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 to The Buddha. There is quite a lot of opposition to this proposal, but as Wikipedians are aware, title choices are made through the WP:CONSENSUS process, which means evaluating arguments made through the lens of the project's policies and guidelines. In this case, it was extensively shown, particularly in the discussion section below the RM survey, that the WP:COMMONNAME policy, when comparing the titles "The Buddha" and "Gautama Buddha", is substantially in favour of the former title. Thus, all other things being equal, we should house the article at that title. However, the point was also made that "The Buddha" and also "Buddha" do not WP:PRECISEly define this individual, which was the reason why the RM was rejected in 2021. But the supporters counter this argument by pointing out that the page is also very clearly the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC for both "The Buddha" and "Buddha", when considering common usage and long-term significance. Furthermore, the redirects "The Buddha" and "Buddha" have pointed to this page for a long period of time. Finally, there was some support for moving simply to Buddha, but I don't see consensus for that at this time. Once the dust has settled on this request, editors may wish to revisit that and seek to establish a consensus in that direction too, noting that Buddha does already point to this article. I realise there will be some who opposed this RM and will be unhappy with this assessment, but as with previous contentious RMs such as Hillary Clinton and Climate change, hopefully the explanation above and our deference here to Wikipedia policy will set their minds at rest.  — Amakuru (talk) 10:49, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

Gautama Buddha → The Buddha – This page should be renamed in line with both the body of reliable, secondary and expert sources cited in the article and WP:COMMONNAME, which both clearly favour the use of "The Buddha" over any alternatives in English. Ngrams makes this usage plain, and shows that even whole phrases such as "of the Buddha" and "by the Buddha" are more prevalent than "Gautama Buddha" - a legacy title not used in the title of a single cited source and for which little WP:COMMONNAME case can be made (in English). The definite article "The" is required, and justified by the guideline WP:THE, to distinguish "The Buddha" from the broader concept of buddhas or buddahood (as frequently noted in the previous RM). This is also supported by WP:COMMONNAME as, when used in a sentence, "The Buddha" is also more prevalent than "Buddha" alone, as can be seen in an Ngrams of "of (the) Buddha" (with and without the "the") - a phrase used in common literary titles like "(The) life of the Buddha" - or other phrases [1][2][3]. Iskandar323 (talk) 09:20, 5 October 2022 (UTC) — Relisting. – robertsky (talk) 07:16, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

• Addendum: In terms of sourcing, "the Buddha" is presently used in the title of 36 active sources for this article, not including the numerous mentions in notes and quotes, compared to a grand total of zero titular mentions and just three quoted mentions of 'Gautama Buddha' - a very similar picture to the Ngrams. Iskandar323 (talk) 09:55, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

Are we going to have this discussion twice a year ad infinitum? Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 11:20, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

The previous move discussion was over a different title, and was closed with "no prejudice" to "The Buddha" as a title. Iskandar323 (talk) 11:36, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

• Oppose per the comments in recent discussions (please read them) and a renaming comes across, because "the" would be lowercased in running text, as an end around to naming the page "Buddha" which has been rejected. Randy Kryn (talk) 12:03, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

  I don't understand the point being made here. "The Buddha" is already how the subject is mentioned in the running text of this article, with "The Buddha" and "the Buddha" (both cases) appearing more than 200 times. "Gautama Buddha" barely appears 20 times ... because it's not the common name. Iskandar323 (talk) 12:38, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

• 'The Buddha' is a major alternate name, so of course it appears often in the text. As the previous discussions about this issue explain, there are many Buddhas, and titling this page as "The" gives undue weight to the individual known as 'Gautama Buddha'. Nothing seems broken here, and the names meld well and seem properly emphasized within the telling. Randy Kryn (talk) 13:25, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

  What is the basis for claiming the weighting is undue? Here is the pageview split for buddha-themed reader traffic. Iskandar323 (talk) 13:56, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

Carefully missing all the big other buddhas, like Maitreya, Amitabha, Tathāgata, Vairocana .... Johnbod (talk) 15:58, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

No problem. Here's the same analysis with those as well. Happy to repeat with all and sundry contenders. Iskandar323 (talk) 16:27, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

• See Lists of Buddhas Randy Kryn (talk) 14:27, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

  Yes, lots of obscure buddhas - which is why I provided a traffic analysis showing their collective inconsequence. Iskandar323 (talk) 15:10, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

• Oppose per RandyK & JJ. The ambiguity of "Buddha" is serious, especially as many of our readers are unaware or unclear about the numbers of other buddhas in Buddhism. Johnbod (talk) 14:06, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

Note - the last discussion (now Archive 13) should be added to the top of the page. Johnbod (talk) 14:09, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

Given that there's been a few move discussions I'm working on collecting them and updating the top of the talk page to list them all, but it'll take me a minute. - Aoidh (talk) 14:47, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

 Done - Aoidh (talk) 15:05, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

Hence "The" Buddha. "Buddha" already directs here and is disambiguated to Buddha (disambiguation) in the disambig note. Iskandar323 (talk) 14:22, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

@Johnbod: Legitimate question for you or anyone else, because maybe I'm wrong, but how many other subjects that could be described as a Buddha are referred to as "the Buddha" which is this RM's target? To the best of my knowledge whenever any other Buddha is mentioned it's always with a qualifier, such as Maitreya being called "Maitreya Buddha". I've seen situations where others have been called a Buddha (especially if you start getting into Buddha-nature), but to the best of my knowledge the others are never referred to as the Buddha. Even in Maitreya's own Wikipedia article "the Buddha" and "Buddha" are used to refer to this article's subject and not Maitreya. Buddha already redirects here because this is the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC for that word, per that guideline other Buddhas existing does not preclude this article being moved, because this article's subject is what people usually mean when they refer to the Buddha, and concerns about readers not knowing about the other Buddhas is something that a hatnote can easily address. - Aoidh (talk) 19:46, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

Not most of those in that dodgy ngram, for sure, but any buddha once introduced may be "the buddha" in further discussion. And for example, Maitreya is very often called "the future Buddha", just as Gautama is very often called "the historical Buddha" (another possible name here, not that I would support it). How many people ever read hatnotes? Precious few, imo. I notice that none of the nomination arguments in this or previous discussions claim that the present title causes difficulties for readers (given "the Buddha" redirects here); it's all about conforming to WP rules. Btw, in the kind of specialized books I mostly read around this area (history and art history) Shakyamuni Buddha is the norm, but this has rightly been rejected in the past. Johnbod (talk) 01:05, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

"the future Buddha" is kind of what I'm getting at, that the other Buddhas use qualifiers as to which Buddha they are, whereas this article's subject is the Buddha and is the only one who is the Buddha. The closest I can find is something like "X is the Buddha of..." but again that's a qualified type of Buddha, "the Buddha of X", not "the Buddha". For this reason I don't think a move to the proposed title would cause any difficulties for readers either, since Buddha and The Buddha already redirect here anyways and changing the title will not change how it's navigated to/from. I do agree that Shakyamuni Buddha would probably be preferable to Gautama Buddha (but again, less common than The Buddha) but that's a whole different discussion (has Shakyamuni Buddha been discussed in an RM? I see passing mentions in RMs about other titles but If I missed an RM in the list I put above somehow please feel free to add to it). - Aoidh (talk) 01:32, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

I'm not aware that Shakyamuni Buddha has been proposed in a formal nom, & I wouldn't think it would get support - not very widely familiar in English, though eg "Shaka" is the normal name in Japanese. Johnbod (talk) 04:26, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

It might be "Sakya" in Japanese, as far as I remember the Tokyo hotel rooms where the life of the Sakyamuni and Gideon's Bible were placed on the nightstand. It is Saka or Sakka in Pali. It is Shaka in Sanskrit at least in the 20th century Indian revival of a tradition that was long lost there. The Sanskritists desperately attempted to revive it via the Mahayana traditions. But there is no Buddhist culture in India. Indian society is too violent, too riven, too hierarchical, and too grandiose for Buddhism. The people from Buddhist lands do come to the pilgrimage sites (Gaya, Sarnath) created by the British and later improved by their own governments, but hardly ever mix with Indians. There's a big disconnect. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 22:28, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

