Talk:Brescia Casket

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: not moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) Sceptre (talk) 09:39, 10 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• Brescia Casket → Brescia casket
• Cammin Casket → Cammin casket
• Kanishka Casket → Kanishka casket
• Troyes Casket → Troyes casket
• Veroli Casket → Veroli casket

– In the recent discussion at Talk:Bimaran casket#Requested move 8 January 2023, Dicklyon provided n-gram evidence that these titles are not consistently capitalized in book sources and suggested renaming them to lowercase titles: Brescia, Cammin, Kanishka, Troyes, Veroli. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 18:10, 26 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• Very Strong Oppose A "Brescia casket" would be a type of casket; this is a single object with a proper name. These damaging changes should be dropped - ngrams are to be treated with caution, and properly scrutinised, which thyese have not been. Johnbod (talk) 18:21, 26 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  Whether the term refers to more than one thing or not is not what distinguishes a proper name from a description – there is also the question of whether the term has been consistently selected as a naming label or not, and Wikipedia often uses sourcing to try to figure that out. When looking at a set of photographs, "the man with a full beard" might be a unique identifier of which person one is talking about, but that does not make that phrase his proper name and suggest it should be capitalized. Of course if you put an indefinite article in front of it, you're signaling a non-unique referent, but I don't expect these articles to be doing that. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 19:04, 26 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The Brescia casket would be a specific casket and not a type of casket, immaterial of how casket is capitalised. Cinderella157 (talk) 11:26, 31 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

What, like Wellington boot? This is nonsense. Johnbod (talk) 15:21, 31 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Are you saying that the definite article (the) does not create a definite specific reference so that in saying: The Bresica casket is an ivory box, we are specifically referring to a particular ivory box? Furthermore, in the example sentence, changing the capitalisation does not alter which box is specifically being referred to. Cinderella157 (talk) 22:53, 31 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

There are plenty of possible sentences where non-proper names can be preceded by "the" ("... the Wellington boot...") so this test is useless in removing ambiguity, and I think OR, not recognised by WP guidelines. Johnbod (talk) 15:30, 8 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

When stating eg, pass me the Wellington boot...", there is no ambiguity in context about which particular Wellington boot is being referred to. It is quite definitely referring to a specific Wellington boot. That is the inherent nature of the definite article. True proper names are not descriptive. The Bresica C|casket is descriptive. It is a casket. To say, this is a single object with a proper name (an assertion made without reference to any criteria or evidence) is even more so OR, not recognised by WP guidelines. There are different perceptions about what should or should not be capitalised and this is why the P&G is to rely on empirical evidence. Cinderella157 (talk) 00:09, 9 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• Support all per evidence from sources; these are not usually capped in sources, so per WP:NCCAPS and MOS:CAPS, we use lowercase. And if you don't like the n-gram stats, you can verify, by searching books and scholarly articles for sentence fragments such as "the Brescia Casket was", that nobody caps "Casket" (the exception that created the 2002 spike in n-gram counts is this book, which the Library of Congress lists with lowercase Casket in spite of the author's capitalization). Dicklyon (talk) 02:16, 27 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose on the basis of the long standing differentiation in treatment between object types and specific works. This is why we have "Portrait miniature" vs Portrait Miniature (X artist). Dicklyon as ever you are a s-stirring nuisance. Ceoil (talk) 21:38, 29 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose. I don’t understand the motivation for this move; these are proper nouns, no? Why should this be any different from the Dead Sea Scrolls or Rosetta Stone? At a certain point we do just apply grammatical conventions. — HTGS (talk) 10:46, 30 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  To expand: The issue comes down to whether an object like the one at this page is named the ‘Brescia Casket’, or is simply referred to as the ‘Brescia casket’ as a way of saying “that casket from Brescia [as opposed to that other one next to it]”. With this in mind, I would only expect unnamed objects like a ‘Brescia cabinet #4321’ to be lowercased (as with Assyrian statue (BM 124963) and Stamp seal (BM 119999)).

  So I did some perusing. Going in I thought it would be likely that we would give uppercase names to larger, more important, more distinct, more defined and (thus) more famous objects like the Rosetta Stone, and less likely that we would give names to objects like the Hunters Palette. In skimming through categories like Category:Ancient Greek and Roman objects in the British Museum and Category:Asian objects in the British Museum it just doesn’t seem that there is much of a pattern. The majority of artifacts and objects seem to be given capital letters. Some bowls and plates seem a little more likely to be uncapitalised (Hephthalite silver bowl, Euphorbos plate), but vases are more likely.

  Some exceptions seem to be some objects which are plural (Kakiemon elephants, Nimrud ivories, Assyrian lion weights); and again for objects whose origins appear less familiar, or are from cultures that have historically been seen as less culturally important (Double-headed serpent, Mammoth spear thrower, Ain Sakhri figurine, Kayung totem pole)—no doubt this is a major potential for Western bias.

