Talk:1937 tour of Germany by the Duke and Duchess of Windsor

Comment on name change

The following discussion 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.

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Moved from Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Ex-King of Britain's visit to Nazi Germany/archive1

• This article has had two quick name changes without consensus for either. Duke and Duchess of Windsor's 1937 tour of Germany was accurate and clear. The change to Ex-King of Britain's visit to Nazi Germany was unsatisfactory. As Surtsicna pointed out, this gives him a wrong title. It is also clumsy. The new title of Windsors' visit to Nazi Germany is equally unsatisfactory as it is the family name of the royals, not just of two individuals. I think the article should go back to the original name. Dudley Miles (talk) 15:49, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

In defence of "Windsors' visit to Nazi Germany", they are called the "the Windsors" throughout the article and Edward in particular is called "Windsor", both per custom of referring to peers by their titles. In other words, they are called Windsor because of his dukedom, not royal house. But in any case, I think Wallis should be somewhere in the title, not least because much of the episode revolved around her. Surtsicna (talk) 15:54, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

Oh balls, this has got off to a fine start  :) I think you're both right. I originally redux'd the title as just, frankly, it was a mouthful (and in any case, 1937 was an unnecessary DAB, since there's no other article on the Windsors touring Germany). How about Duke and Duchess of Windsor's visit to Nazi Germany, seems to summarise the essential elements (and I agree that I was a bit naughty omitting Wallis).

Dudley Miles, I appreciate your allegations of page-moving against consensus. Consensus with whom, would be the obvious question. It has had no other substantial editors than myself. Anyway. ——Serial ^# 16:05, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

On Surtsicna's point, it is not just a question of what names are used in the article, but of having an unambiguous title for someone who has not yet read it. I still prefer the original title as it is neutral in tone and conveys exactly what the article is about for someone who has limited knowledge of the subject. As to consensus with whom, you have a point but my understanding is that it is always better to give notice of a potentially controversial name change so that anyone who has it on their watchlist can comment. Dudley Miles (talk) 16:33, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

No problem, Dudley Miles. Look—and @Surtsicna: too—can we move this discussion to the article talk page as you suggest? If a move discussion is required, it will have more eyes on it and if necessary the WP:MOVEREQ can be made official there. ——Serial ^# 17:13, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

Fine with me. Dudley Miles (talk) 17:33, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

• @Dudley Miles and Surtsicna: Suggest moving the thing back where it was. I'm not so invested in my original move that to insist on it, and I kind of gather that, if I hadn't made that move, would you Surtsicna, have made yours? Incidentally, your copyedits were appreciated; good idea about the picture. ——Serial ^# 18:32, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

Also pinging User:Caeciliusinhorto who reviewed this at GA and might have formed an opinion. ——Serial ^# 19:06, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

Also pinging User:Guerillero who—albeit inadvertently—kind of started this ball rolling :)——Serial ^# 09:43, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

• Support moving the name back to Duke and Duchess of Windsor's 1937 tour of Germany. Dudley Miles (talk) 18:42, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
• Support move back to original name - "King of Britain" was a bit clumsy and adding back the year makes it clear which Duke and Duchess of Windsor we're talking about, at least. (Of course, using "Nazi Germany" would too.)-- P-K3 (talk) 18:50, 3 June 2020 (UTC) (Of course, only now do I realise it was a title created especially for them and there ARE no others. Should have done me research...)-- P-K3 (talk) 19:26, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
• Thanks for the ping, SN. I think Duke and Duchess of Windsor's 1937 tour of Germany, though wordy, was a perfectly fine title and I'd be happy to see the article go back there. Windsors' visit to Nazi Germany is okay, but I suspect that it's less immediately obvious to what it refers (Edward and Wallis are not, after all, the only Windsors who might have visited Nazi Germany). I don't like "Ex-King of Britain" – it's longer and more opaque than "Duke of Windsor". Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 19:22, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

