Talk:Yang Yuhuan

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Move to real name

I think per our naming policy which favors real names to common names (e.g. Ratonhnhaké:ton instead of "Connor"), we are supposed to move this to Yang Yuhuan. Guifei was just her title, which was the highest concubinage rank during the Tang dynasty and made her second to the position of empress. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 06:59, August 4, 2020 (UTC)

I wanted to revive this question because it seems we have forgotten all about it. Double-checking our manual of style, the name used in anAssassin's Creed source takes precedence over the real name if the latter never appears in an Assassin's Creed source. I'm not sure if Yang Guifei's real name has appeared in Dynasty yet. Back in the day, we even had Gaius Julius Caesar only at Julius Caesar for this reason, a technicality that I'm not sure I agree with anymore. I think that the "canonical name" takes precedence over the form of the name widely used in the real-world applies more to instances like "Cristoffa Corombo" over "Christopher Columbus" (prior to the release of the film). Where the "canonical name" given to us is just a part of the real name, I'm not sure this policy makes sense.

In any case, the thing that makes me most uneasy about leaving this article title at Yang Guifei rather than moving it to Yang Yuhuan is because historically, women in China often did not have their names recorded. Even many empresses are known only by their surname and their title. Given how fastidious the Chinese have been for thousands of years in recording history, it shocks me how sexism can lead them to the extent of regularly erasing women's names. In any case, whenever a historical Chinese women does have their real name recorded to us, I actually really cherish that. So this context makes me more uncomfortable with leaving the article title at just her surname + title. And yet perhaps a counter-argument is that even for the article titles of emperors, we use their most widely known title not their real names? Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 19:44, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

I say we can move everything. Like, there's already an issue with consistency, the chinese emperors are " Jiajing Emperor " and " Hongwu Emperor " but Queen Victoria is " Victoria, Queen of the United Kingdom ". If we want consistency we could move them to titles such as "Zhu Di, Yongle Emperor" and this page to "Yang Yuhuan, Guifei". This is just a suggestion and if you want to ignore it and just move this page you also have my vote for it. - Soranin (talk) 20:15, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

Actually, "Victoria, Queen of the United Kingdom" most likely was named that way due to a confused attempt at consistency. British royals typically forbid the use of their technical surname in their full name, so I suppose "Victoria Hanover" would have been unacceptable to everyone. I suppose one can argue that, at the end of the day, the way royals would like to be named should be taken into account no differently than any other individual's name preferences or identity, and so it would be inappropriate to render their full name in a way they would not have.

For this reason, King Richard the Lionheart is at "Richard I of England" because this was the closest we have to a rendering of his full, legal name which is also faithful to what he would have identified with. The debate would have been should we use "Richard I of England", "Richard the Lionheart", "Richard", or "Richard I". The problem with the latter two options would be the technical ambiguity or impreciseness, leaving only the former two as options.

This problem of how we title the articles for royals was worsened in the case of Queen Victoria because she doesn't have an epithet like "Lionheart", we're not accustomed to referring to her as "Victoria of the United Kingdom", and we don't usually allow royal titles in the article title. For this reason, we avoided using the most intuitive title of "Queen Victoria" that is used in Wikipedia. I would say that we actually should be reconsidering how we title the Queen Victoria article.

However, we also have "James Brudenell, 7th Earl of Cardigan" which does include the title of James Brudenell because we're accustomed to European peerage titles being used in place of an individual's name. I think perhaps this was the logic behind titling Queen Victoria's article "Victoria, Queen of the United Kingdom", replicating this formula.

Bear in mind that it is not inconsistent to not title the article for the Yongle Emperor "Zhu Di, the Yongle Emperor" because this is a European naming format not a Chinese one and the correct cultural naming format must also be taken into consideration. In Mongolian and Persian cultures, the khan and shah titles do become part of an individual's name upon their accession.

