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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by GTBacchus (talk | contribs) at 05:25, 24 July 2011 (→‎Respect to the subject: edit). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

For (1.yes)

Commonality (1.yes)

  1. WP:NCON#Common_names says at the top, "The term most typically used in reliable sources is preferred to technically correct but rarer forms, whether the official name, the scientific name, ... Other encyclopedias may be helpful in deciding what titles are in an encyclopedic register as well as what name is most frequently used."
  2. Quality encyclopedias unanimously favor "Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi," (and not just the English language ones).
  3. There is a world-wide historiographical convention of preferring "Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi."

Consistency/Precedent (1.yes)

  1. There is also an apparent Wikipedia convention of naming Indian political leaders of Gandhi's era by their full names, just as there seems to be for prominent Germans born in the 18th century, which include Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, whose forenames are unknown to most people.
  2. The only other Wikipedias with million plus articles, the German Wikipedia (with 1,262,162 articles) and the French Wikipedia (with 1,128,802 articles), both favor "Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi;" see here and here for evidence.

Stability (1.yes)

  1. "Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi" has been the stable page name for over four years despite a number of attempts to change it.

Against (1.no)

Commonality (1.no)

  1. Of all the permutations, the full name Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi is the one by which Gandhi is least known.
  2. WP:NCON#Common_names gives other encyclopedias as only one source for determining usage, along with "major international organizations, major English-language media outlets" and others.
  3. Further, it only says that "Other encyclopedias may be helpful", not that they are to used as a yardstick.
  4. Indian historiographical convention and the titles of articles on less-well-known Indian leaders carry less weight in discussions on articles on major world figures.

Stability (1.no)

  1. An article title cannot be called stable if there have been "a number of attempts to change it."

Mohandas Gandhi

For (2.yes)

Recognizability (2.yes)

  1. Mohandas Gandhi [1] appears almost as often (26,300) in Google books English language search as Mohandas K. Gandhi [2] and Mohandas Karamchad Gandhi [3] combined (26,800). Those numbers change very little when switching to google.co.in, too.

Against (2)

Commonality (2.no)

  1. Google books hits are: "Mahatma Gandhi" (with quotes) 245k against "Mohandas Gandhi" (with quotes) 28k i.e. 10 to 1 in favour of Mahatma Gandhi.
  2. Personality not commonly referred to by the name at all.

Gandhi

For (3.yes)

Commonality (3.yes)

  1. A binary Google Books search for "Gandhi," which excludes the other well-known Gandhis and "Mahatma Gandhi," returns 678,000 titles in contrast to 323,000 for "Mahatma Gandhi". This shows that reliable sources prefer plain old "Gandhi" to "Mahatma Gandhi" by 2 to 1

Recognizability, conciseness, precision, naturalness (3.yes)

  1. Plain Gandhi satisfies 4 of the 5 policy criteria (WP:AT). It is recognizable, natural, precise and concise. The fifth criterion, consistency, is probably not important as the many examples on this page show that there is little consistency in naming well-known individuals.

Consistency/Precedent (3.yes)

  1. There is precedent in Wikipedia for single names; Napoleon is one, even though there are many other Napoleons worthy enough to merit their own Wikipedia pages.

Against (3.no)

Commonality (3.no)

  1. A google book search for Gandhi done above returning 678,000 titles is by no means exhaustive and therefore conclusions are not definitive. Point 2 above is the same as point 1.

Precision (3.no)

  1. Gandhi is not exclusive to the subject of the article. Other Gandhis are famous enough to have articles in WP, particularly Indira Gandhi and members of her family.
  2. 'Gandhi' in India means numerous things. It is as such inherently ambiguous. Whether Gandhi is already mentioned in redirect carries no implicit fact that people search for Gandhi more than Mahatma Gandhi.

Consistency/Precedent (3.no)

  1. Surnames on their own are not used a titles on WP, even where they are as common or more common than full names, such as Shakespeare, Churchill or Picasso.

Mahatma Gandhi

For (4.yes)

Honorific? (4.yes)

  1. The WP:HONORIFIC argument is a red herring. The MOS is concerned with the over-use of "The Right Honourable", "His Holiness" etc. Quibbles about whether or not the name is rarely found without the honorific goes against the MOS injunction to "use common sense in applying it".
  2. If honorifics like mother in Mother Teresa can be used, so can Mahatma.