It might be "Sakya" in Japanese, but as it happens it isn't - see the plentiful museum references at Shussan Shaka. The Chinese apparently transliterates to "shìjiā", so I expect they followed that. There's lots of evidence that foreign pilgrimages to Gaya and Sarnath (mainly) have been virtually continuous since ancient times, though obviously more common since international travel became easier during the British Raj. Once Buddhism died in the surrounding area, it could presumably be viewed as a harmless and profitable industry by locals of all faiths. Johnbod (talk) 15:25, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

@Johnbod: It's about common sense, backed up by "conforming to WP rules" - something that isn't a pejorative. Gautama Buddha is simply a totally unnatural page title in English, and it has never been demonstrated otherwise. And yes, people arriving at the wrong page do use hatnotes. Iskandar323 (talk) 07:02, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

That's a hard line to argue, given the six previous attempts to change the current title have failed. Johnbod (talk) 14:58, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

True. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 02:01, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

• Oppose per Jb, RandyK, JJ, and many of the reasons I offered at the previous page move attempt of a few months ago, even if the target of that page move was different. No judgment implied, but when things don't go my way on Wikipedia or in life, I try to take it on the chin and move on. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:11, 5 October 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose. There are more than one Buddha. The one being referred to is either Gautama Buddha or Shakyamuni Buddha. I'd give more serious consideration to a proposal to rename to the latter, though it still falls afoul of the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" principle. Skyerise (talk) 14:57, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

  Is there any policy, as opposed to a two-line essay, that in any way speaks to this, or is this more policy-deficient reasoning? Iskandar323 (talk) 15:14, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

  Yes, WP:TITLECHANGES, which is part of WP:AT, which is policy: "If an article title has been stable for a long time, and there is no good reason to change it, it should not be changed." Whether that applies here or not is an open question, but "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" is accepted practice for article titles. Dekimasuよ! 15:08, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

  @Dekimasu: Ahem. That's rather selective reading. Yes, it does say that, immediately after this sentence: "Changing one controversial title to another without a discussion that leads to consensus is strongly discouraged." - making clear it refers to undiscussed controversial page moves. Iskandar323 (talk) 18:38, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

  Dekimasu, with respect to the text you quoted from WP:AT above, in particular the part "...and there is no good reason to change it...": I must agree with you that at that time no strong reason was presented here to overturn a long-term stable name, and therefore it should not be. However things have changed since then because of the investigation carried out subsequent to your !vote. Please see the § Conclusion in the #Discussion section below, based on Talk:Gautama Buddha/Tertiary sources and other tests. I'd be curious how you feel now. Mathglot (talk) 19:23, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

• Support See Ngrams here. Very clearly the commonname. The problems with "Gautama Buddha" have been well covered in previous discussions; editors are recommended to review those. Onceinawhile (talk) 15:15, 5 October 2022 (UTC)
• Support, clear COMMONNAME.--Ortizesp (talk) 15:35, 5 October 2022 (UTC)
• Support Buddha which already redirects here in any case. Yes, yes, we know there are other Buddhas, blah, blah, blah, but this is overwhelmingly the WP:COMMONNAME and the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. Why exactly are we making an exception to these standards for this particular article? And, I repeat, it already redirects here! Which rather invalidates other arguments about the need to eliminate ambiguity. -- Necrothesp (talk) 15:42, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

  Before you wax the fervent yeses, or the sliver-tongued blahs about the Buddha perhaps you might want to excel with matching oratory on the hundreds of page names of British lords, earls, and marquises.

  Witness, Lord Dalhousie disappearing into the many syllabled James Andrew Broun-Ramsay, 1st Marquess of Dalhousie or Lord Dufferin into Frederick Temple Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, 1st Marquess of Dufferin and Ava.

  If you don't nor do others who Wikilawyer on "first principles" like you, I will come away thinking that the Anglosphere finds every excuse under the sun for their own eccentricities, but are unwilling to grant anything but their selfish ease of comprehension to the longstanding traditions of others. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 17:24, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

  the Anglosphere finds every excuse under the sun for their own eccentricities, but are unwilling to grant anything but their selfish ease of comprehension to the longstanding traditions of others. Truth. At least on Wikipedia. Srnec (talk) 23:08, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

  @Fowler&fowler: Yet Lord Byron is Lord Byron. Why not go challenge those others instead of bringing the baggage here? Iskandar323 (talk) 06:55, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

  Which of all the aristocrats is The Lord? (20040302 (talk) 08:12, 6 October 2022 (UTC))

  Intuitively, that would not be an aristocrat but God in Christianity, though as it stands it's a more ambiguous redirect. Iskandar323 (talk) 08:53, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

  @Necrothesp: For clarity, are you hypothetically amenable to "The Buddha" as an option as well, or only a bare "Buddha"? Iskandar323 (talk) 17:08, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

  Yes. The Buddha is certainly better than the current title. -- Necrothesp (talk) 07:55, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

• Support - (and I'd actually argue that Buddha would be a better move target) I want to stress that I have the highest respect for each and every editor that has made a comment opposing this move, and I say that sincerely. However, I feel like they're looking at this through the lens of Buddhism and not through the lens of Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Yes, there are other Buddhas, and "Buddha" within the conext of Buddhism is non-specific enough that it would need clarification in some instances. However, this is the English Wikipedia, where article titles are determined by the Wikipedia:Article titles policy and the Wikipedia:Disambiguation guideline. In the English language, "the Buddha" or "Buddha" is overwhelmingly the WP:COMMONNAME for this article's subject. While there are other subjects which could be referred to as Buddha, this one is by far the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC in English-language usage. That there are other Buddhas does not preclude this from being the primary topic any more than Apple being a company (more than one) precludes Apple from being the primary topic. When someone says Buddha in the English language, they are overwhelmingly referring to this article's subject. For another example, there's more than one Anne Hathaway, but one of them is still the primary topic because we follow Wikipedia's policies and guidelines; that there's more than one doesn't mean we can't refer to the article as such. Any ambiguity or potential for confusion with other topics is easily solved with a hatnote. - Aoidh (talk) 15:46, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

  I see. Or are you just saying that in a crowd-sourced encyclopedia in which the crowd is overwhelmingly single men in quantitative fields, with little knowledge of the literature of the English language, their knowledge gleaned not from reading books, but from surfing the internet, a Hollywood actress is more memorable than the woman who offered refuge to the greatest dramatist of the language in her thatched cottage? Fowler&fowler«Talk» 18:49, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

  I'm saying that on the English Wikipedia the way that articles are titled is determined in a specific way, and that when viewing this article through those policies and guidelines, there is a valid rationale for moving the page. It's got nothing to do with what is more memorable, but rather what someone means when they say a word or phrase when speaking in English. - Aoidh (talk) 19:16, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

  Does your last sentence suggest then that the English Wikipedia is the be-all and end-all of spoken and written English comprehension and usage? Because it seems that in books written in that same English language, Shakespeare's wife is preferred to the fly-by-night Hollywood ingenue by 60,800 to 3,290 and that is 18 to one. I'll bet my bottom dollar that among scholars of that same English language it is even more lop-sided. So, is there such a disconnect between the people who write books (especially scholarly books) and the Wikipedians who vote and claim the mantle of the language? Fowler&fowler«Talk» 21:58, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

  If you feel there is an argument to be made for changing those article titles around I have no prejudice for or against such a move, that article certainly hasn't always been titled such. I only used it as an example because there are some words or phrases where one topic is a primary usage of that word or phrase, even though multiple things share that name. The point I was making was that even though other Buddhas exist, that does not mean we cannot move this article to the proposed title. There are other Buddhas (described with qualifiers in every instance I could find) but there is a primary topic for "the Buddha", which is this article's subject. - Aoidh (talk) 22:16, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

