Talk:Thorn (letter)

Wynn says (of itself)

Wynn says (of itself): "The rune was held to represent joy, and is the only rune other than þ to have been borrowed into the Latin alphabet." Could someone who knows these things add a sentence or two about this in this entry? --Spikey 00:14, 28 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Moving this article

I'm going to move this article to Þ today if nobody objects, pros to this:

• Naturally linked, people are more likely to write [[þ]] than [[Thorn (linguistics)|Þ]]
• It's in ISO-8859-1, this will cause no trauble.
• It's in the style of æ,ö,ý... this is one ugly distinction. --Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 16:19, 2004 Jun 25 (UTC)

I object. First, I want to say that I love the letter thorn, and have for many years; I fought to have it recognized as a separate letter for the purposes of international sorting (and won). But the name of this letter in the English is Thorn. Further, while "Thorn (linguistics)" was very bad, I already changed that (and all the articles) to "Thorn (letter)". And that took rather a long time. (This back-and-forthing is one of the more unpleasant features of the Wikipedia.) Evertype 09:44, 2004 Jul 20 (UTC)

hehe here we go. I thought I was going to have problems with the redirects when I discovered my original sally at the subject was not where I put it; but actually, on reflection, so long as we have appropriate redirects in place, I am not really that concerned. Definitely an issue of a low order of severity in any case. I vote we just make sure we have stuff pointing at it from the right angles. Sjc 10:00, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Most English speakers when faced with the thorn's glyph don't recognize it at all. It is far better to list this letter under its name in the English-language Wikipedia.

Perhaps they will after reading the article. -- Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 10:28, 2004 Jul 20 (UTC)

How will they find the article? Evertype 18:45, 2004 Jul 20 (UTC)

It should also be pointed out that not everyone has ISO/IEC 8859-1 as their character set. Many Macintosh users do still do not have support for Thorn or Eth. The convention "Lettername (letter)" should be used for Thorn and Eth, as it is for a number of Greek letters, which are listed under their names as spelled out in English.

I would like the articles to move back to "Thorn (letter)" Evertype 10:18, 2004 Jul 20 (UTC)

What Macintosh users in particular do not have support for Þ or Ð? Mac OS has always supported character sets alot better than Windows equivalents, especially with Mac OS X.

Any users with OS 8 and OS 9, certainly – and there are many of them, no matter how wonderful OS X is. And most people don't have keyboard access to the letter, certainly (unless they use the Unicode keyboards, which are not supported on all browsers, including Explorer). Evertype 11:41, 2004 Jul 20 (UTC)

Furthermore, i think that Thorn (letter) is an overly long and ugly title for an article as opposed to Þ. -- Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 10:28, 2004 Jul 20 (UTC)

I am sure that you do, as an Icelander. I would like to see some consistency in Wikipedia, that's all. I don't think we should change Eth (letter) to Ð (which would be ambiguous with regard to the Croatian and African look-alikes). Evertype 11:41, 2004 Jul 20 (UTC)

Greek letters which can't be written in 8859-1 have to be listed as their spelled out names; but "A", "B", ... are not at Ay (letter), Bee (letter), etc; why should "Þ" be at Thorn (letter)? —Lady Lysiŋe Ikiŋsile | Talk 10:31, 2004 Jul 20 (UTC)

We do not normally write out Ay, Bee, Cee. Thorn is normally written out. Thorn is an entry in dictionaries. Thorn is the character's name. Evertype 11:41, 2004 Jul 20 (UTC)

• Keep at Þ. We have redirects to handle things. Dysprosia 10:21, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)

This is inconsistent, and I don't think it buys anything for the end-user. Ævar's argument that it's more convenient for Wikipedians to type in links is pretty bogus. Why not keep it at Thorn (letter)? ÆVar said he was going to move it unless he heard objections. Well, I object. Evertype 11:41, 2004 Jul 20 (UTC)

First of all, how is it inconsistent with abcdefghijklmnopqrs letters are at their letter name, unlike numbers which are at int (number).

It's one thing to be idealistic, and another to be practical about the realities of what English-speaking readers will know and recognize. Evertype 18:45, 2004 Jul 20 (UTC)

And how is it bogus that it's more conviniant to type it? The previous name was 14 letters, the current one is 13 shorter.

Convenience for the throngs of Wikipedia authors rushing to link this article is one thing. Convenience for actual users wanting to be able to recognize and pronounce article names is quite another. Evertype 18:45, 2004 Jul 20 (UTC)

Generally, if you can make the title shorter and more understood thats a good thing, uneeded ()'s behind them should not be used if they can be avoided.

And about that objection notice, that was 25 days ago, I've first now seen you disagree, not that you can watch every page on wikipedia, i just wanted to get any formal complaints then. -- Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 12:14, 2004 Jul 20 (UTC)

No, I did not see it a month ago. I did spend a considerable time following up links when I made both the Thorn (letter) and Eth (letter) articles accessible to people other than Icelanders and students of Old English. (I was both.) No one said anything when I did that, and so I am quite rightly surprised to see this unwelcome change here.

• Let's just keep this at Þ, I don't see why this one should be treated differently from æ, ö and ß. Why use long and ugly article names when it may easily be avoided? --Biekko 14:40, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)

There isn't anything particularly ugly about the article name, though perhaps in retrospect Letter Thorn (Þ) or Letter Þ (Thorn) would be better, with other variants pointing there. And, indeed, why not Letter A, Letter B, etc.? ſ resolves to Long s, while ß does not resolve to Sharp s. This is not user-friendly, and I would like to see the whole thing tidied up. Evertype 18:45, 2004 Jul 20 (UTC)

I think that (no pun indented) if you have general issues with naming conventions on WP such as that A should be on Letter A, Þ on Letter Thorn (Þ) it should be taken up on WP naming conventions. -- Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 05:39, 2004 Jul 21 (UTC)

Þ

While there may be an arguement for keeping an article in Wikipedia on the common phrase "ye olde", I think this topic should be covered in the article on the letter thorn. If it is decided that "ye olde" deserves its own page, then that page should certainly agree with the letter thorn page. -Acjelen 05:49, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Move of Æ to Ash (letter) or Aesc

Interested persons, please read and vote for or against either proposal at Talk:Æ#Requested move. —Michael Z. 2005-09-27 00:10 Z

Domari

Doesn't Domari use thorn as well? Skyetheguy (talk) 9:38, 14 December 2022 (EET)