Talk:Jerome

Requested move 27 March 2020

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: No consensus to move per lack of consensus that this is his common name in reliable sources, lack of consensus on the applicability (or position) provided by MOS:HONORIFIC, lack of clarity on if he is the primary topic or if the proposed move even was calling that into question. I would strongly recommend to anyone who might re-propose this move to make explicit whether or not you are proposing to move Jerome (disambiguation) to Jerome as well, or simply leaving Jerome as a primary redirect. (non-admin closure) Red Slash 23:24, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

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Jerome → Saint Jerome – He is commonly known as "Saint Jerome" and isn't just "Jerome" a little vague. Iamreallygoodatcheckers (talk) 10:55, 27 March 2020 (UTC)

• Comment The guidelines for titling articles on saints are at MOS:SAINTS. Largoplazo (talk) 11:02, 27 March 2020 (UTC)

Indeed they are: "Saints go by their most common English name, minus the word "Saint", ..." Johnbod (talk) 05:30, 28 March 2020 (UTC)

You seem to be conveniently ignoring the rest of MOS:SAINTS which allows for natural disambiguation using the wordk "Saint" if there is no suitable alternative. -- Necrothesp (talk) 15:28, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

There's more "As the word "Saint" can lead to controversy (depending on who considers whom to be a saint) and possible non-neutrality, other forms of natural disambiguation are typically preferred, all other things being equal", which is a massive understatement. Johnbod (talk) 01:38, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

• Support - quite vague. Suggest fixing incoming links and then also move Jerome (disambiguation) into primary. -- Netoholic @ 11:44, 27 March 2020 (UTC)
• Comment Why not "Jerome of Stridon"? Veverve (talk) 11:55, 27 March 2020 (UTC)

Because that is the uncommonest possible option. Johnbod (talk) 13:43, 27 March 2020 (UTC)

• Support I don't think the saint is the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC for "Jerome". I think "Saint Jerome" is a sensible title for this article, and I think it's what he's best known by (WP:COMMONNAME).

That leaves the question of what to do with the title "Jerome". I wouldn't redirect it to wherever this article ends up because, as I said, I don't think this is the primary topic. I think the primary topic is the given name, but others may feel there is no primary topic and immediate disambiguation is best. So redirect either to Jerome (given name), and put a {{redirect}} hatnote there for the disambiguation page, Jerome (disambiguation); redirect this title to Jerome (disambiguation); or move Jerome (disambiguation) to this title. Largoplazo (talk) 13:03, 27 March 2020 (UTC)

• Keep He is primary, and the title clear enough as it is. Other uses are rather minor, & it's not that common a name. Johnbod (talk) 13:43, 27 March 2020 (UTC)
• Support, move Jerome (disambiguation) to primary.--Ortizesp (talk) 03:18, 28 March 2020 (UTC)

Lets get this clear - the saint is the primary topic; all the others (the great majority just first names) are chickenfeed. The question is what to call this article. If it is moved to "Saint Jerome", plain Jerome should still redirect here, as the primary topic for that term. The nomination does not say the saint is not primary, and those who believe this need to make the case, with reference to policy. Johnbod (talk) 04:04, 28 March 2020 (UTC)

Let's get this clear: Declaring "Let's get this clear" is not an effective way of gaining consensus. I, for one, disagree with you that the saint is the primary topic, and I am unmoved by your pronouncement. Is that clear? Largoplazo (talk) 05:18, 28 March 2020 (UTC)

The saint has been treated as primary since the article was started well over fifteen years ago. You saying "I don't think the saint is the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC for "Jerome"" isn't enough. Do you have any reasons you'd care to share? Johnbod (talk) 05:28, 28 March 2020 (UTC)

The amount of time it's been titled this way is irrelevant. It isn't as though some kind of affirming review occurring on a monthly or annual basis has consistently, over 15 years, explicitly found this to be the primary topic, with me showing up now and single-handedly challenging that accumulation of all those years of affirmed consensus. Now it's come under question, and we debate it now on the merits. If the state of something that's been a certain way isn't subject to debate just because it took that long for someone to raise it, then why are we having this Move discussion at all? Largoplazo (talk) 16:56, 28 March 2020 (UTC)

So no arguments or reasons then? Johnbod (talk) 17:38, 28 March 2020 (UTC)