  @Fowler&fowler: What exactly are the references that drive you to opposition here? Are the scholars at the Numata Center for Buddhist Studies in Hamburg morons who don't know what they're talking about because they consistently use 'the Buddha' to refer to 'the Buddha' in Buddhapada and the Bodhisattva Path? Are Mano Laohavanich and Oskar von Hinüber wayward fools for using the term 'the Buddha' in The Cause of the Buddha's Death in the Journal of the Pali Text Society? Is the first Malaysian Buddhist Chief High Priest K. Sri Dhammananda's Great Virtues of the Buddha just off key? Etc. Etc. Who is it you think you speak for? Iskandar323 (talk) 19:17, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

• Oppose. We would not consider moving Jesus to The Savior or Muhammad to The Prophet. I fail to see how this is any different. Tevildo (talk) 18:21, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

  Hear, hear. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 18:31, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

  Impefect analogy. If you view 'Buddha' as a vocation that shouldn't be in the title then that applies equally to the current title. Iskandar323 (talk) 19:02, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

  I agree, this article should be (IMO) at Siddhartha Gautama, but that proposal was rejected earlier this year. Leaving it at its current title is, in my view, an acceptable compromise. Tevildo (talk) 19:52, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

  I agree that 'Siddhartha Gautama' would indeed be the way to go if we were strictly following WP:AT and treating this as a biography, which is what I suggested previously before being shot down. In contrast, if we are treating it as a religious article and allowing religious titles (as "Gautama Buddha" already does) then we should at least go with the WP:COMMONNAME for the religious figure. The current title is a halfway house that satisfies neither policy. Iskandar323 (talk) 20:12, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

  "The Savior" is not the WP:COMMONNAME for Jesus in any way, so I agree that we would not consider that, but I would also point out that this RM's rationale is a WP:COMMONNAME and WP:PRIMARYTOPIC argument, so that's not a relevant comparison. A better analogy would actually support the move: the article for Jesus is at Jesus not Jesus Christ, because even though there are many other people and things called Jesus, that article's subject is what most people mean when they say Jesus, just like (in English) this article is what most people mean when they say the Buddha. When you say I fail to see how this is any different I would point out that it is drastically different in that this move is supported by WP:COMMONNAME and WP:PRIMARYTOPIC, and your examples are not. - Aoidh (talk) 19:16, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

  Perhaps Jesus Christ would have been a better example. Our article isn't at that title because it's not religiously neutral - Christ is a term with a specific religious meaning, as is Buddha, and using it (for Jesus) would give the impression, in WikiVoice, that Jesus' claim to be The Annointed One was true. The same should apply here. Tevildo (talk) 19:52, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

  That reasoning is still something that doesn't quite apply here. Jesus is the WP:COMMONNAME; Christians call that article's subject Jesus Christ as well as simply Jesus, while others just refer to him as Jesus, so Jesus is used because it's the common name for the subject. So far we're on track, both Jesus and Buddha/the Buddha are the primary topics and the common names for both. As for saying that the Christ issue should apply here, I disagree. The word Buddha does not have the same issues as Christ, as evidenced by the fact that it's already part of the article's title, and dropping the Gautama and replacing it with "the" does not introduce any suggestion of the fulfillment of another religion's prophecy like the word Christ does. - Aoidh (talk) 20:19, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

• I Oppose any move and reject any further move requests as disruptive, since consensus rejected these precise arguments twice in the last year. The move request was not endorsed then, and nothing has changed about the subject itself since those datestamps. Arguing that adding the article 'The' makes for a discretely different move question is a simply laughable assertion. User:Tevildo makes a novel and valid point that Wikivoice should not be used to annoint religious figures as primary. 'Buddha' refers to an entire class of religious figures and English speakers often use the word as an abbreviation for the specific figure with which the world is most familiar. WP:NWFCTM does not constitute Common Name or Primary Topic; there's no valid excuse for the move. There's something deliberately WP:IDONTHEARTHAT which runs through all these recent move discussions, and I object to this process as both unnecessary and disruptive. Badgering every oppose assertion doesn't exactly shower the move supporters with glory either. BusterD (talk) 20:31, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

  The previous RM was closed with "no prejudice" to the title currently being proposed, as already noted. And this page is already the redirect destination and unchallenged primary topic for both Buddha and The Buddha. The WP:COMMONNAME case has also been made plain, so where you are getting WP:NWFCTM from I have no idea. What beggars belief is the staunch defense of the title 'Gautama Buddha' when it is all but unused and uncited in the actual article. The lone quoted source for 'Gautama Buddha' on the entire page is the The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, which is referenced in the 5th note, and even there it actually uses both terms in almost the same breath, saying: "...GAUTAMA Buddha, also known as ŚĀKYAMUNI. In some accounts of the life of the Buddha..." Given the utterly threadbare referencing for the current title, it's actually somewhat remarkable people can unashamedly scoff at the rather more obvious common name of 'The Buddha' as if it is somehow implausible. Iskandar323 (talk) 21:26, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

  I thank the requester for making my point for me. BusterD (talk) 21:33, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

  I know your comment mentioned badgering and yes, I did already reply to two other editors (which I don't think rises to the level of badgering by any means nor do I intend to respond to everyone who comments), but I feel that this comment in particular does need to be addressed, given that there are claims of inappropriate behavior that by my reading I'm being swept into. The closer of the previous RM specifically noted that there is fairly strong support for "Buddha" and "The Buddha"; however, we can leave those for a possible new move request (at any time – no prejudice). Now it's being suggested that it's disruptive to follow the closer's suggestion, one that specifically pointed out that this exact move could be requested at any time – no prejudice? I don't think that's fair to paint this RM as disruptive when it is precisely what was prescribed in the last close. Also boiling the support down to WP:NWFCTM is glossing over the Ngrams, the pageviews, and the references; these are the metrics we have to measure the commonality of a given title and they all support this move so when you say there's no valid excuse for the move I am not sure what other metric we could possibly use. When you say Wikivoice should not be used to annoint religious figures as primary that's an argument with no basis in any Wikipedia guideline or policy that I've ever seen and quickly falls apart on inspection: this article's subject is overwhelmingly referred to as the Buddha in the English language both inside and outside of Buddhism. If someone says the Buddha, they are talking about this article's subject. That's not an "anointment" of any kind, it is a reflection of how people refer to this article's subject, which is what article titles can and should do. This is both the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC and the WP:COMMONNAME per every metric we have, as has been demonstrated above. - Aoidh (talk) 22:04, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

  "If someone says the Buddha, they are talking about this article's subject" is the definition of "not what first comes to mind." Supporters keep claiming PTOPIC and COMMONNAME, but these arguments weren't persuasive in the last two RMs, and don't appear to impress in this one. For my part I'm glossing over nothing. We disagree, and I've sufficiently stated my position. If you can't make better arguments, this requested move will also fail. BusterD (talk) 23:26, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

  That's not the definition of WP:NWFCTM, that's actually the definition of WP:PRIMARYTOPIC with respect to usage. It's also not just "what comes to mind" it's a WP:PRIMARYTOPIC backed up by the weight of not only overwhelming pageviews but also overwhelming usage in multiple different types of sources as indicated by the data shared above. It's interesting that nobody opposing the move has tried to address those metrics or explain why they're not in fact indicative of a primary topic or the common name. This article's subject is overwhelmingly just "the Buddha" in reliable sources, something none of the other Buddhas can claim, so there's not even an issue of primacy there; this article's subject is unique in that it is "the Buddha" and the others are just "a Buddha". You say the arguments weren't persuasive in the last RM, but it was specifically closed with the note that There is fairly strong support for "Buddha" and "The Buddha" so I don't think that the previous close should be relied on as a rationale for opposing this RM on any sort of procedural grounds. "There's other Buddhas" and "Buddha is not a name" are similarly not compelling reasons to oppose a page move, as they are non-issues in terms of how Wikipedia articles are determined. I do think, however, that we are just going to have to agree to disagree, but I did want to address your response and point out that the supporters aren't just claiming WP:PRIMARYTOPIC and WP:COMMONNAME, but that those claims are backed up by the data, a trait that is lacking in the opposing comments. - Aoidh (talk) 00:50, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

  And I thank you for making the point in the first place, and request the requester to cut their losses and close this RM before more time is wasted. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 22:07, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

