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Latest comment: 13 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion
The name "Totozoquean" is the name used in the published literature, specifically in Brown et al 2011 where it was coined. The lead author of this article pointed out this discrepancy to me and objected to it . This is the name that will be used in subsequent discussions by academics, and people searching for information on the topic in Wikipedia will look for "Totozoquean" rather than "Toto-Zoquean". When they find the latter, it will create the false impression that there is published work, perhaps even an earlier proposal, that established this variant of the name. It seems to me that the Wikipedia article should use the accepted name of the group, not a name coined by Wikipedia editors.
I would have just moved this page myself, but I see from the editing history that it used to be "Totozoquean" and got moved once already. so as not to start an editing war, let's discuss. Davidjamesbeck (talk) 14:57, 4 November 2011 (UTC)Reply
I wonder why you didn't follow the usual convention of hyphenating the compound name when you named the proposed family? I hope that subsequent academics will use Toto-zoquean instead of Totozoquean which doesn't show that it is a family proposed by joining to other families. But I agree that as long as the only published work uses Toto-zoquean then wikipedia should follow that instead of inventing our own nomenclature.·ʍaunus·snunɐw·14:59, 4 November 2011 (UTC)Reply
There was some discussion amongst the five of us, but there were several reasons for the choice. One was that the proposed family is already composed of two hyphenated groups (Mixe-Zoque and Totonac-Tepehua, though we ended up not using the second of these either), so it wasn't going to be convenient to keep the practice consistently. Also, "Toto-Zoquean" looks like we deliberately cut the Mixes out of the equation, whereas their absence is less notable in "Totozoquean." There are also several composite families out there that aren't always hyphenated, including a couple that used to be hyphenated but often aren't now (like Afroasiatic and NaDene). Some of the not very compelling reasons were that it is easier to write and abbreviate (proto-)Totozoquean in a nice way than it is to do (proto-)Toto-Zoquean. Davidjamesbeck (talk) 05:11, 7 November 2011 (UTC)Reply
