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Talk:Bogi Takács

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Article pronoun usage

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Takács uses both e/em/eir as well as singular they. The article currently uses e/em/eir, but should it? Wikipedia is a general encyclopedia, and many may be confused by this; English Wikipedia gets lots of views from those whose native language is not English, and even native speakers may be confused by this. As long as Takács is comfortable with singular they, which it appears they are, shouldn't we rather use they/them in the article, to enhance clarity and understanding? There is another approach which is to avoid using pronouns in the article at all, while keeping the statement about Takács's pronoun use intact.

If we decide to keep 'E', then maybe we could follow with either a parenthetical, or an explanatory footnote. Here are some options:

  1. E currently resides in the United States.  – This is the current version.
  2. They currently reside in the United States.  – Preceded, or followed, by the existing sentence about pronoun usage.
  3. E (or, they) currently resides in the United States.  – As written; the "(or, they)", including the parentheses, would become part of that sentence.
  4. E currently resides (or, They currently reside) in the United States.  – As written; including the parens
  5. E[a] currently resides in the United States.  – including the bracketed note; the Note would appear with the rest of the footnotes at the bottom of the page.
  6. Avoid pronouns; see for example, Albert Cashier, or James Barry (surgeon).
  7. Something else.

I'm in favor of #2. Or, a combination of #2 and #5. Any thoughts? Adding @Antiqueight, Ciaracat, Ben the Bos, Daviddwd, Asarelah, Yngvadottir, Sorrel, Rab V, Ira Leviton, QoopyQoopy, and Funcrunch:. (If you add new ideas, please number them, starting with 8.) Mathglot (talk) 22:13, 28 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Notes

  1. ^ The E is a gender-neutral pronoun in English. It is used in this article, where others might use He ,She, or They where a subject pronoun would be required.
I'd go for #2. I think most users of neopronouns other than singular they recognize that accommodations sometimes need to be made for comprehension and accessibility. Funcrunch (talk) 22:31, 28 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Given that Takács uses both e/em/eir and they/them pronouns, I'd say any of #1, #2 and #5 are fine. #6 is unnecessary given that they/them pronouns are one of the options and are definitely fine to use in articles, and #3 and #4 are needlessly clunky. GreenComputer (talk) 22:35, 28 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I think #2 is best, as long as Takács uses they/them and is comfortable that way, I think that is probably simplest. Ben the Bos (talk) 22:52, 28 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Since we know the pronouns Takács uses, we should avoid #6. I'm (perhaps obviously, since I added the pronouns in the first place) in favour of #1 or #5. On the other hand, since Takács is happy with both e and they, #2 is probably also ok. Sorrel 🦉 (talk) 23:02, 28 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I'm going to address the XY problem here - is a neopronoun really more confusing to a non-native speaker than using a plural pronoun to refer to one person? (Not that that usage is incorrect - just possibly more difficult for a non-native speaker). @Mathglot: QoopyQoopy (talk) 16:35, 3 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I'm in favour of #2 because Takács uses that too and it simplifies the vocabulary. But then I may be biased. It would be good to get input from someone who uses a pronoun that is not she/he/they. ☕ Antiqueight chatter 13:37, 4 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: it seems like #2 is favored more than other options so far, although I don't know if we could call it a consensus. So why don't we keep this open for a while longer—perhaps a week or two?—after all, there's no hurry. Otoh, this is not a highly viewed page, so we might need to attract more opinions, so if anyone wants to list this at a project, or other Talk pages, that might help. Before you do, please read WP:APPNOTE, and be sure that any listings you post are neutral (i.e., that they don't let on what your viewpoint is, in the posting) and above all, please avoid anything that involves WP:CANVASSING, which would pollute the survey results. Thanks for all the responses so far. Mathglot (talk) 21:40, 4 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Given name, surname

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We should probably call out somewhere in the article that "Bogi" is the given name, and Takács is the family name. "Bogi" is normally a diminutive, but I don't know if we should add that, unless we have a specific source for that in this case.

The title of this article correctly names its protagonist following English standard usage, that is, given name first, surname last. In a Hungarian newspaper, Bogi would be listed as "Takács Bogi" (example: here). Hungarian (like Chinese and some other languages) uses eastern name order, which is surname first, given name last; so, for example on Hungarian Wikipedia: hu:Orbán Viktor and hu:Polgár Judit. The convention in English usage is to swap the order of Hungarian names to match English convention of given name first, so: Viktor Orbán, Judit Polgár; possibly because the given name looks familiar to us in English. (But we don't do that for Chinese; e.g., Xi Jinping is "Mr. Xi"). In a lot of cases of Hungarian biographies on English Wikipedia it's obvious which is the given name, and which is the family name; the names Viktor and Judit look familiar to us. In other cases, it's less clear, especially if the given name could sometimes be a family name; "Bogi" is an example, as that is sometimes a surname in Hungarian (also in other languages, e.g., Giorgio Bogi). "Takács" can only be a surname, but most English speakers probably wouldn't know that. So, we should probably mention something about given name/surname in the article. (If you want to max out your confusion about Hungarian first name/last name vs. given name/surname, check out Talk:Peter Bence.)

Beyond name order, there's also the issue of nickname/diminutive vs. completely spelled out name: normally "Bogi" would be a diminutive for "Boglárka" (emphasis on the first syllable, as with every word in Hungarian, regardless of diacritical marks; listen), which is a popular girl's name in Hungary. German Wikipedia already has an article with the name de:Boglárka Takács, however she is a Hungarian sprinter, and if en-wiki ends up having an article about her, we might need to create a disambig page for the two articles, or have hatnotes at the top for navigation. Mathglot (talk) 00:55, 5 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]