  If you really wish not to waste time, perhaps you will refrain from comments such as this one, to which I have replied below. Andrewa (talk) 02:26, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

  If not wasting time was the paramount concern, this RM would not have taken place. At least I've created some Buddhism-related content, such as the Lion capital of Ashoka. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 16:47, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

  Which of course gives you no more ownership of this or any other article than any other Wikipedian. But that comment explains a lot. Andrewa (talk) 00:08, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

• Oppose - not for any policy-reason, but because "the Buddha" is kind of a caricature; some simplified image in pop-culture. 'The Buddha' was a man, a human being, not the icone he's become in our culture. In the sutras, he's often called "the blessed one," while "tathagata" may have been his own self-designation. Gautama Buddha just serves fine: a mixture of groundedness (Gautama) and mythology (Buddha). Regards, Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 22:06, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

  Hear, hear, for thus spake a knowledgeable one. My thanks and admiration for Joshua Jonathan. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 22:08, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

  As the curfew tolls the end of parting day and the ploughman homeward plods his weary way in the environs of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the toll (different meaning) here is eight votes against and four for. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 22:17, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

  And hopefully, the closer will discard this comment as irrelevant, and possibly some of those !votes as well. Andrewa (talk) 00:45, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

  Wait... what? "not for any policy-reason..." Srsly? You've just thrown out your own !vote. Mathglot (talk) 09:35, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

  Couldn't of said it any better. JungleEntity (talk) 06:51, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

Additional comment: a loose (lose?) Google Books search shows that "Gautama Buddha" is predominantly used for 'biographies' of the Buddha (yeah, I know), while "the Buddha" is used in the context of Buddhist teachings: 'the sayings of the Buddha' (the sutta-collections), 'the Buddha said'. It seems to me that Wikipedia favors 'secular approaches' over 'religious approaches', and that this article is primarily a sort of biography (never mind the fact that we actually know close to nothing about Gotama himself). So, that would be an argument to reject a move to "the Buddha," which is primarily a religious honorific. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 07:19, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

Actually, a Google books search does not show that. "The Buddha" appears to be the predominant term used in the titles of books both frivolous and serious. If you think I'm mistaken, please show your work. Mathglot (talk) 08:37, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

• Oppose. Quoting myself from back in April: Among the first things one needs to learn about the Buddha are that (1) Buddha is not a name and (2) he wasn't the only Buddha. The current title is an aid to the reader in this regard and no different from preferring full names in other cases. In fact, this title is a perfect parallel of Mahatma Gandhi. Both combine a family name with an honorific in a WP:PRIMARYREDIRECT situation. —Srnec (talk) 23:08, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

  @Srnec: The key difference there is that 'Mahatma Gandhi' is a hugely dominant common name in English relative to 'Mohandas Gandhi' (the Perso-Arabic 'Mohandas' had bad optics) or 'The Mahatma' (a true parallel), whereas in this instance it is 'Gautama Buddha' that pales into insignificance. Iskandar323 (talk) 06:47, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

  Perso-Arabic "Mohandas?"

  Not any Perso-Arabic I know, unless we are looking for the common origins of the Avesta and the Rig Veda in the Dnieper river valley of the Kurgan hypothesis. But even then the "Arabic" will remain resolutely "Semetic" In other words, "mohandas," is all Sanskrit, i.e. Indo-European. "mohan" = enchanter, i.e. Krishna and "das" = slave, i.e. devotee. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 16:16, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

  The reason that "Mohandas Gandhi" is bad optics even if the Anglosphere finds it convenient is that no one ever called him that. His name was Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. He either signed his name in full or M. K. Gandhi. Only a handful of people called him familiarly Mohandas (his family elders, C. F. Andrews and Hermann Kallenbach), but even they did not write "Mohandas Gandhi," but "M. K. Gandhi Esq" Fowler&fowler«Talk» 16:21, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

  Oops, convergent linguistic evolution then. Was thinking of Muhandes, or Mohandes - thought it must be Mughal. Iskandar323 (talk) 18:15, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

  Not convergent evolution. No Semitic religion was polytheistic. Mohandas is not one word, but two, a join of Mohan and Das. The language families are different. There are many constructions both with Mohan and with Das in Indian languages, usually, all derived from Sanskrit, witness: Manmohan = Man + Mohan = Mind + Enchanter = Enchanter of the mind, another title of Krishna. It is a common name in Hinduism and Sikhism, being the first name of India's former prime minister Manmohan Singh, a Sikh. It is the same with "das." Witness Damodardas = Damodar + das = "Krishna"'s slave = worshiper of Krishna. It is the middle name of India's current prime minister, Modi. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 23:21, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

  Incredibly off-topic. Convergent evolution was just an analogy - for unrelated things taking on similar forms. Iskandar323 (talk) 12:45, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

  It is not convergent evolution. It is neither analogous nor homologous, i.e. neither a resemblance due to proximity of descent from the common ancestor of Homo sapiens languages in Africa nor due to similarity of function. They are just two words that sound similar to you. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 12:58, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

  More absolute nonsense. No one was speaking about hominids. If the analogy eludes you, so be it. Iskandar323 (talk) 13:23, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

  We are talking about the evolution of human languages that began after the first anatomically modern humans, i.e. Homo sapiens (not hominids who did not have any language) began to speak in Africa. Two words in two different language families might sound similar to you, but they have different functions in their respective family trees as well as distance in the human language family tree. The two words are neither proximal in descent nor serve the same function. You are using the term incorrectly. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 02:20, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

• Move to Buddha. It's clearly the most common name in English. Rreagan007 (talk) 23:32, 5 October 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose. The current title is needed because there are many Buddhas, not just one. Buddha and the Buddha can redirect to this article as Gautama Buddha is the best known Buddha. JIP | Talk 23:41, 5 October 2022 (UTC)
• Support. Many who would not recognise Gautama Buddha as his name would recognise The Buddha. But I'm not all that fussed, just so long as The Buddha redirects here as it does. I note that Buddha also redirects here which seems to me to be more controversial. Most if not all of the oppose arguments so far would apply to a proposal to rename this article as simply Buddha, and so it also seems that the primary redirect from Buddha might be challenged. But The Buddha seems unambiguous, so these arguments do not seem to apply to this move at all. Andrewa (talk) 00:41, 6 October 2022 (UTC)
• Comment: It is worth noting that the current title, setting aside its inadequate sourcing in typical English language usage, is not even particularly neutral within Buddhism, as elucidated by the Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, which in note 4 of this page, says: "In Pāli literature, he is more commonly referred to as Gotama Buddha; in Mahāyāna texts, Śākyamuni Buddha is more common." In the past decade, the usage gap between these terms has also shrunk, so there's a neutrality concern too. Iskandar323 (talk) 06:29, 6 October 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose - again. I'm not very comfortable with 'Gautama' but the plural nature of Buddhas is absolutely central to Buddhism. I believe it is only within the Śramaṇa traditions that we find the founders saying "You, too, can become an ultimate being". The Mahavira article uses his name, rather than Tirthankara. (20040302 (talk) 08:23, 6 October 2022 (UTC))

  Sure, but that's besides the point. In English, if you say Buddha, 99 per cent of the time you are referring to this one. Ortizesp (talk) 18:23, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

  It would be more true to say, at least in the case of art history and tourism, that "99 per cent of the time you think you are referring to this one", but in the cases of East Asia and Tibet etc you are likely to be wrong, as most "Buddha" artworks don't show this one. Johnbod (talk) 14:02, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

  "I bow down to the bodies of those in whom the excellent jewel, the Mind, has arisen, and towards whom even harm will lead to happiness. To these mines of happiness, I go for refuge." From the Bodhicaryāvatāra of Santideva, Oxford World's Classics, 1998. Note the plurals before you casually estimate percentages. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 12:30, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

  In case it wasn't clear, The Mind = Buddh (Sanskrit) = awakened, enlightened, or wise. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 12:33, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

• Oppose for the reasons given in the discussions in 2004, 2007, 2018, 2021 and 2022. Nothing has changed, or is likely ever to change.

