very easy to get it "wrong" when deviating from the common name and using an archaic / invented name. Secondly, many nobles were cosmopolitan sorts who flitted between multiple domains, so you have Spanish princesses becoming English Queens, you have Hapsburgs ruling in both the Low Countries and Spain and Austria, you have Austrians who travel to briefly rule Mexico, etc. Which language name do you pick when there's 2-5 to choose from? Additionally, languages change over time, so it gets even more complicated for sublanguage dialects, archaic forms, languages that used to be spoken in a region that isn't anymore, etc. There's only one sane thing to do: not even attempt to systematize "rules" for this and use the
  WP:COMMONNAME. SnowFire (talk) 12:54, 28 February 2018 (UTC)[reply
  ]
• Oppose pending evidence of change in English generally. We are not a clarion of change, with which to make "statements"; we are a work of reference. If Henty III, or Henry of Navarre, becomes as outmoded as "Lewis of France" - now some two centuries out of date - we should change then.

Be not the first by which the new is tried

Nor yet the last to lay the old aside. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:02, 2 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose. Robert Knecht's Hero or Tyrant? Henry III, King of France, 1574–89 was published in 2014. (Surtsicna and Agricolae have made the broader point already.) There could probably be a little more consistency, but mostly within groups and not across them. The French kings are all Henry and that's appropriate. Srnec (talk) 03:39, 3 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment Because English is in part constituted of Middle French, why not treat all Old and Middle French as one standard, and Modern French as another? -
  talk) 19:18, 6 March 2018 (UTC)[reply
  ]
• Oppose – fascinating discussion, but seems to me that Henry is by far more common in English sources, so might as well let it be. I do not mean to contradict that "Wikipedia can be a source of change", but that's not really our purpose and I don't see how it's an appropriate goal on this one. Dicklyon (talk) 05:37, 8 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Extended discussion Some detail on the "WP does not blindly follow sources on style and titles" theme: The selection of sources for any particular article is skewed and incomplete anyway, but regardless, we use an internal consensus on

MOS:CAPS rules against over-stylization of proper names to mimic logos and other preferences of the subject, as just another example. Our hands are not tied here.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:50, 21 February 2018 (UTC)[reply

]

Not sure why, but beginning around the middle of the 20th century, the English language began using non-English names for non-English speaking countries. The first primary example was

Carl XVI Gustaf (instead of Charles XVI Gustav). Then there's the future monarchs in Denmark, Luxembourg, Spain, etc. GoodDay (talk) 07:04, 23 February 2018 (UTC)[reply

]

Sure. And since we live after the middle of the 20th century, that's what I suggest WP should do, too, at least within reason (e.g., we're not going to move Russian czars' articles to Cyrillic-lettered titles here, of course). WP, because of it's ostensible desire to move away from systemic bias, is in more of a position to take this culturally neutral step than the average publisher (e.g. an American encyclopedia for Americans, like The World Book Encyclopedia, or whatever).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:49, 24 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

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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.