Talk:Thorvald Asvaldsson

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 Move. —Wknight94 (talk) 03:13, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

After doing a bit of research on this fellow, I've come to the conclusion that his name in English is conventionally Thorvald Asvaldsson, not Þorvaldr Ásvaldsson. Although there is generally not much biographical information on him, he is mentioned quite frequently in connection with his son, and as a result I think it is clear that there is a long-standing tradition of spelling his name as Thorvald Asvaldsson.Erudy (talk) 16:14, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Survey

• Strong Support as usage. Other instances of thorn should be kept, rejected, or imposed by the same test; for example, it may be reasonable in modern Icelandic politicians. I congratulate Erudy on gathering evidence. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:54, 20 July 2008 (UTC)
• Support ASCII titles should always be preferable. 70.55.84.212 (talk) 05:01, 21 July 2008 (UTC)
  • Could you actually care to elaborate why? Another !vote. This is an argument I'd expect to hear from someone typing on a 19th century typewriter. Admiral Norton ^(talk) 19:58, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
• Support: I find Erudy's evidence pretty convincing that Thorvald Asvaldsson is conventional usage in English sources. Scog (talk) 10:07, 21 July 2008 (UTC)
• Strong Oppose 1) The letter thorn (Þ) is and has always been perfectly acceptable in the English language; 2) "Þorvaldr" is as legitimate and verifiable in English as "Thorvald", so the original and most accurate spelling is always preferable; 3) Why does this proposal request "Ásvaldsson" to drop the accent along with the thorn, when this is clearly a common situation when diacritics (particularly accents) in the name of a person are customarily kept? 4) We're in the age of Unicode, not ASCII (which is almost contemporary with Þorvaldr himself); 5) By the way, I'm changing the first mention in the first paragraph back to "Þorvaldr Ásvaldsson". Must conform to the title of the article, which hasn't been moved yet. Húsönd 01:27, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
  • Make mine strong support. If Erudy's evidence, below, is not sufficient evidence that, on this subject, th is far more acceptable and legimate than thorn, what would it take? The only hits on Google Books for thorn are in Icelandic, not English. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:43, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
    • Oooh, make mine a Very Strong-strong-strong Oppose then, if that'll help you realize the needlessness and ludicrousness of the symbolic escalation of !vote you seem to enjoy using as a reply to a different position in discussions of any kind. By the way, you are supposed to strike a former !vote when you cast a new one. Please do. Húsönd 11:34, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
      • I only cast one vote; I also mention it. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:33, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
        • Then please strike one of them. Causes visual imbalance within the survey. Húsönd 18:21, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
          • The reference is now italicized. I'm not convinced that this would actually confuse a closing admin; but this should take care of it. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:35, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
• Strong Support as per Septentrionalis. English usage does not include the special character. Rarelibra (talk) 19:13, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
• Semi-strong verging on the borderline weak support. Seems to be the more common form. And dump all Icelandic Th warriors somewhere in the mid-Atlantic please. Fut.Perf. ☼ 19:19, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
  • Please adhere by WP:CIVIL. Admiral Norton ^(talk) 20:03, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
• Support per WP:ENGLISH. -- JHunterJ (talk) 19:33, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
• Support - This is English Wikipedia --Steven J. Anderson (talk) 19:45, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
  • This is no argument at all. Admiral Norton ^(talk) 19:07, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
• Thorvaldr would seem to be the standard English transliteration in general academic works, Þorvaldr and its upper case Eth seems to be limited to the likes of the Viking Society's Saga Book and similar quite specialist works. I don't see any reason to omit the diacritic from Ásvaldsson however. If doing so is indeed more common in print then likely it is an artefact of typesetting limitations. Angus McLellan (Talk) 21:37, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
• Just merge it with Eric the Red. Having an article gives the false impression that this is a historical person whom we could write some sort of biographical article about. In reality he gets one sentence in one medieval historical work, Landnáma. This sentence then got copied into the Saga of Eric the Red. The redlinks for his ancestors are especially silly and misleading, these are just names in genealogies. Haukur (talk) 22:26, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
  • Fair enough; but isn't there another sentence about the Western Isles? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:52, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

(deindent) It's possible that I missed something, if you'd like to expand on the hint. Checking Landnáma more closely I see that the subject of this article is actually mentioned twice:

• Þorvaldr son Ásvalds Úlfssonar, Yxna-Þórissonar, ok Eiríkr rauði son hans fóru af Jaðri fyrir víga sakir ok námu land á Hornströndum ok bjöggu at Dröngum; þar andaðisk Þorvaldr. (My quick translation: Þorvaldr the son of Ásvaldr Úlfsson, the son of Yxna-Þórir, and Eiríkr rauði, his son, went from Jaðarr because of some killings, and claimed land in Hornstrandir and lived at Drangar; there Þorvaldr died.)

