Talk:Bowie (surname)

image

I've removed the completely unencyclopedic image from the infobox. It might as well have been a picture of Marilyn Monroe or Madonna - completely irrelevant to the DAB page.

This isn't a disambig page, it's an article about a surname (click this link for the disambig page). The person is unidentifiable because her blonde hair is in the way. Actually it's impossible to tell if it's really a young man or woman in the picture. That makes it a perfect picture for a surname with an origin meaning "fair-haired". All that matters with that picture is the colour of the hair. That's why it's going back into the article.--Brianann MacAmhlaidh (talk) 15:41, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

The person is not a Bowie and has nothing to do with the surname. It doesn't belong on "your" page. Gee, WP:OWN much?

Perhaps a picture of a Bowie knife or one of the more famous Bowies would be significantly better. Better yet a family crest. Toddst1 (talk) 18:49, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

This article isn't about things like-named, but about the surname itself. So this isn't a page where everything under the sun with the name is listed, or people's favourite celebs with the name. The infobox pic is supposed to be actually about the surname. A picture of an American knife, or a 21st century celeb, have no bearing on the surname that dates to the Middle Ages.

Coats of arms and crests are personal property. They belong to individuals. The articles on Scottish clans correctly display them as the arms/crests of the chiefs not of the clan (in the clan-system the chief is the leader of a particular clan). But this article isn't about one particular family/clan, it's about a surname that is used by who knows how many families.

What makes the current image a good one is that you can't see the face, you can't see what the person is wearing, you can't even see what they are doing. It's a totally nondescript and neutral picture of someone. You can't even tell the sex of the person. All that matters is the hair-colour! A picture of a person with the surname Bowie doesn't illustrate anything unique about the name - people with this name aren't going to look any different than people with other English-language surnames. Some names owe their origin, or popularity to specific people. Like the names of saints, or European royalty: the English give names William (from William the Conqueror), and Kate (from Saint Catherine of Alexandria). But Bowie is different since it's a surname and it doesn't happen to owe it's origin to a any specific person (like maybe some other surnames do). The current picture is just as encyclopedic as the one shown in the article for the given name Randall or Raven. They both illustrate the original words that the names are derived from. The only real difference is that one is of a chick, but that doesn't make it unencyclopedic. It's the same as showing a picture of a fox for the given name Todd, which is ultimately derived from a Middle English word referring to the animal.

Since Bowie has at least two different etymologies, I think one can argue that a fair-haired person doesn't fairly illustrate the whole name (it's leaving out the Irish-language "descendant of Buadhach" etymology). That makes sense to me, and I don't have any probs removing it because of that, but pictures of knives, celebs, and personal coats of arms are not what this name is about.--Brianann MacAmhlaidh (talk) 05:51, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

Then we agree that it should be removed. Good. Toddst1 (talk) 23:18, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

wording

"A family of the surname, the Bowie family.. " is awkward. I think it would read better as it was originally written, "The Bowie family...", the same way it is written in Colonial families of Maryland. Toddst1 (talk) 17:19, 2 July 2011 (UTC)