Talk:The Wolf and the Seven Young Goats

Rename

A discussion started about renaming this article on Wikipedia:Reference desk/Language: jnestorius^(talk) 23:11, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

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What is the English title for this story?

A mother goat leaves the house while her children remains inside the house. A wolf is hungry and spies on the house and its plump occupants. After the mother has disappeared, the wolf tries to enter frequent times. He tries once by swallowing chalk. He also tries to cover flour over his paws so his feet look like those of goats. He then tricks the kids that he is their mother. When the door opens, he eats every one except one last kid. The mother comes home and discovers her kids are gone except one kid left. The two found the wolf and dump stones in the wolf's stomach. The wolf wakes and drowns. What is this story? 69.218.214.249 22:55, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

The Wikipedia article is at The Wolf and the Seven Young Kids, but I think a more common English name is The wolf and the seven little goats. Really one for Wikipedia:Reference desk/Humanities. jnestorius^(talk) 23:05, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

The Wolf And The Seven Kids. It can be found here. Scouse Mouse - 日英翻訳 23:08, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Well, I was half right; apparently "kids" is preferred to "goats", but "little" is preferred to "young". Google books matches "The wolf and the seven..."

• little kids 257
• kids 173
• little goats 91
• young kids 28
• goats 9
• young goats 1

I suggest moving the article to The wolf and the seven little kids jnestorius^(talk) 23:21, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

The wolf and the seven young kids is a literal translation of the title Der Wolf und die sieben jungen Geißlein by which the tale was originally presented by the Grimm brothers.  --Lambiam^Talk 07:34, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

The Wolf and the Seven Young Little Goats would be just as adequate a translation, though. I would definitely avoid "the seven little kids" because of what "little kids" usually means in English. —Angr 08:40, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

It would be a better translation, in my opinion. The cognate word Kitz for young goat exists in German (also for young deer, ibex, chamois etc). Maybe Geisslein has more of a folksy and children's book tone. I would translate it as little goats (or goaties?). ---Sluzzelin talk 10:10, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Personally, the other meaning of "little kids" didn't occur to me till Angr alluded to it. I guess it's more established in American English. Angr did you really mean "Young Little Goats"?!? Not very idiomatic. In any case, further discussion should talk place at Talk:The wolf and the seven little kids#Rename. jnestorius^(talk) 23:11, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

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I think some further relevant points are:

• WP:NAME includes "use English name" and "use common name". Thus attempts to provide a new translation of the original German title should not be countenanced if the story is already well-known in English under (one or more) existing English names.
• As Angr says, "kids" is ambiguous. If a name with "kids" in it is sufficiently canonical, this ambiguity should be irrelevant; but if there is a fine decision between a form with "kids" and one with "goats", this could be the tipping point.

jnestorius^(talk) 23:11, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

I googled 'em both.

"The Wolf and the Seven Young Kids" 669 results

"The Wolf and the Seven Young Goats" 3 results -- one not in English.

I think we can say that "kids" is canonical. Goldfritha 23:25, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Um...there are more than 2 options. "The Wolf and the Seven Little Kids" gets 12700 googlehits. Also, Wikipedia mirrors inflate the figure for "The Wolf and the Seven Young Kids". (See WP:GOOGLE#Google_bias.) jnestorius^(talk) 19:32, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

And this has to do with the suggestion about "Goats"-- how? Goldfritha 00:10, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

What suggestion about goats? There is a general discussion about the title of this article. I have listed 6 contenders; I give them again with google counts [and the google-books counts from above]:

1. "The Wolf and the Seven Little Kids" 13,800 [257]
2. "The Wolf and the Seven Kids" 506 [173]
3. "The Wolf and the Seven Little Goats" 1,180 [91]
4. "The Wolf and the Seven Young Kids" 653 [28]
5. "The Wolf and the Seven Goats" 60 [9]
6. "The Wolf and the Seven Young Goats" 3 [1]

(there may of course be others titles.) We agree that "kids" is more common than "goats", but the current title is "young kids" whereas the most common is "little kids". On this basis I suggested moving the article to The Wolf and the Seven Little Kids; the discussion has proceeded from there. jnestorius^(talk) 02:28, 5 May 2007 (UTC)