• Oppose. I probably would not have moved the article if Wallis had not been cut out, no, but I do now see room for improvement in the title. Edward and Wallis are the only Windsors to have ever been commonly called that but if my suggestion ("Windsors' visit to Nazi Germany") won't fly, I guess any simplification is welcome. There is nothing particularly important about it being 1937 (and not, say, 1938), and I think having "Nazi Germany" in the title rather than "1937" makes it much clearer to the reader why this might be an encyclopedic topic. What one gathers from "Duke and Duchess of Windsor's 1937 tour of Germany" is that two royal people went on a vacation, while "Windsors' visit to Nazi Germany" (or something to that effect) immediately signals a political significance. Surtsicna (talk) 19:39, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
• Comment. On second thought I think it probably should be Windsors plural: Duke and Duchess of Windsors' 1937 tour of Germany. Tim riley you are a grammar buff - do you have a view on this? Dudley Miles (talk) 08:19, 4 June 2020 (UTC)
  • Dudley Miles, I do not think that is correct, but I wonder whether you think it is more helpful to include "1937" or "Nazi Germany" in the title, per my previous comment. Surtsicna (talk) 09:30, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

• I prefer 1937 to Nazi Germany as I think a neutral tone for an article title is better but I do not feel strongly on this point. Dudley Miles (talk) 10:00, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

• Ah, okay. Though I really do not see anything biased about the term Nazi Germany; it is the title of our article about that period in German history Surtsicna (talk) 11:57, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I agree, if only because the article's opening sentence is Edward, Duke of Windsor, and Wallis, Duchess of Windsor, visited Nazi Germany in October 1937. Indeed, it's the fact of Germany being Nazi that makes the visit notable: after all, they visited Austria a few months earlier, but it'd be hard to make an article out of that... ——Serial ^# 18:55, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

Hold on, if they visited Austria months earlier then this would be the second royal visit to Nazi Germany, which includes Austria! GPinkerton (talk) 21:58, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

Not for another six months... ——Serial ^# 09:18, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

As this article points out! DuncanHill (talk) 09:28, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

• Support moving back to Duke and Duchess of Windsor's 1937 tour of Germany. As for the apostrophe, see The Handbook of Good English, p. 175, second paragraph, from "Note that when the family members are named". Also see "The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge's tour of New Zealand" (Telegraph); "The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s Parks Canada Youth Ambassadors Program (Parks Canada); "Kensington Royal (the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s) accounts" (Tatler). SarahSV ^(talk) 22:35, 4 June 2020 (UTC)
• Comment 1937 Royal tour of Nazi Germany, or similar, might side-step the brevity issues and some of the ambiguity problems of the present title. I don't know how many royal tours of Nazi Germany there were in 1937, but there can't have been many. "King of Britain" is not correct in any context, the wording would have to be something like "British ex-king ..." and that is still atrocious phrasing. Using the words "royal tour" might be enough, in combination with "Nazi Germany" and the year, to convey the notability of the subject and give a clue as to the participants and political dimensions. The actual identity of these Windsors is not so significant as the fact that some crowned heads went and endorsed the dictatorship. GPinkerton (talk) 05:20, 5 June 2020 (UTC)
• Support move back to Duke and Duchess of Windsor's 1937 tour of Germany, and Note @GPinkerton: is was not a Royal tour, it was a private visit. DuncanHill (talk) 22:25, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

@DuncanHill: It was a tour and they were royals (or he was, not sure about her status precisely). The article already calls it a tour, and when royals make a tour, then they call that royal's tour a royal tour, especially when they meet the head of state. GPinkerton (talk) 22:47, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

The article notes that he was a royal, but she had been explicitly excluded by the letters patent published in the Gazette. ——Serial ^# 09:21, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

• Support move back to Duke and Duchess of Windsor's 1937 tour of Germany as this is their correct (and unique) title, whereas "King of Britain" is incorrect. Dislike "Royal tour" as he was not the king, although it had aspects of one. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 19:59, 8 June 2020 (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.

Requested move 18 September 2021

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 section.

