Talk:George Forbes (New Zealand politician)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived 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. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: moved to George Forbes (New Zealand politician). Jenks24 (talk) 15:29, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

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George William Forbes → George Forbes (Prime Minister) – Forbes wasn't known by his middle name, but instead went as George Forbes. And for a while, he had a nickname of 'Honest George'; see his DNZB entry. What I'd like to test with this move request is whether 'Prime Minister' is preferred over 'New Zealand politician' (note there is a Canadian politician of this name, too). If 'Prime Minister' (alls caps) is acceptable, I'll put the other prime ministers (and premiers) up as a multi-move request. Schwede66 05:32, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

• Is he ever known by his full name? Of the other people named George Forbes without middle names/initials or titles of nobility, we only have a middle name for one. So this middle name serves as natural disambiguation. If we're going parenthetical, I would prefer (New Zealand politician); I'm not aware of a case of (prime minister) or (president) as disambiguation, since national leaders are generally primary topics. Either way, the uppercase doesn't look right. One more alternative to consider is (statesman), though that's only appropriate if he's widely considered such. I know in American politics, at least, we don't like to tarnish venerable figures with the p-word. --BDD (talk) 17:10, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

• Thanks for your comments. Wikipedia does not know the concept that you describe as 'natural disambiguation'. In fact, it says in the naming conventions that "adding middle names, or their abbreviations, merely for disambiguation purposes (if that format of the name is not commonly used to refer to the person) is not advised." With regards to 'Prime Minister' as disambiguation, the one New Zealand example that we have is Francis Bell (New Zealand Prime Minister) (although that doesn't align with naming conventions either, as the country bit is superfluous, but that's another topic for another day). Schwede66 18:28, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

• Well, natural disambiguation exists, sure enough. But you're right, using the middle name if it's not commonly used isn't a great idea. Tentative search results, however, suggest the middle name is in common usage. All of these use the -wikipedia qualififer:

Search term	Google	GScholar	JSTOR
"george william forbes" new zealand	84,500	8	1
"george william forbes" prime minister	53,700	5	1
"george forbes" new zealand	33,300	173	33
"george forbes" prime minister	13,900	209	22

It's a mixed bag. The pure Google hits suggest the current title is best, per WP:COMMONNAME. The scholarly sources don't support the case for the middle name, although it looks like at least a few of those hits are academics of the same name. I'm leaning towards an oppose vote, but if New Zealand-centric sources lean towards usage without the middle name, I could change my mind. It looks like his DNZB entry uses the middle name. In the external links, so does the 1966 Encyclopaedia of New Zealand. --BDD (talk) 18:59, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the table above; very interesting. As for DNZB, their (6,000 odd) entries are always of the same format: First, they state the person's full name, and then later on, they mostly refer to people just by their last name, but on one or two occasions, they state by which name a person was known (in this case, it's the last sentence). I couldn't tell you whether the older 1966 entries follow a similar pattern, but they always state the full name, irrespective by what name a person was commonly known). Schwede66 19:18, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

• Move to George Forbes (New Zealand politician). Better the generic term than the specific one. -- Necrothesp (talk) 16:24, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.