Talk:Pellegrino II of Aquileia

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal was no consensus. Perhaps such requests should be bundled in the future; for now, we have inconsistency. --BDD (talk) 23:41, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

Pellegrino II of Aquileia → Pellegrinus II of Aquileia – Pellegrinus was a German cleric active at the contact zone between the German-speaking and Italian-speaking area in what is today northeastern Italy (Friul). His German name is Pilgrim and his Italian Pellegrino. I propose to use his Latin name Pellegrinus because

• this is how Latin sources of his time used to refer to clerics and Latin dominates as medieval lingua franca the written record entirely
• WP:Commonname: medieval clerics generally go in the English WP by their Latin name wherever an English name does not exist, compare the List of popes: even though most were Italian nationals, their Latin names are preferred in WP.en unless an English name exists.
• his Latin name corresponds best to WP:Neutrality by establishing an equidistance between the German and Italian side of his identity.
• consistency: the article Altarpiece of Pellegrinus II has been going for over a year now by the Latin name without the least objection so far.

Relisted. BDD (talk) 00:13, 13 December 2013 (UTC) Gun Powder Ma (talk) 19:04, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose. The name most commonly used by reliable English sources is correct for this or any other article. A search on Google books gives:

Search Term	Unique results	English	German	Italian	Latin	Bosnian
"Pellegrino II" Aquileia	93	13	1	79
"Pilgrim II" Aquileia	36	1	35
"Peregrin II" Aquileia	11	1	9			1
"Pellegrinus II" Aquileia	8	3	3	1	1
"Peregrinus II" Aquileia	6	2	2		1	1
"Peregrine II" Aquileia (no results)

The English sources lean heavily towards Pellegrino, more than twice as many as all other forms combined, so is the the correct title. Aymatth2 (talk) 19:35, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

Comment: Your search is completely invalid because you have not used any language filter at Google Books, disregarding entirely WP:English It shows hits indiscriminately in Italian and German, too. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 19:40, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

I deliberately did not set the search filter to English, since Google is not very accurate on that, but instead looked at the language that showed up in the book titles, snippets or previews, which is more accurate. Aymatth2 (talk) 20:01, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

The search the way you do it is useless, the results are hopelessly mixed between all the languages and I have not even addressed the issue of source quality. I get entirely different counts. Use the search filter for English. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 20:08, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

I cannot see any way to turn up more than three English-language sources for Pellegrinus II in Google books:

• Demus, Otto (1970). Romanesque mural painting. H. N. Abrams. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Menis, Gian Carlo (1988). History of Friuli: The Formation of a People, Italy. Grafiche Editoriali Artistiche Pordenonesi. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Images of adventure: Ywain in the visual arts. University of Pennsylvania Press. 1995. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

This compares to over 12 English-language sources for Pellegrino II. Aymatth2 (talk) 20:30, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

"Pellegrino" clearly lacks any appreciable source quality: Those English language books you cite in favour of the Italian term are mainly tourist guides. Additionally, some of the other English sources use the name "Pellegrino" only when evidently citing Italian, namely in the term "Pala di Pellegrino II" (pala is Italian for altarpiece). These have to be discounted, too. This reduces your 12 English-language hit to practically nil relevant sources in terms of WP:Commonname and WP:English. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 17:25, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

There are some art/history sources, e.g. [1], [2],[3], [4], [5] and several travel guides, [6], [7], [8], [9], [10], [11], [12], [13]]. Travel guides are reliable sources. They check their facts, get plenty of feedback when they make errors, and often issue new editions, so in a sense they are more reliable than most. And they are widely read. I imagine a typical reader seeing some mention of Pelegrino II in a tourist guide and fishing out her phone to check what Wikipedia has to say about him. The person who reads the kind of book that gives the Latin form seems less likely to check Wikipedia for more information. Aymatth2 (talk) 18:05, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

The only scholarly expert English-language sources in all of your searches, the Catholic Encyclopedia of 1913, yields "Pilgrim II". In view of the general absence of a clearly preferred English name, I consider the Latin name "Pellegrinus II" to be best choice by the reasons stated above. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 12:24, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

The Catholic Encyclopedia of 1913 is a dodgy and biased source in my view. It tends to skip anything discreditable and is often sloppy about dates and events. I have seen serious errors. Penguin's Rough Guides and other sources have errors too. Whatever their academic quality, they are relevant in establishing common English usage. Aymatth2 (talk) 04:13, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose. Can Gun Powder Ma cite his sources? Everything I find prefers Pellegrino. Srnec (talk) 20:22, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

Comment: The sources provided by Aymatth2 are either Italian or shoddy, see above. What you need is English-language quality sources, like in encyclopedias. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 17:22, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

Comment: I have formatted the results as a table, removed duplicates and checked language on the first set. There are 13 reliable English-language sources listed above that use the Italian form "Pellegrino", compared to 3 for the spelling variant "Pellegrinus". "Pellegrino" is the dominant form in English-language sources.

