- Oppose. I'll try to explain my reasoning why we should stay with the current title of "Hillary Rodham Clinton", without putting up too much of a wall of text.
- It's a common name. Common name counts in news stories are subject to many distorting effects due to contexts where shorter forms are compelled (use in headlines, captions, quotes, disambiguation, later references, etc). But every New York Times story (recent example), Washington Post story (recent example), Los Angeles Times story (recent example) and Associated Press piece (recent example) uses "Hillary Rodham Clinton" upon first reference in the article text. These news organizations have long been considered as the elite in the serious U.S. media. So even if you believe from the counts that move proponents put forward that "Hillary Clinton" is the most common name, it is clear that "Hillary Rodham Clinton" is a common name and not some odd or obscure choice.
- Common name is not always supreme. The idea that the most "common name" always prevails over accuracy and formality and self-identification is a WP myth. There are many exceptions carved out. Hence Diana, Princess of Wales and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge (far from the most common use for either); United States presidential election, 2016 (who says it with that word order?) and United States Senate election in New Jersey, 2008 (absolutely nobody says it like that); Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress (several more concise forms of that get more Google hits); United States Ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Council (common use would use US and UN and omit other words); "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)" (more often referred to without the parenthetical part); Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (hello, Obamacare) and Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 (say what? common use is "Bush tax cuts" or "first round of the Bush tax cuts"); and so forth. These are not isolated cases of "other stuff exists" that can be dismissed but rather are illustrations of where whole subject areas are systematically exempt from "common name" (British nobility, elections, military aircraft, ambassadorial positions, song titles, federal laws). Another good example in the biographical context is that "Jacqueline Kennedy", "Jackie Kennedy", and "Jackie O" all get more search engine hits than "Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis" does, and by the crude common name argument should win. But we correctly locate the article at Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis because that was the name she used in the latter stages of her life and the name that serious media referred to her by then and after her death. In practice we do not determine article titles solely by Google hit counts or other popularity metrics and we often value correctness and other considerations.
- Correctness, official name, and self-identification. So why not make this another exception and call her by her official name and the name she uses? For a number of years after becoming married she did not use "Clinton" at all, in part to keep her professional life separate from Bill's, in part as she later said as a "gesture to acknowledge that while I was committed to our union, I was still me." Living History pp. 91–92 Political realities in Arkansas led her to start using Clinton in 1982, but she subsequently made clear both in Arkansas in 1983 and again once she reached the White House as First Lady in 1993 that she preferred the "Hillary Rodham Clinton"; see this 1993 New York Times piece and this 2015 Politico piece for background on her name usage during these periods. The point is that the "Rodham" isn't just some whim; it's there for a reason. It is the name used by her First Lady page and her official Senate page and her official former Secretary of State page. If she does get elected to the presidency, it seems quite likely that she'll use "Rodham" as part of her name in that office, just like she has in all previous offices. All of the books she has written have been published under "Hillary Rodham Clinton": It Takes a Village (1996), Dear Socks, Dear Buddy (1998), An Invitation to the White House (2000), Living History (2003), and Hard Choices (2014). Her signature is "Hillary Rodham Clinton". And lest there be any doubt about which name she prefers in this context, when Jimbo asked her people during last year's RM, the answer came back "Hillary Rodham Clinton".
- But wait! She's campaigning as Hillary Clinton now. Yes, it's true that during a few of campaigns she has been involved in, she has dropped the 'Rodham' in her campaign materials. This is true when Bill was running to regain the Arkansas governorship in 1982; true during her 2007–08 presidential campaign; and true so far in her 2016 presidential campaign that has just begun. The first of these was clearly for political reasons, but the presidential ones may just be because short-and-snappy carries the day in campaign messaging – indeed for 2008 she was mostly just referred to as "Hillary". See this 2015 NPR piece for more. The campaign difference can, and has, been handled by the naming of the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, 2008 article in the past and the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, 2016 article now. But the bottom line is that the names she has used during her life break down something like this:
- Hillary Rodham – 34 years including when first married
- Hillary Rodham Clinton – 29 years including all the major offices/positions she's held
- Hillary Clinton – 4 years while campaigning.
- Stability. This article has been at "Hillary Rodham Clinton" for essentially its entire existence on WP. It became a GA and then an FA article under this title. It got written up in the press multiple times under this title. It keeps getting subjected to RM's but in the end the title has always stayed where it is. It gets upwards of two million page views a year on average and with web links, our redirects, and search engine predictive completions (they pop up with this article and its lead image and capsule biography after just typing "hilla"), it's hard to credit the view of some move advocates that this title has been causing a loss of readership or confusion about who the subject is. Nothing has changed since the last RM except that the 2016 campaign has begun. But the use of "Hillary Clinton" there is nothing new either, since it already happened during the 2008 campaign and she went back to her regular name once that was over. Two recent data points that she still uses "Hillary Rodham Clinton" in non-campaign situations: It's the name used for the title and first reference on her bio page at the Clinton Foundation in the most recently archived version as of late March 2015 (before she resigned from there in order to run for president); and it's on the cover of the paperback edition of Hard Choices due out late April 2015. Changing the article's title now just because of some 2016 campaign materials would be falling prey to WP:RECENTISM at its worst. This is a biography of her whole life, and "Rodham" has been part of her name for almost that whole life.
- Thus I believe the article should remain at "Hillary Rodham Clinton". Wasted Time R (talk) 11:06, 21 April 2015 (UTC)