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Duke and Duchess of Windsor's 1937 tour of Germany → 1937 tour of Germany by the Duke and Duchess of Windsor – Better encyclopedic title. Peter Ormond 💬 02:42, 18 September 2021 (UTC) — Relisting. Mdewman6 (talk) 00:25, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

• Support per nom. Better English. -- Necrothesp (talk) 11:45, 22 September 2021 (UTC)
• Question - What other years did they tour Germany? DuncanHill (talk) 12:56, 22 September 2021 (UTC)
  • Very good question. Is there a more concise title? Remembering that we will preserve the redirect from the current title, this is really just about the banner title. Andrewa (talk)
• Comment This was the only time they toured Germany. I feel a better title would be "Tour of Nazi Germany by the Duke and Duchess of Windsor" DeaconShotFire (talk) 00:08, 2 October 2021 (UTC)
• Comment 1937 Tour of Nazi Germany by the Windsors is more concise, but I'm not sure "the Windsors" is precise enough. (Yes, the rest of the Royal Family carried the surname "Windsor" at that time.) I think it is important to have the year: it's not there to disambiguate but to emphasise its significance, not only his alleged leanings to Nazism but that it was the year his brother George VI was crowned as his successor. Had they toured East or West Germany, or both, in the 1960s, it would be a different story. 85.67.32.244 (talk) 09:07, 3 October 2021 (UTC) WP:SOCKSTRIKE -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she/they) 04:59, 16 October 2021 (UTC)
  • There appears to be no policy that would justify including the year. There has as yet been no other Duke of Windsor or Duchess of Windsor. Whether including the year makes the title more recognisable as Wikipedia uses the term is dubious IMO. Andrewa (talk) 23:55, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

The policy is WP:AT § Precision and disambiguation: Usually, titles should unambiguously define the topical scope of the article, but should be no more precise than that. Applied ruthlessly, that would rule out "Nazi" in the title, too. My own feeling is that if we have "Nazi" in the title, we need the year, because a visit by a famous person in 1933 or 1934 would have had very different political overtones from one in 1937, 1941 or 1945 : that is, it is part of the "topical scope". I still think the significance of the visit was its timing, as the article explains. Compare "Berlin 1936". It's clear they were the (only) Duke and Duchess of Windsor, or we'd say "1st Duke and Duchess". My very tentative suggestion of replacing with the more concise "the Windsors" was indeed that I doubted whether that would be recognisably the Duke and Duchess. 85.67.32.244 (talk) 17:23, 5 October 2021 (UTC) WP:SOCKSTRIKE -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she/they) 04:59, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose. Between "Duke and Duchess of Windsor's [tour]" and "[tour] by the Duke and Duchess of Windsor", there's no real policy reason to prefer one or the other, besides pure opinion (as seen in the Support justifications above). I think the current phrasing is perfectly fine English. A number of participants in the previous discussion #Comment on name change apparently thought so too (e.g. User:SlimVirgin [SarahSV]). The style should be retained. As for the possibility of dropping "1937" and/or changing "Germany" to "Nazi Germany", I express no view here. Adumbrativus (talk) 05:42, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

I don't think "Duke and Duchess" without an article is "perfectly fine English"; one wouldn't say "Hitler met Duke and Duchess of Windsor", or "Duke and Duchess of Windsor met Hitler". But that smacks of pedantry. 85.67.32.244 (talk) 17:44, 5 October 2021 (UTC) WP:SOCKSTRIKE -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she/they) 04:59, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

When used in a sentence, we would say "the Duke and Duchess of Windsor's 1937 tour of Germany". Leaving the word "the" out of the title itself is standard (with certain exceptions that don't apply here); see WP:THE. Adumbrativus (talk) 21:23, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

I wouldn't say that in a sentence, I'd say "the tour of Germany in 1937 by the D and D of W". Yes, we use a somewhat telegraphic style in titles; but there is more to it than that: the order of the nouns "Duke and Duchess of Windsor", "1937" and "tour of Germany" dictates the emphasis and, perhaps, ease of search (which is why "the" is omitted). Each is syntactically correct, of course. 85.67.32.244 (talk) 07:15, 6 October 2021 (UTC) WP:SOCKSTRIKE -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she/they) 04:59, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

• Weak support due to better English, over an urge to oppose per TITLECHANGES. “1937” is very important to be in the title because it was a notorious EVENT in 1937, and for recognisability. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 13:57, 12 October 2021 (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.