Propose moratorium on making this move request again for a reasonable period, such as a decade. Narky Blert (talk) 09:22, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

A decade is not a "reasonable period" for a moratorium. What is the longest move request moratorium that has ever been granted on Wikipedia before? Rreagan007 (talk) 10:33, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

Oppose moratorium at this stage. Yes, it can take a while to come to and assess a consensus at Wikipedia! See WP:NYRM. It took eleven years to go from a consensus that New York (state) was not the Primary Topic of New York (which was quickly achieved and never seriously challenged) to a consensus to move the article on the state away from the base name (which then took eleven years of repetitive discussion). But we got there, and will get there on this occasion too. A moratorium may be a good idea or not. But let us first see whether a rough consensus is possible here. I do not envy the closer. But note my comments regarding wp:discard. By which I do not mean to attempt to assess consensus here myself. Just the opposite. That is a matter for the closer, and attempts by involved editors to count heads here are just wasting their time and ours and theirs. (And it is somewhat ironical when these attempts are justified as attempts to save time.) Andrewa (talk) 15:44, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

Oppose moratorium, there's no clear consensus in any of these votes, it's always close. Ortizesp (talk) 18:24, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

Oppose moratorium this isn't a situation like Genesis creation narrative where the page was having multiple RMs a year, this page has had 5 previous RMs over the span of 18 years. The last close specifically noted in the closing comment that There is fairly strong support for "Buddha" and "The Buddha"; however, we can leave those for a possible new move request (at any time – no prejudice) (emphasis was in the original comment). So if "nothing has changed" since then as you say, then there remains fairly strong support for this move. The last time this title was proposed was 2007, and Wikipedia is a very different environment than it was then. Consensus can certainly change in 15 years. As for the length of a moratorium, I've never seen one longer than one year, and given the time between RMs on this page, that wouldn't do much of anything. See WP:MORATORIUM, as that's not something to be enacted lightly, and nothing about this RM (that was specifically prescribed in the last move at any time – no prejudice) warrants one. - Aoidh (talk) 19:21, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

A decade is by no means a "reasonable" length for a moratorium, it is by far too long. A year would be a reasonable time. Anyway, I oppose a moratorium per User:Ortizesp and User:Aoidh. JIP | Talk 00:05, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

So, all those opposing the moratorium who are all also supporting the move: what is the soonest it can return without causing you the least bit of intellectual or moral discomfort? None of you has made any contributions to Buddhism-related articles as far as I can tell. I do understand that there is a community of talk page mavens out there that feels competent to judge page moves based only on Wikipedia principles. No one is concerned that the lead is third-rate again, that my clean prose of a few months ago has been removed and replaced by a turgid one. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 02:31, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

Donald S. Lopez Jr., one of the world's experts on Buddhism has written the Britannica article "Buddha." There are other experts who have written articles titled "Historical Buddha," "Siddhartha Gautama," "Sakyamuni Buddha," and a few others, all about the same person. How does WP plan on competing with them? By adding reliable content and monitoring content or by dickering about inconsequentials on talk pages and asserting with a straight face the right to dicker more at a time of their choosing, and in the process tying up the handful of content contributors that do exist? Fowler&fowler«Talk» 04:28, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

@Fowler&fowler: So you like Donald S. Lopez Jr.? How about From Stone to Flesh: A Short History of the Buddha. As rhetoric, I'm not sure where this leads. But I do see that you don't claim that experts ever use "Gautama Buddha" - the current title continues to have zero defence. Iskandar323 (talk) 12:56, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

Have you contributed anything to Buddhism-related content on Wikipedia or are you using the facility for searching the web available courtesy Google to mimic expertise? Fowler&fowler«Talk» 13:01, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

In other words, what if Google weren't there, how would you be contributing to Wikipedia? Encyclopedias have been around for centuries. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 13:03, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

@Fowler&fowler: This is the second time you have evaded a very on-topic enquiry about expert sources and why you feel entitled to ignore them in defense of the current title. Perhaps I'll answer your questions when you respond to my far more valid ones. Iskandar323 (talk) 13:09, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

I, for my part, am perfectly clear. I would have written Lion Capital of Ashoka in exactly the same manner. It would have taken me longer in the way it did during my early days on Wikipedia when I was using paper books and not digital ones, but the process would have been no different. I would have read the related books, not cherry-pick words indiscriminately from content I have not cared to familiarize myself rigorously. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 13:16, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

How does WP plan on competing with them? Thankfully the fact that there may be multiple possible names is an issue that is specifically addressed by WP:COMMONNAME, which is a policy that supports the move, so the point you're making isn't an issue here. When you say None of you has made any contributions to Buddhism-related articles as far as I can tell. I'm just going to say that you didn't look closely enough, and the only reason I'm responding here is to point out that error. Regardless of the accuracy of such a statement however, it's ultimately irrelevant because it's addressing the authority of the other editors instead of the merits of their words. We determine things by what can be shown and demonstrated through the lens of Wikipedia policies and guidelines, and no weight is given to any arbitrary self-imposed authority. I don't care if you've come to this discussion having never even heard of this article's subject, in fact there's a certain quality to that mindset that should not be overlooked. There is no "only experts are allowed to give their opinions" criteria of WP:RM and that line of thinking runs entirely counter to what Wikipedia is. - Aoidh (talk) 13:19, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

Like, I said, there is a cottage industry around RM on talk pages, a Dungeons and Dragons, solipsistic world, where only the internal rules are important, no matter how glaring the disconnect with the outer world. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 13:31, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

The only glaring disconnect here is between the weight of reliable sourcing from subject-matter experts and the arguments to stick with the current title. Iskandar323 (talk) 13:55, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

@Mathglot: Ditto your note on contempt for policy: here the same for reasoning "based only on Wikipedia principles". Iskandar323 (talk) 10:01, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

• Comment I am neutral between The Buddha and Gautama Buddha. I think both are common and specific enough to accurately describe the subject. As stated in my comments in previous rounds, I oppose Buddha alone as the title simply because there are multiple Buddhas, as mentioned by the nominator. Wikiman5676 (talk) 03:14, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
• Support per WP:COMMONNAME. I seriously doubt that anyone searching for Maitreya, Amitabha, Tathāgata, Vairocana will type The Buddha or Buddha. Or, that anyone, Wikipedia pedants excepting, when confronted with "hey, have you heard about that Buddha guy" will turn around and ask "which one". --RegentsPark (comment) 13:13, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

  But RP, there are issues of cultural equity and historical precedence that are equally important. A common name is not everything. For example, just as Britannica has moved from "Arabic numerals" to "Hindu-Arabic numerals," the more accurate name, Wikipedia has displayed recidivism to go in the opposite direction by using the common name logic. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 13:28, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

  What sources show that these are issues? What culture is affected by this RM? That's quite a claim that would need evidence if it is to be addressed. - Aoidh (talk) 13:32, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

  South Asian culture is. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 13:42, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

  ^{[citation needed]} - Aoidh (talk) 13:45, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

  1 million 50 thousand to 150,000 Yet the clueless Anglosphere waxes away ad nauseam. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 13:58, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

  Sorry, 1 million 930,000 to 129,000 Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:01, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

  More like a clueless scattershot search that picks up Gautam Buddha Nagar district, Gautam Buddha University, etc. etc. ad nauseum. Iskandar323 (talk) 14:13, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

  And who do you think "Gautam Buddha Nagar" been named after? Who do you think have named it so? It is named after Gautama Buddha and named so by the Dalit leader Mayawati. Other than Buddhists in northeastern India, Dalits are the only Buddhists in India. They became Buddhist after their iconic leader B. R. Ambedkar renounced Hinduism to convert to Buddhism in the late 1950s. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:19, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

  You're forgetting Ladakh. Johnbod (talk) 04:55, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

  The Kashmir region is disputed. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 12:26, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

  Not the point - you're not polling reliable sources here, just trawling geographical mentions. Why not consult the yellow pages? Iskandar323 (talk) 14:22, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

  So, I've written most of the FA India and your only contribution to South Asia is Talk:Gautama Buddha and you feel entitled to feign expertise. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:25, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

  Ah. Back to the arguments from your own authority: any authority in fact apart from the reliable sources lying at your feet. Iskandar323 (talk) 14:30, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

