Talk:Gaspar de Guzmán y Pimentel, Count-Duke of Olivares

Untitled

I've had a go at expanding this a bid and getting the in-line citations sorted. There were one or two facts in the original that I just couldn't track citations down for (but look like they're no doubt correct!) and I have highlighted these with 'citations needed' flags. The comments on the pictures have been drawn from their original wikipedia entries. The overall tone of the article is perhaps slightly more positive towards Olivares than the original, but this seemed to be reflecting the weight of the modern sources I could find. The ambiguity over the Catalan v. mainstream histories of the revolt of 1640 could usefully be checked over by someone with a Catalan academic background (the English sources I'm using may have a slant all of their own here!). Hchc2009 (talk) 18:50, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Olivares's birthdate

Though at brittanica.com his birthdate is January 16 (and "Pimentel" is misspelled "Pimental"), Elliot in an extensive history of Olivares's family in The Statesman in an Age of Decline -- the only biography of Olivares in English, I believe -- gives the date as January 6. Looking for biographical information in Spanish at Google Books, Siglos Dorados 2 at p. 1411, citing the Statesman book and a biography in Spanish, gives his birthdate as 6 de enero de 1587, as do the few other Spanish sources available there; I didnt find a source for January 16. Accordingly I changed the January 16 dates back to January 6. If that date is wrong please revert but please provide your source(s). Thanks -- LaNaranja (talk) 13:37, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Article Title

I'm not an expert on the Spanish biographical articles by any stretch, but it seems to me that the majority of the ones I've seen don't include the "y" portion of the person's name in the title, e.g. it's Luis de Góngora, not Luis de Góngora y Argote; Francisco Goya, not Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes; Óscar Romero, not Óscar Arnulfo Romero y Galdámez; Enrique Pérez de Guzmán, 2nd Count de Niebla, not Enrique Pérez de Guzmán y de Castilla, 2nd Count of Niebla; etc. I think the logic is similar to the reason why we don't include middle names in the article title unless the person's middle name is widely used.

So, by that logic, it seems to me that this article's title should be "Gaspar de Guzmán, Count-Duke of Olivares", not "Gaspar de Guzmán y Pimentel, Count-Duke of Olivares".

Thoughts?

Adam sk (talk) 01:46, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

I've done a quick scan of Google Books. I think the English language material there seems split about 65%:35% with the shorter version (Gaspar de Guzmán) being more commonly used. That would support your argument. Hchc2009 (talk) 17:16, 9 July 2010 (UTC)

I don't see a rule or guideline, or even a consensus at a discussion, defining how Spanish surnames should be presented in English article titles. (There might be one, but I haven't found it.) But WP:EN says, "The title of an article should generally use the version of the name of the subject which is most common in the English language, as you would find it in reliable sources." It makes sense that English readers would expect the first surname only. Olivares's English biographer calls him simply Gaspar de Guzmán, too. And at the section in es:Wikipedia, Casa de Olivares, where the title "Conde-Duque" is explained, he's Gaspar de Guzmán, III Conde de Olivares, I Conde-Duque de Olivares.

At the Conde de Floridablanca's Talk page is the only discussion I found nearest to this topic. There too the article title has included only his first surname from its start in 2004.

(I do think "Don" should be added before "Gaspar de Guzmán" in the first line, and his title changed to the English version of the one he finagled and fought to get: "Gaspar de Guzmán, Count-Duke of Olivares and Duke of San Lúcar," but that's a discussion for another day :)) -- LaNaranja (talk) 02:21, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

Alright, I'm going to go ahead and make the switch then. Adam sk (talk) 05:13, 11 July 2010 (UTC)