Talk:Chris Martin (civil servant)

Lead paragraph

User:Wash whites separately, you state that "per WP:QUOTENAME, all nicknames go in quotes, even the obvious ones". This is a misunderstanding. "Chris" is not a nickname, merely the standard contraction of his first name, Christopher. MOS:LEGALNAME states, "It is not always necessary to spell out why the article title and lead paragraph give a different name." A good high profile example would be our article on Bill Clinton, which starts "William Jefferson Clinton", with no mention of "Bill". Edwardx (talk) 19:42, 19 October 2016 (UTC)

It's not a misunderstanding. Any shortening or contraction of a given name is by definition a nickname. The line you gave from MOS:LEGALNAME refers to the difference between a person's stage name and their legal name; it's not referring to nicknames at all. And the Bill Clinton page does make a mention of "Bill"... —Wash whites separately (talk) 22:39, 19 October 2016 (UTC)

A contraction is different from a nickname in my view. Bill for William and Jack for John are nicknames because they are different words but Chris for Christopher or Steve for Steven require no explanation in the article. Philafrenzy (talk) 23:34, 19 October 2016 (UTC)

Any deviation from the given name constitutes a nickname to me. The first dictionary definition I came across defines a nickname as: "a familiar or humorous name given to a person or thing instead of or as well as the real name". In your example, "Chris" would be the familiar name and "Christopher" is the real name. —Wash whites separately (talk) 01:38, 20 October 2016 (UTC)