Clerics writing in church Latin often took the vernacular name and made it look like Latin by changing "J" to "I", "W" to "V" etc. and adding "-us", thus "Robertus", "Pilgrimus", "Pellegrinus". For what it is worth, the Latin form of this name is Peregrinus. It is used by two scholarly English books, Contemporary Sources for the Fourth Crusade: Revised Edition. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help) and Analecta Cisterciensia. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help) Aymatth2 (talk) 15:32, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

• Note that Pellegrino I of Aquileia has just been moved to Pellegrinus I of Aquileia. It might have been better to bundle the requests. --BDD (talk) 19:28, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
• I don't care what name we prefer, but it is asinine to have Pellegrinus I, Pellegrino II, and altarpiece of Pellegrinus II, as it appears we shall. Srnec (talk) 20:08, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

• "Pellegrinus I" is not German, Italian or Latin, but a semi-literate monkish attempt at Latin. It is like schoolboy Latin: endus wordi stickus us. But it may be the most common English usage, so seems a reasonable choice. "Pellegrinus II" would not be reasonable, since it is rarely used. Consistency does not matter. Common usage is what counts. Charlemagne was succeeded by Charles the Bald and later Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor. Aymatth2 (talk) 23:41, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

• The comparison is ridiculous. If we had the kind of overwhelming usage for either one that we have for Charlemagne or Charles the Bald, we wouldn't be having this debate. (The better comparison is if we had Lothaire I, Lothar II and Lothaire Crystal.) We are talking about two obscure German patriarchs of Aquileia who lived in the same half-century. And we're considering using different names for each as if they had different names. We're even using their conventional numerals as if they had the same name, while giving them different names! "Most common English usage" is pretty meaningless in this case, especially when we are limiting our research to Google Books. All the usages are uncommon, because the individuals are obscure. I do not care if we go with one or the other. (My personal preference is for Pilgrim.) In this case, consistency is more important than counting hits on Google.
  We're also considering using a two different forms for the prelate and his altarpiece. How would this setup help the reader? Srnec (talk) 23:56, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

• I have the sense that the first patriarch, from Povo, was more Latinized, Pellegrino to his family. The second, from Cividale (or Östrich), was more Germanic, Pilgrim among his friends. The names got translated both ways. The Bavarians called Pellegrino of Povo "Pilgrim" and the Venetians called Pilgrim of Östrich "Pellegrino". Their formal church names were "Peregrinus I" and "Peregrinus II", which are used by the more academic English sources. The clerks sometimes used Pellegrinus or Pilgrimus. Google Books counts are better than flipping a coin. The name most often used in books is presumably the most likely search term.

The altarpiece can have a different form from the prelate it is named after, like the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore, named after Mary (mother of Jesus). Aymatth2 (talk) 00:56, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

Your speculation about the naming discrepancy is interesting, but irrelevant. I do not find that what you call "formal church names" are, in fact, "used by the more academic English sources". Since I haven't urged "flipping a coin", that comment of yours is irrelevant. What people may search for—if anybody ever does search for these guys—is not the only consideration, especially since we have redirects. The impression created by the titles is also important to consider. The case of the Virgin Mary and the Basilica is exceptional and unlike the case of the altarpiece, which doesn't have a "common name" in quite the same way as the basilica. Srnec (talk) 20:43, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

The two English language sources that use "Peregrinus II" are Contemporary Sources for the Fourth Crusade: Revised Edition and Analecta Cisterciensia. These both seem academic compared to the tourist guides, which are presumably more widely read and much more likely to trigger a search ("who was the guy that made the altarpiece?). The rather silly "Pellegrinus II" with three sources is much less widely used than "Pellegrino II" with thirteen, so the move is clearly not justified. I think this is agreed, although perhaps for different reasons. Aymatth2 (talk) 23:43, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

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