The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete‎. (non-admin closure) Cheers, atque supra! Fakescientist8000 23:10, 13 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Baoshan (given name)[edit]

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Baoshan (given name) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log | edits since nomination)
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At the suggestion of @Folly Mox:, I'm bundling this nom with Hongliang (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) and Zhilin (given name) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views), which suffer from the same issues. Note for the latter that Rosamund Kwan's name, listed there, isn't even correct; she has a Cantonese name that is not romanized Zhilin.

I’m nominating this page for deletion today based primarily off of WP:GNG, lack of a coherent subject, and intractable WP:SYNTHESIS issues, the latter two of which can be folded into WP:TNT.

This is eligible for deletion under these criteria as this is not a disambiguation page; it is a anthroponymic set index list per MOS:DABNAME, and as such must follow GNG and WP:NLIST.

This fails NLIST on two counts; the first is that there is no substantial English-language coverage of the Baoshan given name. The second is that there is no one subject of Baoshan or of similar loci; this is why I discount any potential Chinese-language source.

The main problem here is that romanizations of Chinese do not have one-to-one correspondence with Chinese characters. Also, a particular romanization X may also appear in a different romanization, but instead representing a different sound; this is all before we take tones into account. We might also note that Chinese is not one language; it is better described as the Sinitic language family (Mandarin, Cantonese, Hokkien, etc.), and every character is pronounced differently and thus romanized differently even if thttps://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Baoshan_(given_name)&action=edithe character itself is identical.

Indeed, all the articles listed here have different Baoshan transliteration origins.

As another analog, take common Chinese surnames; note common overlap in the end state of romanizations between romanization systems (the most common now are Hanyu Pinyin, Wade-Giles, and postal) and different languages of Sinitic. Any original language discussion of a particular given name, even in Chinese, would then be conflated with every other possible combination of romanizations, characters, and languages that would result in Baoshan. It is a many-to-many correspondence.

As such, the content and premise of this page is a form of WP:SYNTHESIS. It combines multiple forms of two-character Chinese given names and all English Baoshan romanizations into one; reliable sources doing this do not exist so far as I can see.

The similarity in Hanyu Pinyin romanization is an effect of how words are pronounced in Mandarin. Categorizing them into one English romanization is akin to fitting a square peg into a round hole; this is before we get into tone differences, which change meanings in and of themselves.

There has been no previous project discussion on pages like this—given names with ambiguous romanizations and variations in English without one-to-one-correspondence—that I could find, and certainly not in WikiProject Anthroponymy or in Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/China- and Chinese-related articles.

I’ll then address the criteria laid out in WP:CSC, mentioned in WP:SIA as a guideline, itself a sub-guideline of WP:SAL, itself a guideline and of course subordinate to GNG. This list plainly fails the “every entry in the list fails the notability criteria” and “short, complete lists of every item that is verifiably a member of the group” criteria, so what remains is “every entry meets the notability criteria for its own article in the English Wikipedia.”

But then what is the list about? As established above, it’s about many things vaguely defined that don’t hold water in Sinitic or in English; they are not the same, and similarity occurs only in contrived English analogs.