I appreciate your support for my desire to move this page, but the I am just not sure that the manual of style permits it, and I am a strong believer in upholding the integrity of rules. If I just went ahead and moved this page and technically the manual of style as it stands doesn't permit it, I don't think any real harm would be done, but the message that sends is uneasy to me. If an administrator acts based on what they want against what has been codified, this undermines the very "constitution" if you will. My issue is that I am not sure if the manual of style as it is written permits or does not permit the move. Probably not since I previously conceded that "Julius Caesar" would remain at "Julius Caesar" rather than "Gaius Julius Caesar" just because the full name at the time had not yet appeared in the source material. When I think back on this now, this is pretty silly since "Gaius Julius Caesar" isn't a different form of the character's name but the character's full name, and this just made for an awkward confusion.

An argument can still be made for prioritizing regnal names for Chinese emperors over their real names since that is what they would have overwhelmingly preferred even if their birth names weren't dead names. With Yang Guifei, there's really no question that the article title should be "Yang Yuhuan" except for the fact that "Yuhuan" is derived from real-world sources and has not yet appeared in Assassin's Creed. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 01:31, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

If that's their names (wow didn't know they were all trans) don't move them. Also, if the manual of style doesn't allow the move for this page, then it should remain here as you said. Not that I have any moral qualms about it, mind you, but you seem to and I don't particularly enjoy acting like the devil on your shoulders. - Soranin (talk) 01:58, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

If you're referring to the Chinese emperors in the first line, I don't think they forsook their birth names the way Amunet did Aya. And this is the confusion that I think many people often have when a character or individual changes their name—whether their old identity is dead to them or not. I'm sure in the beginning, there were even some AC fans who mistakenly thought that when Ratonhnhaké:ton adopted the name Connor, Ratonhnhaké:ton was no longer one of his names, that he had wholly changed his identity rather than adopting a European name.

But for Chinese emperors, it's more complicated because upon accession as emperor, pretty much no one was allowed to refer to them by their birth names ever again (unless he let them which may have been the case with close kin). Nonetheless, this also didn't mean that their birth names were no longer their names. It is for this reason that in the "Yongle Emperor" article, I reordered "The Yongle Emperor, born Zhu Di" to "Zhu Di, the Yongle Emperor" so as to make clear that that birth name didn't become invalid upon Zhu Di's accession to the throne.

Compounding this complication is that I am not sure he would even have been referred to as "the Yongle Emperor" in his lifetime. For example, Xuanzong is Emperor Xuanzong's temple name, the name that his descendants used to venerate him after he died. During his reign, he would simply have been known as "Emperor" or "your majesty", and temple names, posthumous names, and era names are used somewhat as disambiguation for emperors. Read the "Name" section in Wikipedia's article on Naruhito, the current Japanese emperor. The Emperor of Japan will be known as "Emperor Reiwa" after he died, but not while he is reigning, nor is it considered appropriate for Japanese people to continue to refer to him by his given name Naruhito now that he has acceded to the throne. Chinese and Japanese emperors therefore sit at a limbo area in regards to this question about identity because as emperors, their given name become taboo to the public, but unlike Sith like Darth Vader (before his redemption), their birth names are not regarded as having "died". Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 02:49, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

EDIT: I just noticed that our article at Emperor Xuanzong of Tang includes the title 'emperor' rather than simply being 'Xuanzong of Tang'. Aiya. This is confusing indeed. We might need to open a thread re-examining our naming policy. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 02:51, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

I have no comments except that I love the fact that your example is of STAR WARS, to me, a person you know has never watched the movies or interacted with any other media and will never do so. - Soranin (talk) 12:46, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

I just want to say that it may have been wrong of me to use the term dead name outside of the context of transgender issues due to my ignorance, and if that is the case, I apologize for that. Apart from this, I am relieved that I could easily move the page without enduring the long process of an amendment to the MoS after all because it turned out that her real name is mentioned in the first special at the end of volume 1. (I would still recommend revisiting our naming policy in the forum though). Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 06:58, 13 April 2021 (UTC)