  The lack of consensus on this actually rages beyond the Anglosphere. It's Siddhartha Gautama in the German wiki and French wiki, just Buddha in the Japan wiki and Shakyamuni in the China wiki - so quite clearly a number of wikis have already sought to diverge from en.wiki based on non-anglophone sources. Iskandar323 (talk) 14:28, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

  A couple of Google search results does not even come close to verifying your very specific claim that the equity of South Asian culture is affected by this article's name being changed, and drawing such a conclusion from two search results is WP:OR at best. Most importantly, most .in websites are not going to be in English, and it is English-language reliable sources that determine how we title things on the English Wikipedia. Also if we take a moment to actually look at the quality of the sources in each of your two search results (I did), it further illustrates why a Google search result is specifically not a good way to determine primacy or the WP:COMMONNAME. We determine the article's title on reliable sources, not blogs and travel guides. That said, when you actually narrow it down to this article's current title, even your own search parameters betray the current title's relevance. Two problematic Google search results do not supersede Wikipedia policy. - Aoidh (talk) 14:36, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

  In India, the name is spelled in a number of spellings the most common of which is "Gautam Buddha," but also includes "Gautam Buddh" and "Gautama Buddha" the -a at the end of Gautama is just a form of transliteration of Sanskrit employed in scholarly English which is not used in spoken South Asian English. The -a is an ever-so-slight "a" sound even in Sanskrit. "Gautam Buddha" gives 813,000 Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:44, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

  Howsoever you spell it, "Gautam," (the most common in contemporary South Asia) "Gautama" (in scholarly transliteration of Sanskrit commonly employed in the West), "Gotama" or "Gottama" (in Pali), it is his family name, similar to Gandhi. That is what is important. There are many times and contexts in which Gandhi too is referred to as "The Mahatma." Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:50, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

  Again that's a very flawed metric, and you're using it to draw a conclusion not stated by any of the sources; there is no cultural offense in changing the title, especially given that even your own search result parameters pale in comparison to just the word "Buddha" even when limiting to the .in domain, which overwhelmingly is used to refer to this article's subject. Even under your reasoning this would mean that the article's title still needs to be changed, since Buddha is what is used. Ultimately however that doesn't matter, we don't use Google search results to influence article titles for a good reason, especially when you're limiting the results to a domain that is very specifically not an English-language domain. - Aoidh (talk) 14:56, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

  And yet, on this English WP, this page move is going nowhere only after two days and the talk page solipsists are looking to return intermittently, without let or hindrance, until they've had their day. I don't need to argue more as I prefer to reserve my knowledge for opposing something that might actually come to pass. I have more productive things to do. On Indus Valley Civilisation where I had to resort to WP:MRV successfully my effort was needed. Here it is not. All the best. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 15:20, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

Support Buddha, lose the "The" per style guidelines and this matches WP:COMMONNAME precedent for how we name historical figures, especially ones for whom little verifiable biographical information exists. If this is really going to be a recurring issue, maybe split the article into the historical figure Gautama and the title Buddha (which will both necessarily have some information about Buddha/Gautama respectively) - car chasm (talk) 15:32, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

Buddhahood already exists. BusterD (talk) 15:55, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

@Carchasm: For clarity, are you hypothetically amenable to "The Buddha" as an option as well, or only a bare "Buddha"? Iskandar323 (talk) 17:10, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm amenable to that, I think it's better than Gautama Buddha. - car chasm (talk) 17:37, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

Should the RM succeed, or appear to be heading that way, we should have a sidebar discussion about the The issue. This is not at all hairsplitting, and in fact, the question of the in titles has been the subject of long and excruciating discussions and Rfc's before in other contexts (see e.g.: WT:TBP#"The"_Beatles), both for the question of whether to include The in the title—which is directly germane to this RM—as well as whether to use The or the mid-sentence in body text, which is a separate subissue. (If we do have that discussion, let's create a ===Discussion=== subsection, and not blow up Carchasm's !vote.) It's possible that the the issue might turn out to be too controversial to resolve at the same time, and could be the object of a follow-up Rfc. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 21:34, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

An apalling prospect indeed, with no doubt many follow-ups over the coming years, whichever way it goes. Another reason not to change the current title. Johnbod (talk) 04:55, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

I actually think the article, finally aligned with the sources, would settle and result in less risk of follow ups were this to pass. On the subject of The or the mid-sentence in body text, the usage in reliable sources is very clear (it's the), so I don't see that issue cropping up. Iskandar323 (talk) 05:13, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

Support per WP:COMMONNAME.Sidchandra78 (talk) 07:58, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

Support The Buddha per WP:COMMONNAME. "Gautama Buddha" is comparatively rare and convoluted. पाटलिपुत्र Pataliputra (talk) 08:25, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

• Oppose Buddha per WP:PRECISE: Buddha is not unambiguous enough to identify Gautama Buddha in Buddhism; there are more Buddhas like Dipankara Buddha, the Laughing Buddha (Budai) etc. When referring to Buddha, it refers to Gautama Buddha in the Western world; but in the Buddhist world, it may refer to other Buddhas too. --Redtigerxyz ^Talk 16:50, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

  @Redtigerxyz: Do you have any thoughts on the actual move target specified in this move request, which is "The Buddha"? Iskandar323 (talk) 17:05, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

  WP:PRECISE does not apply here; WP:COMMONNAME and WP:PRIMARYTOPIC do. "George Washington" is not precise (that's why we have the pages George Washington (name) and George Washington (disambiguation)), but it is the WP:COMMONNAME of the U.S. President as well as the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC, and so is the correct title. (Note that "General George Washington" or "President George Washington" *are both* WP:PRECISE, but the wrong titles.) Same thing with "Napoleon". (You can find Napoleon III—and many others—listed at Napoleon (disambiguation).) This article already has a hatnote linking a couple of disambig pages, as well it should, just like George Washington and Napoleon do, imprecise as they may be, all three of them. Mathglot (talk) 20:03, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

• Support --Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 21:02, 11 October 2022 (UTC)
• Strong support Weak support but that's mostly impressionistic based on insufficient data and I need to investigate further. As !votes are still coming in, and hardly any solid data has been presented yet (on either side), I'm going to request relisting so we can hopefully get something more concrete to go on. Mathglot (talk) 05:20, 12 October 2022 (UTC) Results of investigation are in; see § Conclusion. updated by Mathglot (talk) 11:10, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

  @Mathglot: Keen to learn on this front. What would need to be presented to qualify as the iron-clad, gold standard for data? Iskandar323 (talk) 06:28, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

  All we have to do, is find every WP:RELIABLE, WP:INDEPENDENT, WP:SECONDARY source in English in the world, digitized or not, sort them by usage, tally them up, and see if there's a clear majority viewpoint, taking into account that there's some preference for more recent works (but clearly on a longer time scale than scientific works), while keeping in mind that after initial usage of an official term (which may or may not be the preferred term), subsequent references may be the "short version". Seriously, I think your links to some ngrams right at the top was an attempt to put this on a data-backed footing, so that's a good start. I've already performed a bunch of additional ones, but haven't analyzed them yet, but if this gets relisted instead of closed in the next couple hours, I should be able to add those for starters, and then carry on with some additional searches. I'm not sure there really is a gold standard, and probably the best we can do, is to approach the data from a number of different angles, and see if there's a clear and common trend that holds across multiple approaches, which would be decisive in one direction or another. It's not a simple question, and it's probably a good thing that absent a clear trend the current consensus should not be overturned. We'll see how it goes. As a sneak preview, here's a search on ngrams which I don't plan to present as evidence of anything; it's merely part of the initial investigation I'm doing to determine which are the most common (top ten) verbs used with both terms, in order to decide what the subsequent searches whose frequencies we want to compare should be looking for. Mathglot (talk) 07:00, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

  Another way to attack what is and isn't due weight is through use of trusted WP:TERTIARY sources, and I've glanced at that but that's a slog and will take a couple of days probably. I want to do the easier searches first and see if that points to anything. Mathglot (talk) 19:58, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