The article in its current state shows the lack of focus. Every instance of Baoshan originates from different written characters. Baoshan itself is not and cannot be notable. We wouldn't have an article regarding lists of people whose name is pronounced Baoshan, much less a list of people whose names are transliterated Baoshan by chance. Chinese given names are also used only by people close to the named; the situation where people would search for the given name only is unlikely. Then w.r.t. whatever significance Baoshan carries as a meaning--it is disrespectful in Chinese to name someone after someone else. Any name collision is purely coincidental. The premise of this article is flawed; this article ought to be deleted. Iseult Δx parlez moi 21:20, 1 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Folly Mox: I didn't bundle these because I don't want to risk that going down; seeing that you identified those two, I feel safe bundling these three and have done so. I intend to go through everything in the Chinese given name category and tailor each nomination to its own merits. Iseult Δx parlez moi 01:50, 2 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Something about this discussion is really pulling asshole energy out of me in a way I'm evidently unable to prevent from manifesting. I don't like that, and will be stepping away from and unwatching this discussion after this edit. A note to the closer, who may not feel like clicking through to my comment at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mengjie:
  • The article under discussion misrepresents three distinct Chinese names (寶山、保山、寶珊) as identical due solely to their romanisation – minus the lexically significant tone marks – in pinyin.
  • We already have a dabpage Baoshan, where the ==People== section consists solely of a link to the page under discussion, into which the three wikilinks present on Baoshan (given name) could easily be merged, and which should include the spellings of the people's names.
  • Chinese given names are not really a thing. As User:Mx. Granger notes somewhere in this discussion or the previous one linked above, maybe 建國 would meet the threshold for notability, and I would add possibly 延壽 to that list, but almost any word or binome can act as a given name. They are extremely variant, and almost never used nor seen in isolation.
  • "Baoshan", on its own, does not have a meaning, anthroponymically or otherwise. It is effectively the same as a pronunciation, not a word or term.
  • If a reader somehow remembers just the forename of a notable individual whose name includes somewhere in it words pronounced "baoshan", the existing dabpage or Wikipedia's search function can serve them better than the page under discussion, which misrepresents three topics as one.
  • All these arguments, in the general case, apply to the other two pages bundled in this AfD.
Folly Mox (talk) 06:23, 10 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Merge Baoshan and Zhilin to their respective dab pages. This should address most (all?) objections. Keep Hongliang because it doesn't have one. Clarityfiend (talk) 08:36, 6 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It is my position, and I believe that of previous commentators, that a) it is irrelevant that they happen to share a common spelling in English because these are by definition different given names that happen to share the same transliteration through quirks, as I have mentioned in my statement, and, indeed, as Clarity has already conceded: ...they may be spelled differently and are different given names in Chinese. And then indeed this commentator makes the mistake of conflating Mandarin with Cantonese; Rosamund Kwan, listed in Zhilin, has a Cantonese name transliterated as Kar Wai, even though Zhilin is the Mandarin Hanyu transliteration. So b) this article does not list people with certain particular given names, and so these lists do indeed violate the MOS. And, c), this commentator has not bothered to engage on the terms of notability. D), the seach argument runs afoul of WP:USEFUL and so not particularly appropriate. Iseult Δx parlez moi 14:09, 3 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Clarityfiend: But what would be the basis for keeping? These topics clearly don't meet GNG, and indeed they are not really coherent topics, just lists of people with different given names that happen to be transliterated the same way when tones are omitted. —Mx. Granger (talk · contribs) 16:05, 3 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I might add that this transliteration only takes into account Mandarin out of the many languages in the Chinese language family. Iseult Δx parlez moi 16:25, 3 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
In a way, these are disambiguation pages. And GNG does not apply to those. Clearly they serve as navigational aids. The above editor has redirected Ching (given name) to Ching He Huang, which is how I got into this discussion. Does that make sense? Not to me. Clarityfiend (talk) 22:04, 4 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
In a way but these are not, and even if they are, have flaws pointed out by me, Granger, and @Folly Mox:. I made the redirect because I'm not one to delete when there are reasonable alternatives; the redirect target says, in the lede: ...often known in English-language merely as Ching. The body of the article is also consistent with this mononymous usage, referring to Huang merely as Ching. As such, it is reasonable to assume that someone searching just for Ching is referring to someone known only as Ching, and so I made the redirect. It is usually inappropriate to simply someone's given name from Ching He to Ching; that's not how Chinese works. Here, I assume, Ching went by that for convenience, and if sources bear that out, so be the redirect.Iseult Δx parlez moi 22:14, 4 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
If this page is deleted, then the entries should to be added to the dab page Baoshan#People, which seems like six of one, half a dozen of the other to me. There needs to be a place where users can find what they're looking for. Same for Ching, etc. Clarityfiend (talk) 22:18, 4 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Clarityfiend: I'm fine, facially, with that DAB page, if the entries added there refer only to Mandarin given names romanized in Hanyu Pinyin. The problem is that these lists of Chinese given names are very misleading by their very setup; that's why I've put this here at AfD. Otherwise, Wikipedia search works fine. Iseult Δx parlez moi 22:21, 4 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
What does "facially" mean? And why would you restrict it to "Mandarin given names romanized in Hanyu Pinyin"? That's not how dab pages work. Clarityfiend (talk) 22:26, 4 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