I think the thrust of this reply to Ortizesp's opinion has gotten lost. Ortizesp said "move 'Jerome (disambiguation)' to primary", which was a little confusing because "primary" refers to the concept of determining whether one topic should occupy a particular title based on its importance relative to other candidates—not to the title itself. What Ortizesp clearly meant was, "the disambiguation page should be moved there," but he didn't state a reason—concluding that a particular topic was primary would be a reason, but that's not what he said, and it would have been wrong had he said it. A disambiguation page can never be a primary topic—its sole function is to help distinguish between similarly titled articles or names by which articles under other titles might be searched for. I think that this is what Johnbod was saying: that "Jerome (disambiguation)" can't be primary. But that doesn't mean that this article has to be primary either. I think it is, Johnbod thinks it is, Largoplazo disagrees, and that's fine—it's his opinion, and it's not so implausible that we can simply discount it. Now, the length of time that an article has been at a certain title is relevant to determining whether moving it to another title is necessary or desirable. But it's not dispositive. It's not a choice between "this is the whole argument" and "you can't even consider that". Let's take a deep breath and remember that this kind of debate isn't black and white! P Aculeius (talk) 20:37, 28 March 2020 (UTC)

It's not really fine - this kind of discussion should and usually does concern various of the alternative meanings, and their pageviews, treatment in WP:RS and so on, compared to the meaning under discussion. But Largoplazo isn't going to explain his "opinion" in any way, so it will be up to the closer to decide how much weight to give to it. But of course your other points are correct. Johnbod (talk) 22:26, 28 March 2020 (UTC)

• Oppose since plain "Jerome" is more common in scholarly works in my experience. Also, I don't think there is any other Jerome who comes even close in notability and none at all who is commonly known merely as Jerome. Zero^talk 05:36, 28 March 2020 (UTC)
• Keep at Jerome per Johnbod and Zero. He's quite commonly referred to simply as "Jerome", and is probably the only person who can be so called without further context. On the one hand, renaming the article as proposed might be seen as promoting his theological profile; on the other hand it could be viewed as demoting him from primary status by those who dislike him. These two contradictory results are both less neutral than the present title, and I have to disagree with "Jerome" being particularly vague, since it's unlikely that mentions of "Jerome", without clear context, would refer to anyone else. P Aculeius (talk) 16:23, 28 March 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose We should avoid using "Saint" and other POV honorifics in article titles. It is already embarassing that we have an article called Saint Peter. Dimadick (talk) 21:03, 28 March 2020 (UTC)

• See what WP:NCDAB says about the preferability of natural disambiguation. We avoid gratuitous inclusion of personal titles and honorifics in article titles, but when disambiguation is called for they serve the purpose. Largoplazo (talk) 22:06, 28 March 2020 (UTC)

• Oppose. This is the primary topic. It is the first result when I Google "Jerome" incognito and it is first on DuckDuckGo as well. As someone said above, "it's unlikely that mentions of 'Jerome', without clear context, would refer to anyone else". Srnec (talk) 16:33, 29 March 2020 (UTC)
• Comment Several have mentioned that "Jerome" refers to no one person more than Saint Jerome. Ahem. It's as though people were arguing that the primary topic for Flea is the musician Flea (musician) because he's better known than any one flea. Primary topic isn't a competition among people but among topics. As I said above, it seems to me that it's more commonly known as a given name (Jerome (given name) covers that topic) than it is specifically as the Christian saint. I may be wrong or in the minority about that, and that's fine, but in coming to their own conclusions people shouldn't be operating under an incorrect impression as to the nature of the question. Largoplazo (talk) 16:57, 29 March 2020 (UTC)

How often do you think people refer to the name rather than persons with the name? Srnec (talk) 18:13, 29 March 2020 (UTC)

I dunno, how often do people talk about the saint? I never heard of him till a couple of years ago when I was studying the Renaissance collection at the National Gallery of Art in Washington. I've been aware of the name all my life. I know that's my anecdotal experience, not the basis for evaluating the primary topic, but my point is we also can't go by what's obvious to you. By any chance, did most of the people who've contributed to this discussion so far learn about it because this article is on their watch list? If so, there could be a bias here in the direction of people who have a particular interest in the saint and to whom it doesn't occur that in the world population at large he 'might not be the first thing that comes to many people's mind upon encountering the unadorned name "Jerome". Nor might he most frequently be the referent when the unadorned name is written, even in WP:RS. Maybe yes, maybe no. Largoplazo (talk) 19:44, 29 March 2020 (UTC)

There are two main criteria for determining a primary topic. Other factors can certainly be considered, but most discussions based on the policy usually focus on these. One is long-term significance, under which the insect is by far more significant than the musician; aside from fleas having been known to mankind throughout history, they're the primary vector for the transmission of bubonic plague, which killed something like a third of Europe during the mid-14th century, and countless others elsewhere and at other times—surely much greater than the death toll from any musician who ever lived. And, although it isn't usually a winning argument, I generally feel that even a slightly notable topic should generally be primary over the things that are named after it—but that's just me.

