Tolkien Gateway talk:Naming policy

From Tolkien Gateway

Suggestion (The)[edit source]

This is continuing on from my discussion on the The Yale talk page. -- Dour1234, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

Based on the Recognizability and Canonicty critera pages about thing that have a proper name that is used with the definitive article (i.e. the or that) and whose name without the definitive article would simply be a word for something general should have a name for the page that starts with the (e.g. The One Ring, The Shire, The Yale, etc.). This also follows from the use in English. One ring simply means one ring (i.e. a ring as oposed to rings) and there can be many rings, shire is simply a word for a county and there can be many shires with different names, yale is simply a word for a fertile upland and there can ben many yales with different names. However if a thing has a proper name that uses such a word and if the proper name is used with the definitive article in the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, then it should be used with the definitive article and readers of the workds of J.R.R. Tolkien will be familiar with the proper name with the definitive article. If you search for "One Ring" in an e-book version of The Lord of the Rings, you will find that it is always used with a definitive article (almost exclusively "the One Ring" and only once "that One Ring". "One Ring" without a definitive article is only used in the ring verse at the beginning of sentences. In The Lord of the Rings there is one instance where "the Yale" is used in the text and the label is "The Yale" on the map called "A Map of the Shire" just below Whitfurrows in The Lord of the Rings. Similarly always "the Shire" is used and not "a Shire". Only in one note "a Shire Calendar" is used, but that refers to the calendar and not to the Shire itself. The East Road has the label "Great East Road" on the map called General Map of Middle-earth that was drawn by Christopher Tolkien. The label "The East Road" is only used on the map "A Map of the Shire". In the text it is always "the East Road" or "the great East Road". To give you a real life example. London is the proper name of a city. As far as I know it is not used as a word for something (it has been decades since I translated anything from Latin into another language and I do not remember if Londinium had a meaning that was used in general for something else than the name of the city). So in english usage one does not call it "the London", one simply calls it London. Another real life example is the Netherlands. Netherlands literally means "low lands", but it has become the proper name of a country and as such it is used as "the Netherlands". When talking about the country one does not talk about "Netherlands" without the defintive article. --Akhorahil 12:55, 12 April 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I beg you all please move these discussions to the Discord server. --LorenzoCB 13:03, 12 April 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I made a mention of it there, so I will now be on discord now. -- Dour1234, 12 April 2022 (UTC)