Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (architecture)

EXPANSION

Anyone willing to contribute is welcome. If there are some questions about this, i am here! Tadija (talk) 16:53, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

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Mills

I've added mills to the list, per WP:MILLS consensus on naming mills articles. Mjroots (talk) 10:24, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Places of worship

Regarding Wikipedia:Naming conventions (architecture), I am concerned that this guideline may be misphrased. Currently it states: "The article name about religion building should be in this order: The saint name first, the word monastery, church, cathedral, abbey second." However, there are some churches whose proper names do not follow this format. For example, one of the largest churches in the world is the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, New York, formally known as the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine. I don't know why we would need to reverse the name of a church when its name is already in English and already in a particular order. I would recommend instead that the first choice for an article about a church be the name by which the church is most commonly known in English, but if there is no English name by which the church is commonly known, then use an order in which the saint name comes first. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 07:01, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

I agree! It is changed. Tadija (talk) 13:38, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

I am a bit concerned by the fact that this guideline is so focused on places of worship (as opposed to being focused on architecture in general). Also, is this convention really needed? Everything stated here can essentially be summed up as: "Follow what is said at WP:NAME". Blueboar (talk) 14:40, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Well, there was some questions about Places of worship, but the rest will follow soon. WP:NAME didn't answered some important questions, and also, i think that we need all architecture conventions on one place. As for the "Mills", and "Buildings named after people". We are expanding it...

Tadija (talk) 14:49, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Higher-status class articles Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception (Moscow), Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception (Hong Kong), Old Church of St Nidan, Llanidan, Old Church of St Gwenllwyfo, Llanwenllwyfo, Church of St. Polyeuctus, Church of the Holy Mother of God, Donja Kamenica, Church of St George, Kyustendil, use "X of saint". In Slavic, the most common use is "X of saint" (as in "Crkva sv. X"). So, my question is, should "Saint X" really be forced upon church buildings which in the "mother language" always use "X of saint"?--Zoupan 11:12, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

Most Slavic languages have a genitive case, which is why the pattern X_NOMINATIVE Saint Y_GENITIVE appears in those languages, and could be translated word-for-word as X of Saint Y (although there is no word corresponding to 'of' in the original). However, in English the possessive pattern (Saint Y's X) tends to dominate (e.g., Saint Joseph's Church as one example). These names often have an intermediate denominational adjective (e.g., Saint Joseph's Catholic Church, Saint Joseph's Episcopal Church, etc.), making statistical comparison more difficult. Doremo (talk) 11:34, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

Is there a need for a guideline for naming churches? What is the goal of this RfC? How do the supporters of this RfC say this isn't instruction-creep and why COMMONNAME isn't sufficient in these cases?--RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 05:03, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

Guidance is appropriate in this area because COMMONNAME cannot be applied to most churches in non-English-speaking countries (excepting the most prominent ones). "Church of Saint Joseph" isn't so bad, but lack of a guideline opens the door to bizarre names like Saint Cross Church (should be "Holy Cross Church"), The Church of Saint Family (should be "Holy Family Church"), etc. COMMONNAME should be applied when possible, especially when it corresponds to the guideline (e.g., "Church of Saint Mary's" appears as "St. Mary's (Catholic) Church" on its own website and should probably be moved to that title). Doremo (talk) 06:08, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

I find the idea of the “common name” ideology to be overstretched - why not use in this case, or any other, the proper name, for naming an article, and use redirects for the common name?? Even though I do have utmost sympathy for concerns raised by native English speakers but the “common name” in many cases, not just this one, may simply be incorrect. --Catflap08 (talk) 13:18, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Strong YES (to "should "Saint X" really be forced upon church buildings which in the "mother language" always use "X of saint"?") Idiomatic English should be used. Half-translating stuff into English is a very bad habit of (especially) Russians (in general, not just Wikipedia). If you are going to use English, use English. Don't try to make it conform to Russian language rules, it just sounds off to native speakers. To restate the obvious, it's a different language & works differently. Johnbod (talk) 16:01, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Delete?

I fail to see what problem this page is attempting to solve, much less that it is solving it. I'm inclined to support its deletion... --Born2cycle (talk) 21:02, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Sounds good. I noticed a short discussion somewhere else that lead to this page. We already have enough problems with buildings and the names of hotels, casinos and NRHP buildings that this would be completely unrealistic. Most of these could be handled by a small example to WP:NCCN. Vegaswikian (talk) 21:43, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

We don't have that small example in WP:NCCN. Some questions about places of worship was quite unanswered! Also, that problems with hotels and casinos can be answered here. This can be very useful! Now, it is just too small to be good, but if you help, this will be gold mine! Don't delete this convention. Tadija (talk) 23:26, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Support for deletion, sorry Tadija. Add to NCCN rather than complicate matters with this. Nobody will find it when they are writing new articles anyway. ProfDEH (talk) 18:12, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

VPP

Current discussion at WP:VPP#Articles about churches; titles of the format St. X ('s Church), Somewhere. Please comment there, not here. --Francis Schonken (talk) 08:40, 6 September 2017 (UTC)

That discussion can now be found here. Ham II (talk) 07:28, 6 October 2018 (UTC)

Redirect

Not sure where the best place to bring this up is, but WP:CHURCH redirects to Wikipedia:Naming conventions (architecture), whereas wp:church in lowercase redirects to Wikipedia:Notability (local churches and other religious congregations). Ham II (talk) 07:28, 6 October 2018 (UTC)

St

"Dot (.) after St (St.) should be always used."

