User:Irpen/sb3

Other encyclopedias and a single most primary consideration in naming policy (most commonly used English name)

I checked several other encyclopedias:

In Britannica, the article is simply called Alexandra and goes:
Alexandra
Russian in full Aleksandra Fyodorovna, original name Alix, Princess (prinzessin) von Hesse-Darmstadt
born... died...
consort of the Russian emperor Nicholas II. Her misrule...

In Columbia Encyclopedia the article is called Alexandra Feodorovna and goes:
Alexandra Feodorovna
1872–1918, last Russian czarina, consort of Nicholas II; she was a Hessian princess and a granddaughter of Queen Victoria. Neurotic and superstitious, she...

Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia calls the article Alexandra Fyodorovna, Empress of Russia. The article goes like this:
Alexandra Fyodorovna, Empress of Russia
Alexandra Fyodorovna, b. June 6 (N.S.), 1872, was the consort of Nicholas II, the last tsar of Russia. She was the daughter of...

In Encyclopedia Americana the article is called Alexandra Fyodorovna, and goes like this:
Alexandra Fyodorovna
Alexandra Fyodorovna (1872-1918), the wife of Emperor Nicholas II of Russia. She was the daughter of...

And finally, Microsoft Encarta. I don't have a full access to it, but from limited free online version I conclude that it does not have a separate article for the tsarina. However, the search for Alexandra gives: Alexandra of Russia entry which consists of the lists of contexts and links to the articles she is mentioned as follows: Alexandra of Russia:
"marriage to Tsar Nicholas II of Russia" and
"damage to Tsar’s prestige" and
"execution with husband and children" all three in Nicholas's article
; "behaviors contributing to the Revolution" in Rasputin's article
; "identification of skeleton using mitochondrial DNA" in Mitochondria article
; "photograph of Tsar’s family" in "Russia’s Royal Family" article.

Just out of curiosity, I checked the 1911 Britannica. At that time EB didn't have a separate article on her, but in Nicholas' article, EB1911 mentions his being married to Alix of Hesse.

Now, of course different encyclopedia have different sets of rules on the articles names. But I beleive, everywhere there is something similar to WP's "Used the most commonly used English name", which I interpret "Use the name most commonly used in the English language", because some foreign names are not English names, but English media do call foreigners somehow and these are the names we should choose among. The perpetual problem of all article naming disputes is the criteria, of which name to choose from the set of commonly used English names, i.e. what name of several to use and why. There were many fights about "best" or "several best" criteria. Advocates of Google test have their arguments, opponents have theirs. My opinion is that Google test is a valid criterion among others (not a single one) but it has a large statistical error and means anything only when {a) the difference is overwhelming, (b) the sampling is statistically significant, hardly the case for a princess, currently a relative obscure figure. For the similar reasons we can't make a meaningful media usage test. My favorite one is the LexusNexus test of what LN considers "[major papers]", because "Google news" or most other searches include many sources too unestablished for having a specific and consistent style policy. Therefore, we should pay attention to this "other encyclopedia test". None uses "Alix of Hesse", because none views them as a "commonly used name". To summarize, the "most commonly used English name" clause in the WP naming convention, should take precedence over other consideration, with the others stepping in only to choose among the several commonly used, or, for the totally obscure topics, to choose among several "unused". --Irpen 17:35, July 23, 2005 (UTC)