Talk:Yakutiye Madrasa

Article name

I've restored the article to its former name (Yakutiye Medrese) again after the recent move war. This name was stable for years until it was moved without discussion. It is very easy to check that it is in fact quite common in reliable English sources, even those written by Turkish authors (do a Google Books search or see e.g. [1], [2], [3], [4], [5]). It does not represent a full transplant of the Turkish name, much less of Turkish grammatical morphemes that are meaningless to English readers. The spelling "medrese" instead of "madrasa", just like "hamam" instead of "hammam", is fairly common in English references focused on Turkey (such regional quirks in scholarly terminology exist elsewhere too), and you can find that spelling being used even in isolation, even adapted to the English plural suffix (e.g. [6], [7], [8]).

"Yakutiye Medresesi" can still be found in English sources (especially in guidebooks it seems), but there's no evidence that it is more common (e.g. see Ngram). "Yakutiye Madrasa" can also be found (e.g. see Google Books search results). It might be that the latter is more common with general Islamic architecture references (e.g. the Grove Encyclopedia of Islamic Art and Architecture), but I couldn't ascertain if it's more common than either of the other options.

If any editors want to propose a change, then please go through a WP:RM, as is required by Wikipedia policy and as has been asked many times. Personally, I'm not opposed to "Yakutiye Madrasa", for a more universal English spelling, but I would disfavour the purely Turkish form per WP:USEENGLISH. R Prazeres (talk) 08:50, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

Hey Iskandar323‬, see my comment above. You just moved the article again, but respectfully I think it should still go through a WP:RM regardless, especially after what has just happened. It may also attract input from others not involved in the discussion so far, which would be helpful too if we want to roll out (or not roll out) this change consistently elsewhere. R Prazeres (talk) 09:03, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

@R Prazeres: A move discussion may be necessary, but I am adamant that Wikipedia should stick with the "madrasa" spelling, per our article and general usage. It makes no sense for Wikipedia to dance between spellings of common nouns form article to article; this would be like having half the 'mosque' articles ending in 'masjid' instead, or having a whole bunch more 'madrasa' articles rendered as 'madrasah'. Common words need a consistent, uniform spelling between pages, otherwise it's just bedlam. Iskandar323 (talk) 09:13, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

Maybe, but WP:COMMONNAME could potentially be used against that, if different conventions are commonly used for a subset of topics. There's also numerous Turkish madrasa articles (e.g. see their category) which would be moved by that standard; I don't think it's reasonable or advisable to bold-move all of them.

Maybe this is too ambitious, but one option that comes to mind would be to set up a WP:RMPM (requested multiple page move) that targets most of the Turkish madrasa articles (maybe leaving out any tricky ones to avoid tangents), and make this case explicitly for all of them. That would invite more systematic community input and potentially move the issue more decisively, rather than piecemeal (which, as you rightly say, creates bedlam). R Prazeres (talk) 09:34, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

So I actually don't think boldly moving these would be too crazy, since there is actually only one spelling here in English dictionaries. However, if it were to be taken to the community as an issue, it might be worth making something a little bit more out of it, such as an addendum to the WP:MOSAR guideline advocating how transliterations of Arabic -> Ottoman Turkish -> modern Turkish common nouns might be handled. This would pave the way for a more structure approach. Iskandar323 (talk) 10:14, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

Can you think of any other words to which this might apply? (E.g. Minare, etc.) Iskandar323 (talk) 10:24, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

I think bold-moving en masse is literally what myself, yourself, and others have been objecting to recently, so please don't do that, the potential for trouble is clearly too large. Like I said, it's not just the dictionary spelling of "madrasa" on its own that matters, since reliable English sources themselves don't necessarily follow that in every context. There's plenty of room for disagreement, therefore WP:RM is more appropriate.

I do think that down the line it would be good to have a policy about it somewhere, but I think that's all the more reason to test the waters first with one or more specific proposals. A consensus reached that way can be used to justify drafting a wider solution.

For other words, hamam comes to mind at least. It's just a matter of one vs two "m"s, but it has briefly come up before on the Hammam article and there's lots of article names with the Turkish spelling instead of the most accepted English rendering. However, for minare and other Turkish words that appear before the "madrasa"/"mosque" word in a name, they often seem to be treated as a proper name, regardless of other transliteration choices. E.g. even when authors use the spelling "madrasa", you can find Ince Minareli Madrasa and Ince Minare Madrasa, but I found distinctly less Ince Minaret Madrasa. Arguably, it looks odd to translate one Turkish word (minare) in a proper name but not another (ince); in this case Mercresis did have a point. We should be careful about that. R Prazeres (talk) 18:12, 1 March 2023 (UTC)