Relisting comment: relisting pending a research by Mathglot. – robertsky (talk) 07:16, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

• Like last time, oppose Buddha because there are many Buddhas (see Category:Buddhas) and it is not the case that the term is used primarily for this figure in all contexts. I still believe that Buddha should redirect to Buddhahood. The Buddha avoids some of the ambiguity problem, but it is not a great Wikipedia title per WP:THE, and I don't find the change necessary. Dekimasuよ! 10:00, 12 October 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose. "The Buddha" is not consistent with WP:THE. In my view, the title of this article can only be "Buddha" or "Gautama Buddha" (I am personally open to the former, but past RM consensus seems against that idea). It is a strange state of affairs that "Buddha" redirects here, yet is not the title. — Goszei (talk) 03:52, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

  Yes, it is a strange given the arguments of those opposing it as a title that none have challenged it as the primary topic, but if you look back at the past move requests you will see that the opposition to "Buddha" is quite strong - hence the default to "The Buddha". I do hear these arguments and it is *possible* that "Buddha" alone should go to disambiguation, though maybe not. At the same time, a search with prepositions shows a stronger overall showing and support for "The Buddha". Iskandar323 (talk) 05:32, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

  Thats not strange at all. Christ redirects to Jesus rather than Christ (title) despite the fact that there is only one Christ. Buddha is the most common name for Gautama Buddha, the only problem is there are multiple Buddhas so it doesnt quite hit the requirement of precision. Which is why i think The Buddha is perfectly acceptable, in addition to the current name. Where as Buddha alone wouldn't be precise enough as there are multiple Buddhas. Wikiman5676 (talk) 18:22, 15 October 2022 (UTC)

• Support per WP:COMMONNAME. -- Treetoes023 (talk) 16:19, 14 October 2022 (UTC)
• Comment: I've changed my !vote above to strong support. Based on the panoply of tests detailed below in the § Discussion section, as summarized at the § Conclusion, the result is inescapable: Buddha or the Buddha is the WP:COMMONNAME by every means possible of determining it, with all tests tending in the same direction, by overwhelming margins. This is also true of the exmaination of tertiary sources, which is called out explicitly in policy as a valid method of determining WP:DUE WEIGHT; this also resulted in very strong evidence of Buddha or the Buddha as the WP:COMMONNAME. See § Conclusion below. Mathglot (talk) 11:10, 17 October 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose on the grounds of WP:OVERSIMPLIFY, specifically the notes in WP:Oversimplification. While this was written specifically about technical articles, it can be generalized to any concept that is outside the purview of the common reader. - UtherSRG (talk) 11:40, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

  Assuming this even applies to naming discussions (which is not evident), I'm not sure how calling the Buddha "the Buddha" is "tell[ing] lies to children". Iskandar323 (talk) 13:00, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

  That's an oversimplification of WP:OVERSIMPLIFY via out of context quoting. Encyclopedia articles should not "tell lies to children" in the sense of giving readers an easy path to the feeling that they understand something when they don't. In this case, saying "The Buddha" is an oversimplification that implies "only one". (The = only one.) So, the "lie-to-children" is that the primary topic is the only instance of a being named Buddha, or that all other instances of beings named Buddha are false Buddhas. - UtherSRG (talk) 13:12, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

  The point well stated here. There are many Buddhas, and choosing one to be the Buddha does seem to say that all other are false Buddhas. This often-repeated mistake tends to confuse the topic, as does the discussion below which amplifies western viewpoints and disregards the eastern teachings. Randy Kryn (talk) 13:30, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

  None of this is any more true than suggesting "The Crown" (the WP:THE example) prevents readers from learning about crowns in general. Iskandar323 (talk) 14:06, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

  There are a few distinctions that make that example different from the current discussion. "Buddha" regardless of usage is a proper noun, while "crown" is often not. As an article title, both "Crown" and "Buddha" are imprecise, but while "Buddha" achieves precision as "Gautama Buddha", "Crown" has not other simple wording other than "The Crown" to make it precise. Further, in the English-speaking world, we have plenty of instances of crowns in our lives that seeing "The Crown" is understood to be a certain specific instance, even for people who don't live in a country that has royalty. Compare that with English-speaking non-Buddhists who very likely have no instances of different Buddhas in their lives. - UtherSRG (talk) 15:49, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

  I would have to disagree with almost all of that. The word "buddha" is absolutely not always a proper noun. When used generally as a title, along the main line of complaint against titling this page "Buddha", it is often used in the lower case. See: Britannica for instance. Or in our own buddhahood article, where an entire section uses the lower case, quotes included. Or if you search for scholarly titles for "buddhas", you will find a vocal minority using lower case throughout, e.g.: [4]. Enough to make plain that the capitalisation is elective. Furthermore, I could easily disambiguate "The Crown" without the "The", trivially in fact: "British Crown". We use "The Crown" because it's the common name. Your argument about the English-speaking world meanwhile runs contrary to a key argument put forward against using "Buddha" alone, which is that there are a range of buddhas in the popular consciousness, including most tangentially, "laughing buddha" statues. More generally, however, I think you do 'non-Buddhists' a disservice to assume their absolute ignorance of 'buddhas'. Iskandar323 (talk) 17:29, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

  UtherSRG, WP:PRECISION plays no role here, as previously explained. President George Washington is PRECISE and George Washington is not, but the latter is the name of the article, because WP:AT policy and WP:COMMONNAME apply and PRECISE does not. Same thing here. Mathglot (talk) 18:35, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

  Further, your comment about "the primary topic" above is confused. Your assertion that choosing the Buddha as the title would imply that it is "the only instance of a being named Buddha, or that all other instances of beings named Buddha are false Buddhas" is utterly false and has no basis in policy or guideline. Wikipedia uses Article title policy in order to determine article titles, which says:

  However, some topics have multiple names, and some names have multiple topics; this can lead to disagreement about which name should be used for a given article's title. Wikipedia does not necessarily use the subject's "official" name as an article title; it generally prefers the name that is most commonly used (as determined by its prevalence in a significant majority of independent, reliable English-language sources).

  It has been conclusively demonstrated that the Buddha is the overwhelming choice of tertiary sources and therefore the COMMONNAME for this topic. When there are "multiple topics" for a single name, like Buddha which can be many topics, *then* WP:PRIMARYTOPIC applies, to choose which topic (if any) occupies the main title. In this case, it is clear that the vast majority of reliable, English sources use Buddha or the Buddha for the founder of Buddhism, therefore this is the correct choice of title for this article, and the fact that there are other Buddhas doesn't change that. In cases like this, an article will normally have a WP:HATNOTE at the top to help direct readers looking for other topics to their destination, and this article has long contained one linking Buddha (disambiguation) at the top, as well it should. Mathglot (talk) 19:12, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

I wanted to put the survey on sounder footing with respect to the data. Some of this has already been added to the RM at the outset by Iskander, so this first portion is just a copy of that, in order to have it all in one, convenient place. I'll add some more, subsequently.

Here are the original six links from the OP, recopied here, captioned with search keywords, and annotated (collapsed, because they already appear at the top in a different form):

More coming. Mathglot (talk) 06:16, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

Five new ngram tests:

Note that the raw figures are one thing, and how to interpret them is something else. A forty to one factor in favor of "the Buddha" isn't necessarily the end of the story. Ngrams tallies are corpus hits, unlike web search tallies which are document hits; here, it matters for the raw tally how many times an individual document uses a particular term (whereas in web search tallies it does not). It could still be the case even with a 40 to 1 ratio that you could argue in favor of Gautama, based on the same reasoning that in the "George Washington" article most allusions to him are just "Washington", not his fullname. On the flip side, there are 166 occurrences of "George Washington", so careful interpretation of the details would be required. Same thing here; is 40 to 1 enough? It's not necessarily proof, and the thing to do is to keep trying different tests, and see if they all point the same way, are a mixed bag, or what. Next up, is book titles. Mathglot (talk) 06:45, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

This section compares the two options by testing how common each one is in the title of a book. We actually add a third option, because of the alternate spelling "Gotama"; this was more common in previous centuries, but is included for completeness. The collapse section contains the top 30 results in Google books for books having any one of these three expressions in the title:

• Gautama Buddha
• Gotama Buddha
• the Buddha

The search is not case sensitive.

