Talk:François-Louis Laporte, comte de Castelnau

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Requested move 15 January 2021

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

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Francis de Laporte de Castelnau → François-Louis Laporte, comte de Castelnau – Attempting to follow guidelines at WP:NCNOB, though I'm honestly not sure about the best title to use. I originally sought for help on this at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Biography#Francis de Laporte de Castelnau but got no reply in nearly two weeks, so I thought it best to just WP:BOLD and rename the page anyway.

The full name for this person is generally given as "François Louis Nompar de Caumont Laporte" (or is it "de Laporte"?); his original name at birth was "François-Louis Nompar de Caumont La Force", but the surname was changed to "Laporte" later on. He also used the title "Comte de Castelnau", which comes from his connections to nobility. Most online information I've found on him gives his first name as "François" not "Francis", which was apparently joined together with his second name as "François-Louis". For the most part here, I've referred to information from a Zootaxa article by Neal Evenhuis from 2012 (see here), which gives his correct birth date and original name at birth.

It's worth noting that in 2010, this article was moved by LouisPhilippeCharles (who was later banned that year) from its old title "François Louis de la Porte, comte de Castelnau" to its current title. I cannot make sense of why this previous move was done, unless it was to copy the other language Wikipedias (even French WP uses the same title as the English one currently??), though in retrospect "de la" doesn't seem to be part of his full name at all. Monster Iestyn (talk) 18:04, 15 January 2021 (UTC) —Relisting. Jack Frost (talk) 07:47, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose. Per WP:AT, article titles should be concise. I see no benefit from the expansion. Also comte should not be capitalized. DrKay (talk) 12:05, 24 January 2021 (UTC)

  @DrKay: Hi, this move is not intended as an expansion in particular, but rather to correct the subject's first name (and give both his first two names as they are joined together) and to include "comte de Castelnau" as his title of nobility properly following the guidelines at WP:NCNOB. Unfortunately yes it does make the title longer, but I feel it is more accurate which is what concerns me here. (I take your point about the case of "comte", I'm not sure how you change the target title of a move request after you've made it though). Monster Iestyn (talk) 14:57, 25 January 2021 (UTC)

  SUDOC and BNF both favor Francis. I've amended comte. I don't think we need to worry too much about that change because we're the only ones who've commented. DrKay (talk) 17:36, 25 January 2021 (UTC)

• Support. The current article title is conflating his name and his title. -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:25, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

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The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Page move history

English Wikipedia

• at 15:57, 2 July 2005 Gdr created Francis Louis de la Porte, comte de Castelnau
• at 08:56, 3 July 2005 Gdr moved page Francis Louis de la Porte, comte de Castelnau to François Louis de la Porte, comte de Castelnau (use French spelling of his name)
• at 23:05, 22 April 2010 LouisPhilippeCharles moved page François Louis de la Porte, comte de Castelnau to Francis de Laporte de Castelnau
• at 09:58, 24 February 2021 Paine Ellsworth moved page Francis de Laporte de Castelnau to François-Louis Laporte, comte de Castelnau (per move request on talk page)

French Wikipedia

• fr:Francis de Laporte de Castelnau was created at 17:41, 21 February 2006 and seems to have never been moved from the original title

I'm not convinced that this title is "incorrect", and am uncomfortable with second-guessing the French, given that we title the article in French. If we chose to title the article in English, that would be different. – wbm1058 (talk) 22:45, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

@Wbm1058: If I'm being honest, I'm still a little unsure myself if the current title used right now is the correct title. The move request didn't really get a lot of discussion, and some little things bother me anyway:

• For instance, in his actual publications (see Wikispecies for some links) he variously goes by names such as "F. L. de Laporte" and "Francis de Castelnau". This may have something to do with why some databases and websites prefer "Francis", even though his biographies generally indicate "François" was his actual first name.
• Another is that, while I went for "Comte de Castelnau" in the move request (based on some of the biographies), I now notice that some English-language biographies also give his title as "Count de Castelnau" or "Count Castelnau". He is also referred to by these names in his own publications while living in Australia, and in any notes mentioning him in The Transactions of the Entomological Society of New South Wales (search "Castelnau" in here and you'll see what I mean).

Though in any case, "Francis de Laporte de Castelnau" itself seems like an odd hybrid of his various names, so I still don't think that's the title to use. But that's just my view of course. Monster Iestyn (talk) 02:13, 31 October 2021 (UTC)