  Honestly I think the few that are uncapitalised are probably the exception, and should largely be brought up in case to match. — HTGS (talk) 06:20, 8 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  • • I agree our actual names on WP are very inconsistent, but some above are certainly not proper names - for example pairs of Kakiemon elephants were no doubt turned out in large quantities, it's just that we have no articles on other ones, so no need for further disam. Johnbod (talk) 15:30, 8 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

      I agree. There are certainly many objects which are and should be treated differently (ie left lowercase), and plurals are among them. Maybe I should have put more emphasis on “largely” at the end of my comment there. — HTGS (talk) 01:56, 9 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  Further, the nomination here seems to ignore that the Brescia and the Veroli and perhaps even the Kanishka are actually supported for uppercase by the Ngram data. — HTGS (talk) 06:24, 8 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

None of these terms are true Proper names, since a true proper name is not descriptive. Capitalisation in these cases can be attributed to emphasis, distinction or (apparent) importance; but WP doesn't do that per MOS:EMPHCAPS. There is no pattern because these are not true proper names that would be consistently capped in sources. Per MOS:CAPS, only words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources are capitalized in Wikipedia. This is a much higher threshold than a simple majority and, because ngrams don't distinguish headings, captions etc where title case is commonly used, the threshold for ngram evidence per many other discussions is about 80% to account for this. For uncommon ngrams (like these) a single source with multiple instances of a particular ngram can result in a large spike. Dicklyon would attribute a spike at 2002 for the Brescia casket to this source and that seems quite reasonable. Viewing the ngrams wholistically they do not appear to reach a threshold for capitalisation. They show quite mixed usage. They certainly do not show the degree of consistent usage of the Dead Sea Scrolls (which are in the plural), the Shroud of Turin nor the Rosetta Stone which is not quite as clear but certainly much clearer than these caskets. There are many perceptions of what is a proper noun and what should be capitalised consequently. Because of this, WP relies on empirical evidence to determine capitalisation. Consequently, many of the comments here carry little weight because they ignore the prevailing WP:P&G. If we disagree about the conclusions to be reached on assessment of the evidence against the guidance, then we need to establish why one conclusion should be preferred? Regards, Cinderella157 (talk) 13:10, 8 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• Support all per WP:NCCAPS and MOS:CAPS and ngram evidence by DL. These are not intrinsically proper nouns. They are specific because they take the definite article. Cinderella157 (talk) 11:23, 31 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

While specificity is a property of a proper name/proper noun, it is not a defining property since specificity is also achieved by the definite article (the). Cinderella157 (talk) 23:49, 1 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Uniqueness is also not a defining property of a proper noun - there are many people call John Smith and common names that are equally quite unique. Cinderella157 (talk) 00:20, 9 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose. Blatantly proper names. These are unique items. -- Necrothesp (talk) 14:34, 1 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose If I had not capitalized the second words in an Art History class, I would have been marked wrong. Works of art are not only viewed as unique objects but as sources by scholars and are literally cited. I do not know what genre these books fall into, but the standard for people like me who work with objects like these is for them to be viewed as unique works with proper names. Hopeghostlurker2435158128 (talk) 14:02, 6 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  — Hopeghostlurker2435158128 (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. Their first edits were today, consisting of surprisingly rapid drafting and submission of a complete article at Draft:Karl Albert von Bombelles and the comment above. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 17:56, 6 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  And there it is... the attitude that I left Wikipedia to avoid. Well, if I have to justify why my vote should count: So, it's suspect that I work efficiently? The slowness of the draft review process is the only reason I have not created redirect pages and gone through every page that mentions Bombelles and link or correct links. I can understand some caution, but unless there is a risk that a zombie Bombelles payed me to write his fancruft and then sockpuppet his views on naming conventions for works of art in English, I don't see why I'm being called out. It's a much less exciting explanation: New account, old old Wikipedian—ancient, really. Like I rolled back WillyOnWheels sockpuppets, was in email medcom threads with Essjay, and Barnstars were born after I became an admin level of ancient. I liked to work on neglected or obscure articles and nominate them for FA. So, I still know how to write articles.

  I just came to find Wikipedia to not be a very welcoming and rather biased place when it comes to article topics. I rarely edit Wikipedia, but occasionally a gap in coverage bothers me and I fill it. Most recently before this account, Sun and Moon Pagodas. Over the years, I've even been asked to come back by editors. I had to create an account to fill a hole in Wikipedia's coverage and since I had an account, for a brief moment, I thought maybe things have changed. I am now disabused of such a notion.

  I should not have to go back decades and out my old account in my real name (Yes, it's so old that was encouraged at the time) and itemize my contributions to justify having a voice. That's not the way Jimbo intended things; notability, verifiability, and civility were the key things and always assuming good faith. The quality of the work not the clout of the personality is what is supposed to matter. Count my vote or not, they'll still be proper nouns and the renaming will still fly in the face of art history, classics, and history writing conventions. Oh, and while you were writing your comment I was working on Draft:Rodaun, a part of Vienna that somehow does not have an article on it. It will be my last edit for a very long time. (For those fellow stray Ancient Wikipedians who can connect the dots, yes I appreciate the irony of me of all people arguing against bureaucracy and "cliques.") *waddles off back into the Eldritch darkness of Wikipedia's history to vent to a former Wikimedia board member on Facebook messenger* -Hopeghostlurker2435158128 (talk) 20:17, 6 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  @BarrelProof is just stating two facts about your account, what is so bad about that? TheManInTheBlackHat (Talk) 21:03, 6 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  FWIW, Draft:Karl Albert von Bombelles looks very good to me. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 21:06, 6 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• Lower-case all, since these are descriptive terms not proper names, and they are not consistently capitalized in sources (MOS:CAPS, WP:NCCAPS).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:05, 9 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. These are clearly intrinsic proper nouns.  —Michael Z. 07:10, 10 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]