Talk:Madame Butterfly (song)

New argument to correct the spelling of this mistitled article (6 September 2020)

The original short story's title redirects to a disambiguation page, and the derivative Italian opera's title is different because it translates the first word from French. It isn't up to neutral editors to debate whether an artist used a correct form or translation of a word (in English, ″madam″ is a married woman, and ″Madame″ is a woman with authority); McLaren gave his song a name, and that should be enough. To dispel doubt, please refer to artwork scans from Malcolm McLaren's album Fans; it shows several instances of the published spelling of Madam Butterfly (including the back album cover, the LP label, and the lyrics sheet), which consistently lack an ″e″ . It begs the question of why some editors insisted that McLaren's derivative song remain incorrect, while other editors took sufficient care to spell (for example) David Henry Hwang's derivatively-titled play M. Butterfly as that artist spelled it. Have these editors argued to make all of the titles of the short story's derivative works conform to the source material? Is it not telling that no argument was made to change this article to ″Madama Butterfly″, since McLaren was interpreting the opera? wbm (talk) 07:29, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

References

Requested move 21 January 2020

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 discussion.

The result of the move request was: not moved to the proposed title at this time, per the discussion below. Dekimasuよ! 16:48, 28 January 2020 (UTC)

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Madame Butterfly (song) → Madam Butterfly – Correcting title Rhindle The Red (talk) 14:17, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

This is a contested technical request (permalink). Anthony Appleyard (talk) 15:59, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

• @Rhindle The Red and Ahecht: queried move request Anthony Appleyard (talk) 16:02, 21 January 2020 (UTC)
• The opera is by far the primary topic, not the electronic remix. --Ahecht (TALK
  PAGE) 15:51, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

• Oppose - This move request seems to be about whether the title of the song has the extra "e" at the end of "Madam/e" or not, and if this WP:SMALLDETAIL is enough to distinguish it from any other titles. To the first point, I looked up several contemporary news stories of this from 1984-5 and most of them use "Madame Butterfly". So, on that basis alone, and not seeing any other evidence to the contrary presented, I'm opposing. Even if there were significant sources that use "Madam", I do not think that small difference is enough. If many sources are using Madame incorrectly, then that is evidence of the "e" being too small a detail to avoid confusion, and the article should keep its disambiguation. Lastly, there is an unrelated Madam Butterfly (album), and I doubt this song on its own would be primary over that. This song article is very short, and may not be independently notable. I'd suggest a merge to Fans (album) as a better way to treat it. The sources that mention the song do so by mentioning it along with other songs of that album, due to all of them being inspired by operas. -- Netoholic @ 17:40, 21 January 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose – If "Madam" (no e) is the correct title, then "Madam Butterfly (song)" is the correct article (which REDIRECTs since 2016 to the album). -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 01:42, 22 January 2020 (UTC)
• Strong oppose The opera still remains WP:PRIMARY._{ZXCVBNM (TALK)} 02:12, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

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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.