Commonality (4.yes)

  1. Mahatma Gandhi is a common name. It is used in book titles by reputable Western as well as Indian authors.
  2. Martin Luther King used "Mahatma Gandhi" in the 1960s (Influence of Mahatma Gandhi on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.) Barack Obama used it in 2009 (The Telegraph). This has nothing to do with national sentiments.
  3. Google books hits are: "Mahatma Gandhi" -mohandas 227k against "Mohandas Gandhi" -mahatma 24.6k, i.e., a full order of magnitude in favor of Mahatma Gandhi.

Commonality, Consistency/Precedent, Naturalness (4.yes)

  1. Queen Victoria is named so on the page. Her real name is Alexandrina Victoria. It's not about nationalism, it's how users would search for someone. Based on Internet search it's quite clear how much popular Mahatma Gandhi is. An user is more likely to search Mahatma Gandhi, or would be more aware of this name.

Naturalness (4.yes)

  1. The redirect Mahatma Gandhi is the most used redirect to this article[4], even more used than the Gandhi redirect[5]. Mahatma Gandhi[6] is more often linked to than Gandhi[7] and much more often linked to than Mohandas Gandhi[8], and Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi is most often linked to through piped links reading "Mahatma Gandhi". These things together suggest that "Mahatma Gandhi" is the most natural title for this article, as defined by WP:CRITERIA.

Other (4.yes)

  1. The issue isn't about right or wrong of using great, mother, terrible or mahatma, it is about accuracy.
  2. It is not the function of article titles to correct popular misconceptions such as mistaking an honorific for a given name; that is the function of the article itself.

Against (4.no)

Honorific? (4.no)

  1. Mahatma, as its own page informs us, is an honorific or title.
  2. The argument in "Gandhi (4.for)" above shows that "Mahatma Gandhi" does not qualify as an exception in WP: HONORIFIC, which says: "Where an honorific is so commonly attached to a name that the name is rarely found without it, it should be included"

Consistency/Precedent (4.no)

  1. The analogies of Mother Teresa and Queen Victoria are incorrect, since binary Google book searches for Teresa -Mother and Victoria -Queen yield altogether different kettles of fish, in contrast to that for Gandhi -Mahatma, which is all MKG.
  2. Also, Teresa and Victoria do not redirect to Mother Teresa and Queen Victoria respectively, but Gandhi does redirect to Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.
  3. Not being a well-known honorific outside of India (see eighth line of this site in neighboring Pakistan), "Mahatma" can create the false impression that it is a part of MKG's name, especially in the minds of newcomers.

Naturalness (4.no)

  1. The redirect data seems to suggest that most people access Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi directly (or through an external search engine) without the aid of a Wikipedia redirect, for the article statistics for Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi is 196,000 plus, much more than the sum of 14,000 plus for Gandhi and the 25,000 plus for Mahatma Gandhi and all the other redirects.

Respect (4.no)

  1. Gandhi himself was deeply pained by the title.

Analysis

Search results

Google.in, books, English language:

Huh. The longer the birth name, the more likely the author is to use "Mahatma" instead. Guess that's not too surprising.

Comparing "Mahatma Gandhi" without "Mohandas" versus the combination of all three forms of "Mohandas K. Gandhi" without "Mahatma", gives us a ratio of:

  • 227 : (24.6 + 12.7 + 6.02)
  • 227 : 43.32
  • 5.24:1,

...which is about 72% of an order of magnitude. (It's a logarithm thing.)

Principal naming criteria

Analysis per WP:CRITERIA, the principal naming criteria listed at the Wikipedia:Article titles policy page.

Recognizable

Article titles are expected to be a recognizable name or description of the topic.

It seems clear that, although the full name is common in scholarly as well as popular sources, any version containing the name "Mohandas" will be less recognizable to many readers.

This is somewhat double-edged, because the experience might educate that person a little bit, making "Mohandas Gandhi" a little bit more recognizable, and making the world a little bit more informed. This double-edge is a feature of the fact that we ask encyclopedia article titles to be recognizable in the first place. The criterion's use is supported by a broad and long-standing consensus though, so we just get used to keeping this thought in mind. Our goal isn't to "dumb down", so be careful!

A second reservation is that "Mohandas" is still recognizable by a significant proportion of readers. This proportion would be quite difficult to measure, but we aren't dealing with a name that you could call obscure.

Summary
  • "Mahatma Gandhi", "Gandhi" > "Mohandas Gandhi" and "Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi", (with noted reservations)

Natural

Titles are expected to use names and terms that readers are most likely to look for in order to find the article (and to which editors will most naturally link from other articles). As part of this, a good title should convey what the subject is actually called in English.

