Talk:Gnomish

From Tolkien Gateway
Latest comment: 16 March 2022 by Sage

How about moving this article to "Gnomish"? I notice that I always use "Gnomish" when referencing to this language in other articles. I also believe that it is much more likely that a reader would search for "Gnomish" rather than "Goldogrin".--Morgan 20:12, 29 June 2011 (UTC)Reply[reply]

+1--Mith (Talk/Contribs/Edits) 22:58, 29 June 2011 (UTC)Reply[reply]
+1 — Mithrennaith 03:50, 30 June 2011 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I really think that page names should lean more towards accuracy than what a reader would search up. After all, what is the point of having redirects if no one searches for them? Redirects in my mind should probably be for the more common names while the actual page itself is the accurate name. Dour1234, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
TG:NAMING
TG is a resource for humans on planet Earth and it is for that reason that "recognisability" and "naturalness" are listed first. "Canonicity," the point that most relates to the in-universe name of a thing, is dead last in the schema, and is only concerned that articles use "a canonical name", not necessarily "the name that people within the fiction of some iteration of the Legendarium might be most liable to use." For many concepts there are many article name candidates that are canonical, concise, and precisely identify the subject, but fewer that are consistent with the rest of content on TG; from there ties go to naturalness and recognisability.
This is just my opinion, but as a rule of thumb, I would say if an obscure concept in the Legendarium has a plain English name, it should use that name. Some concepts are only ever named in Tolkien's invented languages, and as such the article will necessarily be named as such. (A second rule of thumb - if a concept in the Legendarium appears in popular media such as the PJ trilogy using a canonical name, the name used in the popular imagination should probably be the article name e.g. Rohan versus the Mark, even though "Mark" is an English word and "Rohan" is not.) --Mord 04:01, 15 March 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
In your first paragraph, you are basically echoing what I was trying to get at, but you explained it in better words. However, I do take issue with the end of your second paragraph regarding the trilogy adaption. The wiki should prioritize the source material over adaptations as Peter Jackson simply made the series more popular and people are likely to come to the wiki because they wish to see more information. Also, the wiki is called Tolkien Gateway, Tolkien’s published writings should, in my opinion, take precedence over any adaptations, no matter how popular that adaptation is. I do admit that despite all of this, I myself got into the series from The Hobbit:An Unexpected Journey. This is just my own beliefs on how to handle adaptations. Basically, I consider them all to be under the original because source material should always take precedence.
Sorry if that was a bit intense. I do not think I can phrase this all any other way. Dour1234, 15 March 2022 (UTC)
I disagree with the idea of changing this policy. Just imagine trying to find the most """correct""" term (says who) for every article. --LorenzoCB 11:26, 15 March 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I just do not think that adaptation terms, no matter how popular, should have precedence. I do think that whatever is the most popular yet accurate term in Tolkien’s writing should have precedence. Dour1234, 15 March 2022 (UTC)
Obviously. That's why we have "Great Horn" instead of "Horn of Gondor". --LorenzoCB 13:07, 15 March 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Yes, let me be explicit: names from adaptations that are not at all canonical (i.e. were not used anywhere at all by JRRT) shouldn't be used as article names (e.g. "Great Horn" vs "Horn of Gondor"). But there is an important distinction between "names invented in adaptations" versus "canonical names used prominently in adaptations;" when there are multiple canonical (i.e. used by JRRT) names for the same concept (e.g. "Rohan" vs "The Mark") I think the one that is more popular should win out per the principles of "Recognisability" and "Naturalness." Both of these principles are necessarily subjective, but I think that it is appropriate to take the perspective of a casual person who might be looking into Tolkien's broader works from a perspective of familiarity only with adaptations.
In this specific case, we're talking about draft material that never saw publication during JRRT's lifetime, let alone any adaptations. This would IMO fall under the rubric of "if the concept has a plain English name, use that instead of a name in an invented language." In situations where multiple names exist for a concept in the Legendarium, my heuristic would be that first priority in naming goes to the canonical name featured most prominently in popular adaptations (if any), second priority to the canonical name that is a plain English word, and last priority to a canonical name in an invented language. --Mord 05:21, 16 March 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Let me give my two cents too. If sometimes finding the most "canonical" or "recogniseable" or "natural" name among others becomes controversial, perhaps we should find some objective guide or rule of thumb. One such guide would be perhaps the books's indices and/or lexicons such as Foster's Complete Guide. For example, I guess that looking up "the Mark" in the LOTR's index, it will say something like "See: Rohan" which indicates that Rohan is the "primary" or "preferrable" name in the lore (this is just a theoretical example I made up, I don't actually know if this is really the case with Rohan, but I do guess so).
On the other hand I do believe that the wiki format gives us some liberties that work better and more accurately than canon: for example unlike the canonical narrative we do disambiguate between Teleri vs Falmari and Dunedain vs Numenoreans. Sage 11:51, 16 March 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Those are all very good points. Dour1234, 16 March 2022 (UTC)