• Þorvaldr Ásvaldsson, Úlfssonar, Yxna-Þórissonar, nam Drangaland ok Drangavík til Enginess ok bjó at Dröngum alla ævi. Hans son var Eiríkr rauði, er byggði Grœnland, sem fyrr segir. (My quick translation: Þorvaldr Ásvaldsson, the son of Úlfr, the son of Yxna-Þórir, claimed Drangaland and Drangavík up to Engines and lived at Drangar all his life. His son was Eiríkr rauði, who settled Greenland, as related earlier.)

It's basically the same thing twice but with the twist that the first mention is explicit that Eiríkr was already born when his father went to Iceland and strongly implies that he was a grown man (they claimed the land). Going with the second version and assuming that Eric was born in Iceland would make for easier chronology (the Age of Settlement ended ca. 930 and after that you couldn't just come along and claim land for yourself). Putting those two sentences in the proper context would involve going into the textual history of Landnáma (one version only has one of those two short passages) and chronological issues with the life of Eric the Red - which is again something which would be at home in that article.

It's faintly possible that if you dug into the surrounding scholarship deep enough you could come up with enough material to justify a separate article on Eric the Red's father but the way it appears to me is that everything you'd ever want to say about him is something you'd also want in the article on Eric. The current stub certainly doesn't have anything crunchy. Haukur (talk) 23:41, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

• Support. Thorvald Asvaldsson is the name in common usage in English, and thus is the name prescribed by WP:NC. Merging is another issue. Wilhelm meis (talk) 23:11, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

• Strong oppose. Take a look at Special:PrefixIndex/Þ. This is the exact same issue as with Novak Đoković: trying to make a precedent to remove diacritics where almost all other articles use them (in Đoković case, absolutely all). Admiral Norton ^(talk) 11:25, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
  • The chief problem with this argument is that it's not based on fact. The most obvious counterexample may be the subject's grandson Thorvald Eriksson; but there seem to be more uses of Th than thorn, even in WP's tendentious environment. See Special:PrefixIndex/Thor for more. Haukur, should we merge this Thorvald too? the Uniped may be the only fact about him. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:39, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
    • The grandson is borderline but probably shouldn't be merged. There are some things that could be said, though the current article is certainly a sorry case. A reasonable article on him would, in my opinion, look like the one I wrote on his sister. Summarize or quote what the two relevant sagas say and make it clear to the reader that that's all there is. Haukur (talk) 22:26, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
    • Yeah, that's a lot of Thors. But, the problem is, how many of these can actually be correctly written as Þors? Just look at the list. Most of the articles there resemble Thornhill College (not Icelandic) or Thor Heyerdahl (Norwegian man; there is no þ in Norwegian). Admiral Norton ^(talk) 19:05, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
      • That is an issue; but the Admiral's contention is that every Icelander is instance is bethorned, which is not true even in WP. Compare with the very limited set of non-redirects in Special:PrefixIndex/Þor; some (not all) of these should in any case be moved, as not what English calls them; the first one happens to be Norwegian. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:20, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
        • Don't generalize! I didn't say that every Icelandic name on Wikipedia uses þ, but that most of the names that would otherwise use th use þ. Þorbjörn Hornklofi is an Old Norse name. Norwegian is Nynorsk and Bokmål. Old Norse doesn't fall in either of these two languages. And stop saying "what English calls them". We have established evidence of usage of both þ and th in English, so stop using weasel words. Admiral Norton ^(talk) 19:58, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
          • If Admiral Norton is prepared to retract "almost all other articles use them" we have nothing more to discuss. Some articles should use thorn; others are WP:OTHERCRAPEXISTS; bad decisions do not justify other bad decisions. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:10, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
            • You are drifting again! This is not the place to question why do articles with þ have þ. We are talking about a requested move and evidence for or against it. And why do you keep referring to me in third person. Not only is this annoying, but it is also impolite. Admiral Norton ^(talk) 23:09, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
• Support per evidence, and not "Thorvaldr" -- that only gets 2 GBooks hits.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 16:15, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
• Support per above: use the English name. Jonathunder (talk) 17:06, 24 July 2008 (UTC)
• Strong oppose per Special:PrefixIndex/Þ. I fully support the policy of WP:ENGLISH, but I object to applying it to the extreme. Of course we should call München Munich and Milano Milan as these are long-established English names. But to try to rewrite personal names in virtually every other language than English into English is no longer the practice of using established names, it starts to look as falsifications. Using these characters presents no problems, so I don't see the case for a move here. JdeJ (talk) 10:32, 26 July 2008 (UTC)
• You are correct. In Serbian language foreign names are always transcribed, but that's because the language uses Cyrillic script. We have no valid reason for transcription in English. Admiral Norton ^(talk) 13:36, 26 July 2008 (UTC)
• Comment: There is an important difference between contemporary names like Novak Đoković (mentioned above by Admiral Norton as "the exact same issue") or, for an Icelandic example, Þórarinn Eldjárn, and historic names with a long-established English spelling. Google hits are misleading regarding Þ vs. Th, as it seems that Google automatically also finds the "Þ" variant when searching for "Th", e.g. the hits for "Thorarinn Eldjarn" include many pages where only the spelling Þórarinn Eldjárn is used, e.g. this purely Icelandic one. I think that contemporary people with names in a Latin alphabet (like the Icelandic one) should be written in the original spelling if there is no overwhelmingly predominant English spelling, but historic names should follow English tradition. Therefore I think that I support the rename in this case, but not very strongly. Gestumblindi (talk) 14:23, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Oh, and additionally, the case of Novak Đoković is certainly different, as the name is written in Cyrillic letters in Serbian, therefore "Novak Đoković" isn't the "real" original spelling but one possible transcription into the Latin alphabet, which makes this name and its handling an unsuitable example for the current discussion. Gestumblindi (talk) 14:27, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