By facially I mean something along the lines of at first glance, but there's a specific word that I'm thinking of that doesn't come to mind. Now, regarding DABs and keeping in mind your evident passion for them, I don't think that a DAB is essentially a catch-all; it's a directory of sorts of articles known commonly or appropriately (I say that with reference to, say, examples like WP:EN where regional/English-language naming prevails). As I've said in my statement, there are many name collisions between transliterations of different Sinitic languages and also within different transliterations of the same Sinitic language. I don't think it's appropriate to lump in someone like Rosamund Kwan who grew up with a Cantonese name speaking Cantonese and got her break in Cantonese acting in with other Zhilins just because her name happens to be transliterated that way into Mandarin and then into English via Hanyu Pinyin. Users can find what they are looking for via Wikipedia search, as the default result goes. We shouldn't mislead based off of a misunderstanding of fact and out of convenience. Indeed, as the page, Ching (given name), that you created goes, the lead result, which I redirected to page to as a primary topic, isn't even correct; Ching in and of itself is not Ching's given name. That would be Ching He. As an encyclopedia, we must not bow to English convenience when there are problems of WP:GNG, WP:NLIST, and WP:SYNTHESIS, as previously mentioned. Iseult Δx parlez moi 22:44, 4 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not too concerned about keeping a given name list per se. However, as I noted before, the entries do deserve to go in a dab page if the given name option is off the table. Same difference. That negates the GNG, NLIST and SYNTHESIS arguments. Clarityfiend (talk) 00:01, 5 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
This is a SAL by definition, so I don't see a negation. I don't see a SAL rebuttal to Folly Mox either, and we're never going to come to consensus on appropriateness for a DAB; however, I'll note that we're not in express dispute over the list as it is; so I guess I'll note for the closing admin that opposition to keeping these specific lists is constrained to a rework via a proper disambiguation. Iseult Δx parlez moi 00:33, 5 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Clarityfiend: Thanks for bringing up the disambiguation argument. I don't think these pages are very useful for disambiguation, for the reasons I explained at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mengjie. Surname lists are often useful for disambiguation, because notable people are sometimes identified by their surname alone, so a reader might well search for a surname to find the article about the person, even if the reader doesn't know the subject's given name. But Chinese given names are rarely used alone, except in informal situations, so it is hard to imagine that a reader would search for "Baoshan" to find one of these people without knowing their surname. —Mx. Granger (talk · contribs) 01:21, 5 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Except in informal situations. So they are used by themselves occasionally. "Hard to imagine" = not impossible to imagine. Clarityfiend (talk) 23:49, 9 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
"I know I met second cousin Baoshan at the family reunion over New Year, but I can't remember if he manages a football team or works for the government..." Folly Mox (talk) 05:40, 10 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
As Folly says, yes, really only in very casual-intimate situations where one knows the person in question personally. There's a cultural difference here that I don't think is quite translating. Iseult Δx parlez moi 06:13, 10 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
User:Clarityfiend it's not at all irrelevant that they're not the same name but happen to be romanised identically when tone marks are excluded: they're not the same topic. Would you have English words pronounced /tir/ (disambiguation)? Because the situation is exactly analogous. If people are indeed for some reason searching for just the given name of a notable Chinese individual who I guess they remember hearing one part of their name but don't have their full name accessible? The search function can return links to each article it matches. These terms are a disjoint set that share one common representation. Folly Mox (talk) 23:08, 4 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry that came out really snippy. Folly Mox (talk) 23:11, 4 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It's not the pronunciation, it's the spelling. This is the English Wikipedia, and we go by English spelling. If things are written the same, they go in the same dab page, regardless of how they're pronounced. Clarityfiend (talk) 23:57, 4 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
These aren't English words and don't have an English "spelling": they're the pinyin romanisation – excluding tone marks, which are lexically significant – of three distinct Chinese spellings. By this rationale, if we were to give equal weight to Wade–Giles for some reason, we'd want a separate disambiguation page for "Pao-shan", linking the same three people. The only thing retaining this page, and others of its kind, will accomplish that using Wikipedia's search function will not accomplish, is to perpetuate the misconception that "Baoshan", on its own, means something. It doesn't. Pinyin is a lossy compression function, and doubly so when tones are discarded. Folly Mox (talk) 23:13, 5 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I'll also put it this way:
If we want to have a dab page for every word romanised as "baoshan" that is attached to a notable topic, I guess that might make sense, but limiting it to just anthroponymy is misleading, and any such dabpage should be organised by the spellings in the original Chinese. Folly Mox (talk) 02:17, 6 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: Most policies invoked in this proposal don't seem to apply. If reliable sources transliterate a person's name as "Baoshan", then including them in a list of people whose names are transliterated as "Baoshan" is WP:NOTSYNTH. WP:LISTN doesn't give many hard rules, but it does name WP:LISTPURP-NAV as exempt from the normal notability guidelines. jlwoodwa (talk) 19:07, 11 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Jlwoodwa: By bringing up WP:LISTPURP-NAV, are you alluding to the discussion above about whether the page is useful for disambiguation? Or do you think it serves some other navigational purpose? —Mx. Granger (talk · contribs) 19:50, 11 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Delete all 3, for reasons mentioned by the nom and those in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mengjie. Some transliterations cannot be deemed accurate due to the conventions of the language as a whole, and the names can be different as a whole, just transliterated by chance Karnataka (talk) 20:58, 11 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
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