The query was: intitle:"Gautama Buddha" OR intitle:"Gotama Buddha" OR intitle:"the Buddha". The results appear to show a strong preference for book titles containing "The Buddha" in them, over books containing "Gautama Buddha".

I was originally going for 20 results, but I was surprised by the large number of pop psychology books, and didn't know whether everyone would accept those, so if you want to throw them out, that's probably a third of the total, so I added another ten more to make 30 results total. Note that your top 30 results may be different from what I got below, based on your preferred language, location, possibly search history, and other factors.

A search in books is a completely different kind of search than ngrams. Ngrams counts raw tallies of word counts in Google's book corpus; there's no "ranking algorithm" or "relevance algorithm" to move "more important words" to the top. Book search first makes a giant list of every book containing the desired phrase (in our case, an OR'd union of any of the three phrases), and then, in the important step, sorts them by its ranking algorithm. That's way too big a topic to go into here.

Could these book search results be biased in some way, with Google actually indexing more books containing the title "Gautama Buddha" than "The Buddha", with the latter ones all apear at the top of the list, and the former all pushed to the bottom? It's not impossible; but you would have to find some algorithm-based theory to account for it. One way to approach this is to keep going to the bottom of the results, by hitting next, next, next until there are no more, and get the entire list. There are only about 200 results total, so it would be possible to compile all of them and then doing the same tally; that avoid any possible bias in the list of the top 30. A quick glance at results 180 to 200 shows a similar pattern to the first 30, which is a pretty strong indicator that the same holds true for all 200.

Books full text search test

This test is similar to the book title search, but extends to all book content, not limited to the title only. Results of this test were so similar to the one above, so they are not shown here. For transparency, the books full text search query was: "Gautama Buddha" OR "Gotama Buddha" OR "the Buddha"

Next up is web search, which shouldn't take too long, and then a search in tertiary sources. That may take a day or two. Mathglot (talk) 08:26, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

This web search compares the two options by testing how common each one is in the HTML title of a web page (including "Gotama" as in the previous test). The collapsed section contains the top 30 results in Google web search for web pages having any one of the three expressions in the title tag. Title web search depends on content of the html <title> tag in the html, but the web designer can place anything they want as the "headline" or large header on the page, so the results may be different in a fulltext web search.

The query is: intitle:"Gautama Buddha" OR intitle:"Gotama Buddha" OR intitle:"the Buddha" -wikipedia -youtube -amazon.com.

In these results, the term "Gautama" occcurred five times, "Gotama" once, and "the Buddha" 22 times. Mathglot (talk) 09:53, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

This test is similar to the last one, except not limited to the title tag. This test was abandoned, because the results were too similar to the previous test, with a very large overlap, mostly just the same results in a different order, and a few different web pages added.

The query was: "Gautama Buddha" OR "Gotama Buddha" OR "the Buddha" -wikipedia -youtube -amazon.com. Mathglot (talk) 10:15, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

Then there is Google Scholar, which produces a crude 110,000+ hits for "The Buddha" to 12,000+ hits for "Gautama Buddha". Iskandar323 (talk) 10:39, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

Those numbers are meaningless; you can safely ignore the "total hit counts" that Google gives on any query. Don't have space or time to explain why here, but we can talk about it on my talk page if you want. But a Google scholar test is a good idea: if you want to get an idea of the rough numbers, then start "nexting" through the results for each query, until you either get to the last page, or until you notice that the query terms, which should be bolded in each result snippets, are no longer showing up in the results. Or, you can do a binary search for the last page which contains any snippets with the bolded terms. Also, Google won't return more than 1000 results for any query (so, the first page, plus hitting "next" 99 times or jumping ahead. Here is page 99 for your first query. A trick you can do, is to reduce the number of results in both queries in a way that still gets you as many hits as possible, but not more than 1,000, so you can compare the two. The trick is to find "extra" terms that when added to each query, do not introduce any bias at all. Try these two, for example, and see what you get:

• "Bodh Gaya" intitle:"The Buddha"
• "Bodh Gaya" intitle:"Gautama Buddha"

The question to deal with here is, is that an unbiased search pair? To be sure, you should do a bunch of searches with different sets of "added terms", keeping the total number of results < 1000 (i.e., with zero results on some page before page 99 of results, i.e. param |start=980 or less), and then compare them. If every one you try all tends in the same direction, that is a strong indication that the overall tendency is probably accurate. Mathglot (talk) 11:08, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

With "Bodhi tree" it's 66:1 (265 to 4). With Nirvana 30:1 (627 to 21). With Siddhartha 15:1 (234 to 16). Etc. Iskandar323 (talk) 11:33, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Probably and easier and better approach, is to just OR them together, so you're asking for any page that has *either* "the Buddha" *or* "Gautama Buddha" in the title, and then just go through the first few pages of Scholar results, and see how it looks. In that case, this would be your query: intitle:"The Buddha" OR intitle:Gautama Buddha". An advantage to doing it this way, is that you don't have to rely on huge hit count tallies, you can just go through one page of results, or two pages (20 total) or three pages (30), and so on, and if there is a lopsided ratio, and you show the results, it should be obvious to anybody. Mathglot (talk) 11:34, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

Looks like you got the hang of it; those counts are very lopsided, and someone wishing to refute it would have to explain why. Mathglot (talk) 11:35, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

Tertiary sources are useful in order to determine the due weight of various formulations in secondary sources. I've created a (non-exhaustive) compendium of tertiary sources (encyclopedias, dictionaries, etc.) which can be found at /Tertiary sources. Mathglot (talk) 10:03, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

I examined the /Tertiary sources listed so far, and here's the tally I came up with based on the bolded headword or section/chapter title in the source:

• 28: Buddha (or the Buddha) – AAR, ADE, CEAP, CE, EB1911, EB, EoR, EoRE, EoRR, EoWR, GSE, IESS, WNEDE, WBE, ODDPP, OED, RHWUD, RIT, WNIDEL, WTNID, CODWR, EBO, EoRO, UEWB, IESSo, WEo, OEDo, OPDCE
• 1: Gautama Buddha (or Gotama Buddha, or Gautama, or Buddha Gotama) – AEoR, MWEoWR
• 3: Siddartha (or Siddartha Gautama, or Gautama Siddartha) – EA, EoWHo, MWo Mathglot (talk) 10:32, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

Ten additional sources added; tally now at 33–2–6 (and 1 for Sākyamuni) as follows: Buddha +5: (EoB, EoWB, CBD, HCDoB, HMDoB); Gautama +1: (DoCR); Siddartha +3: (CEoB, DoB, MWBD), and Sākyamuni 1: (PDoB). Mathglot (talk) 19:47, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

The numerous tests carried out and listed above in this § Discussion section all tend in the same direction and are very strong evidence that the Buddha or Buddha is the correct choice here.

In particular, the results of the examination of tertiary sources on its own is decisive: 28–1–3 33–2–6 in favor of Buddha or the Buddha, over Gautama (or variants of it). As this method is explicitly listed at WP:NOR (which is policy) as a means of determining WP:DUE WEIGHT, this result by itself is sufficient to determine the outcome.

The other tests carried out all back up the result from tertiary sources, including:

• § Ngram tests – between 6 to 1 and 42 to 1 in favor of the Buddha, depending on the test
• § Book title search test – either 9 to 1 in favor of the Buddha, or 14 to 1, depending on how you tally
• § Web search – title test – 20 to 6 in favor of the Buddha
• § Scholarly results – heavily in favor of the Buddha (between 15 to 1 and 66 to 1, depending on the test)

The conclusion is inescapable: the WP:COMMONNAME is the Buddha (or Buddha) by agreement of every possible method of determining COMMONNAME available, including especially the policy-based test of WP:TERTIARY sources found at Talk:Gautama Buddha/Tertiary sources. Mathglot (talk) 10:55, 17 October 2022 (UTC)  – added latest tally; by Mathglot (talk) 19:53, 18 October 2022 (UTC)