Both WP:COMMONNAME and the principle of least astonishment come into play here. I just tried typing "Gandhi" into my Google search-bar, and it auto-completes it as either "Mohandas K Gandhi" or "Mohandas Gandhi". Apparently Google calculates that those are the most likely targets for someone typing "Gandhi". Indira didn't come up, and neither did "Mahatma". I wonder how much influence Wikipedia has on that.

Are any of the suggested names astonishing? Not really. It's not very surprising to see someone's real name as their article title. It's also un-surprising to see a very common form (Mahatma Gandhi). It's a little surprising to see a mononym, but Gandhi is such a prominent figure that even that wouldn't blow too many minds.

Summary
  • No strong preference

Precise

Titles are expected to use names and terms that are precise, but only as precise as is necessary to identify the topic of the article unambiguously.

The only option to suffer in terms of precision is "Gandhi", because there are many notable people of that name (see Gandhi (disambiguation)). None of them is called "Mahatma", so there's no problem there. Gandhi currently redirect to M.K. Gandhi because he is the primary topic. However, we have unambiguous titles available that at least go a good way towards satisfying the rest of the criteria.

Summary
  • "Mohandas Gandhi", "Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi", "Mahatma Gandhi" > "Gandhi"

Concise

Titles are expected to be shorter rather than longer.

The single-word name is shortest, and the two-word names are shorter than the two-word-plus-initial or three-word names, but none of the options really falls afoul of this criterion. A person's full name is concise, within any reasonable set of encyclopedia standards.

Summary
  • No preference

Consistent

Titles are expected to follow the same pattern as those of similar articles.

The single name "Gandhi" would be an unusual choice of title, because we have very few biographies, about modern people in particular, where the title is just their surname. Two examples are Liberace and Morrissey. Before looking into this move request, I knew Gandhi's and Morrissey's first names, but not Liberace's. On the other hand, Gandhi occupies a unique place in history, which makes comparisons with singers seem less relevant, perhaps. Who else in the modern era is quite like him?

The names "Mohandas Gandhi" and "Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi" are both consistent with many, many biography articles that are styled "Firstname Middlename Lastname" or "Firstname Lastname".

The option "Mahatma Gandhi" is not entirely parallel with any other article, because Gandhi is kind of... peerless. I haven't seen a close precedent, and I don't think there is one. The examples of Mother Teresa and Father Damien, as well as Queen Victoria have been offered. However, "Teresa" and "Damien" and "Victoria" alone don't immediately bring that person to mind in the same way that "Gandhi" makes you think of M. K. Gandhi first and foremost. "Victoria said I should slap the guy." / "Who's Victoria?" vs. "Gandhi said I should slap the guy." / "I don't believe you!"

"Neither Gandhi" nor "Mahatma Gandhi" is clearly unallowable per consistency. However, "Mohandas Gandhi" and "Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi" are not too far from "Friedrich Nietzsche" and "Johann Wolfgang von Goethe", in terms of how many people walk around knowing those full names. They seem consistent with most of our articles about very famous people.

Summary
  • "Mohandas Gandhi", "Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi" > "Mahatma Gandhi" > "Gandhi"

Other policies/guidelines

WP:NPOV

There are some arguments that using the title "Mahatma" would seem to make Wikipedia biased in favor of Indian nationalists, or nationalism. The widespread use of the title, however, in such a wide variety of international contexts, seems to diminish the weight of these arguments.

Conversely, one can argue that avoiding the term "Mahatma" would seem to bias us in the opposite direction. Again, the great quantity of sources eschewing "Mahatma" would seem to dilute this argument nearly out of existence, just as above.

It's also not clear exactly how and to what extent these arguments play a role in titling disputes.

Summary
  • No preference

WP:HONORIFIC

If this point from MoS does play a role, it is to prefer any form not using "Mahatma". It is, however, not clear that this is really a case that WP:HONORIFIC is meant to address.

Summary
  • "Mohandas Gandhi", "Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi", "Gandhi" > "Mahatma Gandhi"(with some uncertainty)

Other arguments

Respect to the subject

It has been noted that M.K. Gandhi himself did not approve being called "Mahatma". If this argument matters — and it is not 100% clear that it does — then it favors any form not using "Mahatma".

Summary
  • "Mohandas Gandhi", "Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi", "Gandhi" > "Mahatma Gandhi"(with some uncertainty)
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