The other criterion, and the one more easily measured, is a consideration of which topic readers are more likely to be searching for—something best demonstrated through page views. A primary topic should be, according to this criterion, much more likely to be searched for than any other individual topic, and more likely to be searched for under that title than all of the other candidates for the title combined. Neither of these criteria is dispositive; you can still have a primary topic that doesn't meet one of them, or which is arrived at by consensus. We might not be able to agree on long-term significance here; which came first is a chicken-and-egg question, although most people named Jerome through history will have been named either after the saint, or after somebody else who was.

But by topic of interest, there is a clear disparity. "Jerome (given name)" is the only other topic that's likely to be searched for using "Jerome" by itself; if you're looking for Jerome Robbins, you probably wouldn't expect it to be listed under "Jerome"—and even if you did, there's absolutely no probability of moving him or any of the other non-saintly Jeromes to this title. And "Jerome (given name)" accounted for an average of 46 page views over the last 90 days. "Jerome", the saint, accounted for an average of 866 views per day over the same period—almost nineteen times as many. But you might ask, "might a lot of those 866 daily page views be accounted for by people who were looking for 'Jerome (given name)' instead?" For the sake of argument, let's suppose that everyone who wanted to find out about the name first wound up on the page about the saint by accident. In this case, however, only about 5% of the views were from users seeking information about the name—the number cannot be significantly higher, since such users did not follow the link in the hatnote to the disambiguation page, and from there to the page about the name and view it, or they would have registered on that article's page views. And very few users can have been looking for the disambiguation page—despite the hatnote in this article, the disambiguation page received an average of just 16 daily page views over the last 90 days. So something like 93% of all the readers who searched for "Jerome" would seem to have arrived at the correct article, even if we guess that all of the readers who wanted the article about the name or the disambiguation page arrived here first by mistake. And that's very unlikely to be the case!

So under the two main criteria for determining a primary topic—long term significance, and intended search targets—we have a result that is either inconclusive or which favours keeping the article at its present title under the first criterion, and no contest at all under the second—this must be the article that most people are looking for when they search for "Jerome", because the other articles they might conceivably be looking for don't account for more than a small fraction of the page views, even though they can easily be reached by anyone who arrives at this article by accident. Now as I said, an argument can be made for deciding the primary topic based on other considerations—but if there are some other factors to consider in this case, I'd certainly like to know what they are! P Aculeius (talk) 22:28, 29 March 2020 (UTC)

• Oppose per above discussions. Seems to be primary, and other people named Jerome should be proud to carry on his name (if for nothing else, the pet lion). Randy Kryn (talk) 21:01, 29 March 2020 (UTC)
• Support. It is faintly ridiculous for saints with common names to just be under that name when there are so many other people with it. -- Necrothesp (talk) 14:31, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

Maybe so, but a look at the archives on Talk:Saint Peter shows there is colossal resistance to "Saint Foo" names, some "anti-honorific" or anti-religious, with a strong Protestant contingent scenting a Catholic plot. If this were to succeed, which fortunately it won't, there would be a challenge launched to return it within 6 months at most. Johnbod (talk) 14:51, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

Indeed, and again, more than faintly ridiculous. He's only notable because he's a saint in the Catholic church (and Orthodox, Anglican and other Protestant churches). I'm not religious in the slightest, but I am able to apply common sense. And yes, indeed, look at the title of Saint Peter! -- Necrothesp (talk) 09:26, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

"He's only notable because he's a saint"—that's precisely where you're wrong. There are thousands of early and medieval Christians venerated as saints through history, and you've only heard of a few dozen of them, at best. Jerome is notable not because he's a saint, but because he's the author of the Latin Vulgate, as well as numerous theological commentaries, hagiographies, polemics, epistles, and the lives of early figures in Christianity, modeled on Suetonius; and because the Chronicon of Eusebius, a history of the world from Abraham to the death of Constantine, survives largely through Jerome's Latin translation, which includes a table of Olympic victors covering nearly a thousand years. All of which would be notable even if Jerome were considered a heretic, or an apostate, instead of a saint. Or were you speaking of Saint Peter—one of the disciples of Jesus, the founder of the Catholic Church, and the first Pope? Pretty sure his notability doesn't rest on his having been canonized a saint, either. P Aculeius (talk) 12:09, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

Which is all tied up with them being saints of the Christian church, is it not? If it wasn't for Christianity, how would they even be notable? -- Necrothesp (talk) 12:57, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

Have to agree with P Aculeius here; that's a bit like saying "if it wasn't for the French Revolution, who would have heard of Robespierre?" Johnbod (talk) 14:23, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

