Talk:Ann Fisher (grammarian)

Proposed correction to title name

The British Library, the Library of Congress, the National Library of Australia, and the National Library of Ireland all spell her name as "Anne Fisher". See VIAF and the respective catalogues of these libraries. Thus, as this in an English language project, we should change the title of the page to "Anne Fisher" and use "Anne" throughout. Belastro (talk) 03:33, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

I agree. I'd say go right ahead, but give refs. Bmcln1 (talk) 17:21, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

Fisher's dictionary

Rationale for change: The article claimed: “No known copy of Fisher’s Spelling Dictionary (1774) survives.”, citing an article about Anne Fisher in Blain, Clements, & Grundy, Feminist Companion (1990) p. 376. Further, the reference to Blain et al gave incorrect page numbers; they should be 375–376. In turn, Blain et al apparently relied upon the first edition of Alston’s Bibliography of the English Language, Volume 5, The English Dictionary (1966). (Alston misspelled Anne’s first name; see preceding note.) The annotated reprint of Alston’s Bibliography, which appeared in 1974, recanted his earlier report that an edition of Fisher’s dictionary appeared in 1774 and subsequently disappeared. He replaced the entry at v.325 with bibliographic data for the so-called 2nd edition of Fisher’s dictionary, published in 1773. Belastro (talk) 04:03, 2 June 2020 (UTC)

The Feminist Companion is certainly outdated and has been superseded by Orlando (and where Fisher is referred to as "Ann.") — scribblingwoman 15:32, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

Argument for keeping "Ann"

Agreed that her name is spelt inconsistently in the record, as is frequently the case with Ann/Anne. But I note that the researchers who are working on Fisher most closely refer to her as "Ann," and two of them, at least, have worked closely with her correspondence and family papers: see Rodríguez-Álvarez, Alicia, and María Esther Rodríguez-Gil. "John Entick's and Ann Fisher's Dictionaries: An Eighteenth-century Case of (Cons)Piracy?" International Journal of Lexicography, Volume 19, Issue 3, September 2006, Pages 287–319, https://doi.org/10.1093/ijl/ecl015. — scribblingwoman 15:27, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

1. The en.wikipedia.org site is explicitly an anglophone site. The anglophone authorities offered by VIAF concur with Anne Fisher. The ISNI authority, although published in English, assigns 16-digit identifiers to “uniquely identify” persons and organizations where name variants exist; an ISNI identifier does not privilege any name variant.

2. Arguments from authority are not convincing. Given that anglophone name authorities prefer Anne, Rodríguez-Álvarez and Rodríguez-Gil should provide citable work that demonstrates that Ann should be privileged here over Anne. Note that Newcastle upon Tyne memorializes her as Anne Fisher (see photo of plaque on Wikipedia page) and she advertised her school there under the name Anne Fisher.

3. More recent work refers to her as Anne Fisher. See: Alexander K Bocast, “Plagiarist’s Fatigue: The Case of Anne Fisher’s Plagiarism of John Entick’s New Spelling Dictionary” (conference presentation, International Conference on Historical Lexicography and Lexicology, Logroño, Spain, June 18, 2021). Belastro (talk) 00:06, 22 February 2023 (UTC)