That's not the case. Whereas most languages use only one alphabet, Serbian is a rare exception in using two alphabets side by side, both of them equally valid "Novak Đoković" isn't a Latin transcription of a Cyrillic original spelling, and it most certainly isn't one just "one possible transcription. It's the proper way to spell the name, and the way it is spelled by the daily newspapers in Serbian that are printed in the Latin alphabet. JdeJ (talk) 15:49, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

i. e. Novak Đoković can also be just as correctly written as Новак Ђоковић, but not Novak Djokovic. Admiral Norton ^(talk) 17:18, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, I stand corrected. If "Novak Djokovic" is the overwhelmingly used spelling in English, however, it can and should be used here in the English Wikipedia, I think. However, if there's no clearly dominating English spelling of a contemporary person's name, I would opt for the original spelling, as long as it's originally in a Latin alphabet (which would, according to your information, be the case with Serbian). The current discussion is about a historic name where things are different. Gestumblindi (talk) 18:41, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Evidence

Google Books:

• Thorvald Asvaldsson = 44 This list of citations is both historically and thematically broad. Citations span from the 1930's to the very recent. They include works of fiction, social science and history, general reference works and peer-reviewed scientific papers
• Þorvaldr Ásvaldsson = 2 Both of these citations are for works in Icelandic, published over 100 years ago. However, their existence demonstrates that Google's character-reading software is capable of distinguishing the thorn (Þ).

Google Web

• Thorvald Asvaldsson = 813 (exact search is "Thorvald Asvaldsson" -"Þorvaldr Ásvaldsson" -wikipedia) including hits with New Scientist, Salon.com, University of Newfoundland etc. etc.
• Þorvaldr Ásvaldsson = 191 (exact search is -"Thorvald Asvaldsson" "Þorvaldr Ásvaldsson" -wikipedia) A sizable proportion of these hits come from Myspace and wikipedia mirrors.

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.

Department of Redundancy Department

Husond has now reverted three times to:

Þorvaldr Ásvaldsson (Icelandic: Þorvaldr Ásvaldsson) was the father of the discoverer of Greenland,

The exact repetition of the Icelandic form is bad writing, if nothing else, and the overwhelmingly common English form should be mentioned in the lead. Both of these are more important that the rule Husond has made up that titles must be reflected, exactly, in the first line; what our conventions actually say is that all common forms must be. For some counterexamples, see Cicero, Tacitus and Charles, Duke of Orléans. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:31, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes, Thorvald Asvaldsson could be used in the parentheses, but your edits definitely don't show this point of view, I'm afraid. Admiral Norton ^(talk) 11:28, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Death date

The page currently states that he died before 980 but not explanation or source for that date — Preceding unsigned comment added by 147.108.32.100 (talk) 04:32, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

Exile date

The page currently states that he was exiled in 960 during the reign of Harald Fairhair, but Harald's reign came to an end 30 years prior. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.136.221.210 (talk) 21:05, 9 October 2015 (UTC)