Talk:Varlam Cherkezishvili

Rocker's "Tchishikoff"

Rudolf Rocker, in The London Years, writes about a man named Tchishikoff doing some dastardly things. William J. Fishman repeats the claims in his 1975 book. "Tchishikoff" has no prior introduction and is omitted from Fishman's index so one could be forgiven for confusing him with "Tcherkesov", the Georgian prince mentioned earlier in the volume. It's still unclear to me who this "Tchishikoff" is and whether he has any relation to "Tcherkesov" but flagging here in case you run into the same issue as me. czar 19:44, 17 July 2022 (UTC)

@Czar: That seems closer to the Russian names Чичиков (Chichikov) or Чижиков (Chizhikov) to me. I think it's pretty safe to say that this isn't referring Cherkezishvili, at least from the details provided here. But who it's actually referring to I don't know. Given what we know, it's very possible that "Tchishikoff" was just a pseudonym, as Rocker does say he "called himself Tchishikoff". -- Grnrchst (talk) 18:17, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

Requested move 18 October 2023

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: Moved. (non-admin closure) Rreagan007 (talk) 16:29, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

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Varlam Cherkezov → Varlam Cherkezishvili – A year or so ago, this article was unilaterally moved from the title "Varlam Cherkezishvili" to "Varlam Cherkezov". the justification being that Cherkezishvili's Russified surname was thought to be the more common name. I strongly disagree with this move and think it should be reverted back for a few reasons:

1. Having been through sources on the subject, I don't think it's quite so clear cut that the Russified surname "Cherkezov" is the common name. It really depends on which sources you use, with ones that are more Russia-centric or focused on his time spent with Kropotkin using "Cherkezov", while ones that are more Georgia-centric or focused on his activities in the Georgian independence movement using "Cherkezishvili".
2. The unilateral move introduced a small but noticeable internal inconsistency in the title. While the move decided to use his Russified surname "Cherkezov", it failed to also use the Russified variant of his first name "Varlaam". "Varlaam Cherkezov" is the Russian variant used in Avrich 1971, for example.
3. The use of the Russified name "Cherkezov" was a product of the times of the Russian Empire (see Lang 1962); and as modern English language sources are more commonly using "Cherkezishvili" (see Gogatishvili 2015; Mitchell 2009; BBC 2018), one could easily see a tendency towards using the Georgian "Cherkezishvili" over the Russian "Cherkezov". This then points to the title not only favouring the Russian variant, but also being outdated in doing so.
4. It is no longer consistent with other articles on the Cherkezishvili family, leaving it unclear why one of its most prominent members has a different name in his biography's title.

Given all the above reasons, I think this article's title should be reverted back to "Varlam Cherkezishvili". --Grnrchst (talk) 16:08, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

• support per nom, also i doubt an anarchist Georgian nationalist would appreciate us using a russifed name—blindlynx 21:11, 18 October 2023 (UTC)
• Support per nomination and blindlynx. Cherkezishvili was born in Georgia and was indisputably Georgian, not Russian. The undiscussed move of Varlam Cherkezishvili to Varlam Cherkezov should be indeed reverted. —Roman Spinner (talk • contribs) 01:28, 20 October 2023 (UTC)
• Support, though Varlaam Cherkezov should be in the lead as a variant, since it used to be commonly used. -- asilvering (talk) 01:05, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.