Talk:Commandery (China)

Disambiguation

'Commandery' should not automatically direct to the Chinese page, but preferrably a disambiguation page. Commandery has several different meanings and the Chinese one is not the most obvious.

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Moved. Reasonable & no objections. — kwami (talk) 09:31, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

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Commandery → Commandery (China) — See previous comment above - Commandery should become a DAB page. Philg88 (talk) 02:19, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Move

Should probably be moved again, given that Fu (country subdivision) seems to also be commonly translated as commandery in some eras. Alternatively, an article at prefecture (China) and then treatment on each page of which eras translate which Chinese terms. — LlywelynII 03:41, 1 July 2016 (UTC)

User:LlywelynII this title is also not completely satisfactory because there's another historical subdivision pronounced "Jun": zh:军 (行政区划). Timmyshin (talk) 20:12, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

There is no completely satisfactory way to divide Chinese concepts in the English language, sure. We can't treat this as the "commandery" when other units are similarly and commonly translated that way. 军 is so uncommon that (what is it now? 15 years in?) Wikipedia still has no article at all about it. It should just be dealt with in a subsection on this page until there's enough material to warrant another fork.

Either that or redo the entire page so that it covers "commandery" from an English perspective and breaks down which eras commonly intend "jun" and which intend "fu" or some other term. — LlywelynII 04:08, 23 November 2017 (UTC)

• I almost created an article for 軍 a couple of years ago but didn't because I wasn't sure how to title it. There's definitely enough material (why else would there be articles on zh.wiki and min-nan.wiki?). In the Song dynasty there were no 郡 but a lot of 軍, which are more important than most zhou/fu in times of war. I'm thinking, are Jun (military prefecture) vs. Jun (commandery) acceptable titles? Timmyshin (talk) 07:08, 23 November 2017 (UTC)
• Also please tell me in which books/articles (or about which dynasties) do you see 府 translated as "Commandery"? I'm afraid it's very rare: 7 results for "Fu commandery" vs. 153 results for "Jun commandery" + 41 results for "Chun commandery". These are not precise search terms but give some ideas about prevalence. Timmyshin (talk) 07:18, 23 November 2017 (UTC)

• Move to Commandery This article should be moved back to its original title, Commandery. Jun 郡 is almost always translated as "commandery" in academic literature, including the definitive Cambridge History of China and Charles Hucker's widely referenced A Dictionary of Official Titles in Imperial China, while fu is mostly translated as "prefecture" (Ming-Qing) or "superior prefecture" (Tang-Yuan). This is summarized in Chinese History: A New Manual (Fourth ed.) p. 261. See also the Four Commanderies of Han in modern Korea, which is the standard translation in Korean historioraphy. -Zanhe (talk) 05:00, 24 November 2017 (UTC)

• Move to Commandery or Commandery (China) In addition to the reasons above, Jun (country division) does not make sense to even a relatively knowledgable reader (that is, to me), for it is not clear what language jun is or what a "country division" is. ch (talk) 04:45, 25 November 2017 (UTC)

• I think Commandery is better per WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. The Chinese commandery was the main high-level administrative division in East Asia for over a millennium (the zhou or province was usually a region for inspection instead of administration) and had a profound impact on the history of China and its neighbouring countries. The best known are the Four Commanderies of Han in Korea, and there were also the Three Commanderies of Vietnam and Four Commanderies of the Hexi Corridor (including the famous Dunhuang), which paved the way for the Silk Road. The European commandry already has its own undisambiguated title, and is far less historically significant. -Zanhe (talk) 20:56, 21 December 2017 (UTC)

• The problem is that commandry and commandery are just variant spellings and the latter is preferred in all contexts. I have therefore moved the undisambiguated article to that spelling. If you think this article should be there, by all means open an RM. I would propose moving the other article to commandery (military order) if you want to go that route. Srnec (talk) 02:45, 13 August 2019 (UTC)

Sources for future article expansion

• Li Shizhen (2017), Hua Linfu; et al. (eds.), Ben Cao Gang Mu Dictionary, Vol. II: Geographical and Administrative Designations, Berkeley: University of California Press.

has an overview of imperial Chinese administrative divisions. — LlywelynII 14:05, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

Many thanks @LlywelynII: -- great resource! This would be highly useful for editing this and many other articles on geographical units-- e.g. District (China), Counties of the People's Republic of China. Obviously all these and many more articles in Category:Administrative divisions of China are inconsistent in their usages, but it would be the work of a lifetime to straighten them out. Unschild "universally" uses "county" for xian. (p.14) Sigh. ch (talk) 16:29, 16 January 2018 (UTC)