I can't see where this was ever discussed. The full stop is not generally used in Commonwealth (except Canada) or Irish English and this is therefore a WP:ENGVAR issue. Most articles on churches in these countries do not use it. It should be removed. -- Necrothesp (talk) 14:42, 16 October 2018 (UTC)

I assume it is based on the MOS, our house style: MOS:POINTS. As the name of a church is a proper name, we do err toward the WP:COMMONNAME rather than the WP:OFFICIAL. Though, as the house style regarding the use of punctuation in a church name can vary in newspapers and other sources, this may potentially be tricky; however, the modern trend is toward using a period stop in a contraction, such as St., so we would more commonly find publications using St. Church rather than St Church. As per WP:OFFICIAL, that the church itself uses or doesn't use the dot, is less of a consideration. My own inclination, and that follows our guidelines and widespread use (so - policy and consensus), is to use the dot unless there are compelling reasons not to. I do think, though, that you are right to question the statement as it is asserting an absolute ("always be used"), which we try to avoid. I suggest the wording should be: "Per MOS:POINTS, a full point (period) should be used in contractions such as St. (contracted from Saint), unless there is a compelling reason not to, such as the name being widely and commonly used without the period, per WP:COMMONNAME". Thoughts? SilkTork (talk) 11:49, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

As far as churches are concerned, the issue can be easily avoided by writing Saint X's Church instead of St./St X's Church. Doremo (talk) 15:33, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

That would be permissible if Saint was the WP:COMMONNAME, but where St or St. is preferred, we will use the abbreviation. Same as we use Bill Clinton rather than William Clinton, and Bob Marley rather than Robert Marley. SilkTork (talk) 01:08, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

For what it's worth, Saint /seɪnt/, not St. /sːt/, is surely the common name anytime anyone pronounces any of these names. Doremo (talk) 03:46, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

Certainly not in the UK. I think the latter is by far the commonest pronunciation of a church name. -- Necrothesp (talk) 14:00, 15 April 2019 (UTC)

Tidyup, c/e

I've just tidied and copy-edited this page to be clearer and more concise diff. Some of the text was largely incomprehensible and the formatting was poor, so I've copy-edited and tidied those up. Feel free to make corrections and amendments; there's a chance I've misinterpreted meanings as the writing was so poor. I probably should have removed the subsec about geographical placenames etc. because it's rather off-topic, but hey-ho. Cheers, Baffle☿gab 22:24, 14 April 2019 (UTC)

Churches

This essay appears to be being used by some editors to justify translating foreign church names into English even when (as is usual, especially for those in Western European languages) they are not commonly seen in English translation. This needs to stop as it is in contravention of WP:COMMONNAME. -- Necrothesp (talk) 15:15, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

Hello, Necrothesp. Surely I'm one of those "some editors". Since I failed to find a policy on foreign church naming conventions, I took the liberty of translating them into English. Apologies if that is inappropriate. Now we have quite a variety of titles, ranging from being entirely in Spanish (e.g. Iglesia-convento de Santa Teresa) or in regional language (e.g. Igrexa de San Xurxo (A Coruña)) to being entirely in English (e.g. St Nicholas' Church, Madrid), and everything in between:

• In line with your preference — Santa Bárbara, Madrid
• "San Nicolás, Soria" could be better? — San Nicolás de Soria
• Half English half Spanish — Church of Santa Maria Madalena (Olivença), St. Buenaventura's Church, Seville (the way I see it, either San Buenaventura or St. Bonaventure, but "St. Buenaventura"?)

In conclusion, there is no convention at all but confusion at best. WP:COMMONNAME aside, I'd like to reach a consensus at least among the three types of names — "San Esteban, Valencia", "San Esteban Church, Valencia" or "Church of San Esteban, Valencia". I opt to include church in the title, preferably "Church of ...". But I'm open to suggestions based on published sources. Uriel1022 (talk) 20:39, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

My preference would indeed be Option 1. Slavish translation is certainly not a good idea, except in the rare cases where the translated form is the most common (e.g. St Peter's Basilica, St Mark's Basilica). Option 2 would be possible and would be fine with me, but I suspect would not meet favour with the UE crowd. Option 3 is a very bad idea, as mixing languages always is. -- Necrothesp (talk) 08:20, 3 June 2024 (UTC)