Yes, but Robespierre doesn't need disambiguation! He had more than one name and is the clear primary topic for his surname. And if he did he'd be disambiguated depending on what he was well-known for, which is as a politician. I don't believe St Jerome is the primary topic for his name. Given that, the best means of (natural) disambiguation is by using the honorific that invariably goes with his name, just as in the case of Saint Peter. Does anyone actually refer to him just as Jerome? No, they call him Saint Jerome, whether they're convinced Christians or not. Which meets the criteria of WP:COMMONNAME. MOS:SAINTS specifically allows for natural disambiguation in this way. -- Necrothesp (talk) 15:21, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

Yes, as several above have attested, most RS actually discussing his work will just call him Jerome, especially if they are by Protestants, and by everyone after the first mention. Obviously you won't know this as you never read any of that stuff. Try this simple search. Johnbod (talk) 15:37, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

Sorry, but what a load of utter rubbish. He needs disambiguation and the best disambiguation for saints is natural disambiguation as provided for by MOS:SAINTS. And what is this about Protestants not using the honorific? Anglicans and Lutherans certainly do and most of them would regard themselves as Protestants. And even many "non-conformist" churches use "saint" in their dedications. I've seen many Methodist churches, for instance, dedicated to Saint Foo. And how do you know what I have and have not read? Making a few assumptions about someone you've never met there, I think. -- Necrothesp (talk) 16:46, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

I was merely going by your account of yourself higher up. Johnbod (talk) 21:17, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

• Oppose. "Saint" is an arbitary title given by certain religious groups to a particular individual - based on their belief that this person is holy enough to have gone straight to a place called heaven. Seeing as this is a secular encyclopaedia I think it's inappropriate to reinforce this unsubstantiated view. Stripping away this religious bias allows proper historical biography. By all means mention that some people call him a "saint" whatever that might be. But stick the facts. He was a bishop, theologian and influential in shaping the Bible. That's what we're most interested in. In fact if we do want a name change then I'd rather use the guy's real name: Eusebius Hieronymus Sophronius. Contaldo80 (talk) 01:12, 3 April 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose The current title is on a NPOV stance. Don't need some religious MOS:HONORIFIC. Besides, there's already hatnotes in the article for Jerome (disambiguation) and Saint Jerome (disambiguation). Jerm (talk) 23:49, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

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The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Was Hieronymus (whence Jerome) really part of his *birth name*?

The English name Jerome comes from French Jérôme, from Latin Hieronymus, in turn from Ancient Greek Ἱερώνυμος… which in turn means "holy name". That part is fairly straightforward. (See https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Jerome#Etymology)

The part that I'm doubtful of is whether Hieronymus was really part of his birth name, as the article seems to indicate. It seems to be the kind of cognomen or title that he would've received later in life, or even after death, given that it means "Holy Name". Are there any source that can shed light on this?

(It's also confusing that each part of his name ("Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus") is clearly of Greek origin, given that he's affiliated most clearly with Latin Christianity, and that he may not have learned Greek at a young age, but that's not entirely surprising given the time and location of his birth…) —Moxfyre (ǝɹʎℲxoɯ | contrib) 19:45, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

Why do you set Stridon to be near Emona (ljubljana)

Wikipedia article regarding Stridon clearly states that it is not known where Stridon was. https://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Stridon — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.114.38.198 (talk) 07:34, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

Owl attribution

Has anyone found a source for the attribution of the owl to St. Jerome? I’ve never come across any sources other than Wiki that suggest so. ThaesOfereode (talk) 01:10, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

Important information

Unfortunately the author of this material on Saint Jerome has ruined his extensive work by putting in his 'own opinions' and what he 'wants people to believe.' Some material provided differs from original source materials. The author has provided opinions instead of facts and they differ vastly. To suggest that Saint Jerome did not possibly realise the work that he was doing is ludicrous. Jerome was a priest, but he refused to administer the sacrements. Jerome was a teacher who taught well into old age. Jerome was a Master of Languages. There is other incorrect information in the material provided. The standard is not good enough for Wikipedia because it has things that are opinions, and things that are incorrect. 121.45.246.48 (talk) 20:48, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

What are you precisely talking about? Veverve (talk) 23:45, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

How so?

I am surprised, I incidentally searched the word 'faith' on this page, and there is not one use of it at present. How is it possible to confront a work on the topic of someone like Saint Jerome, without reference to the word 'faith'? I am just puzzed. 115.64.91.15 (talk) 09:52, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

Vergil Translation

The quoted translation from Vergil is extremely poor, constructing much that is not there in the simple original. Should I correct it? Jezza (talk) 07:20, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

No, because we generally defer to scholarly translations if we have them. If there's a different translation you prefer, we could discuss using it. Remsense ‥ 论 07:32, 30 September 2024 (UTC)