Talk:Museum of the Mausoleum of the Nanyue King

"Museum of the Nanyue King Mausoleum" vs "Western Han Nanyue King Museum"

"Museum of the Nanyue King Mausoleum" is the name given on the museum's web site here. It gets 143,000 hits compared to 4,280 for "Western Han Nanyue King Museum". How the Chinese name translates into English is an interesting bit of trivia, but it has nothing to do with the English-language name. Kauffner (talk) 00:18, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

First check your so called 143,000 hits and see whats in the list of result you got. Second, try to click on any link in that english page. It's more like a test page than anything. --LLTimes (talk) 01:02, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Article history and title

Just to make sure that the edit history is complete: the current article was created in December 2009 by a cut-and-paste which lost all edit history in the process. Prior edit history can be found at Museum of the Tomb of the King of Southern Yue in Western Han Dynasty (edits from July 2007 to June 2009) and at Museum of the Western Han Dynasty Mausoleum of the Nanyue King (edits from February 2008 to September 2009). [make sure to avoid the redirects to view these edit histories]

The first of these 2 articles was created by myself, admittedly with a rather bulky title, which was, as far as I can remember, the one mostly found on the internet at that time. Not sure that there was an English version of the Museum website back then. Note that the "competing" article had an almost equally bulky name.

What should be the the title of the article now? The obvious answer for me is to take the name given by the English version of the website of the Museum itself, which is "Museum of the Nanyue King Mausoleum". The name "Western Han Nanyue King Museum" is a literal character by character translation of the Chinese name. I believe that we all know here that word order is not the same in English and in Chinese. Compare with the way addresses are written in Chinese: starting with the country, then province, and ending with the apartment number. Same word order difference between the 2 languages here. olivier (talk) 08:01, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Or are you actually fighting to keep the "Han" part in the title? olivier (talk) 08:04, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm sorry but prior histories of edits or whoever the creator is, are no concerns to me nor will it affect my decision. The so called "English website" is a mere dysfunctional page and I believe its not as reliable. The official name of the museum is "西汉南越王博物馆" and the Chinese and even the Japanese ver. of the website that are more updated, functional, and governed have a English name and it's "Museum of the Western Han Dynasty Masusoleum of the Nanyue King". Actually that should be included in the introduction of this article and maybe the title of this article. Also whether or not if I'm fighting to keep the "Han" is very obvious as I support the English title from the more well established CH and JP webpage, however It's Western Han I'm going for. --LLTimes (talk) 00:38, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Edit history: I mentioned the edit history because the merger which was performed in December 2009 was not made properly. As a consequence, links to prior edit history were lost. I added a note about this on this talk page, so that people interested in the article's edit history know that it was started before December 2009, and have a chance to find this history. Period.

Name of the article: The naming is a separate issue, and I should have made my 2 points in 2 different sections, as I am doing now, for the sake of clarity. If I understand your point, you are suggesting that the title should or could be "Museum of the Western Han Dynasty Masusoleum of the Nanyue King", and it's perfectly fine with me. In any case, none of the titles that we have mentioned seem perfect, either too literal, too long, or anything. So which of the ones mentioned in this discussion is finally used is probably not a big deal. It would be good, though, to mention alternate names in the intro paragraph, as it is the case now. More importantly, the article itself is in serious need of rework. For instance, it mentions a "well-preserved tomb", which was nowhere to be seen last time I visited the museum. Is it what the "hidden" is referring to? olivier (talk) 08:39, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Gentlemen, I have visited the museum in person this past January and now wish to present a few exhibits in the hopes that it might aid the discussion:

File:NanyueKingMusuemBrochures.JPG

From left to right: English brochure dated 2007 at the earliest; Educational activity booklet of unknown date; Ticket stub dated 2010 at the earliest

Close-up shot of the relevant part of the ticket.

So officially, the museum has the names "Museum of the Mausoleum of the Nanyue King" and "Museum of the Western Han Dynasty Mausoleum of the Nanyue King", with the more unwieldy name arguably being more recent (and consistent with the logos on the more recently updated Chinese and Japanese websites of the museum). I suspect that there wasn't an official English name when the museum first opened, leading to the inconsistencies in English names that we see today. Since that issued was apparently settled officially, I suggest we use "Museum of the Western Han Dynasty Mausoleum of the Nanyue King" as the name of this article. (The images I posted are probably gonna get deleted soon, so please discuss promptly.) @olivier: The well-preserved tomb is indeed present, and when I went the visitors can even walk into the tomb. _dk (talk) 09:39, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for the update about the tomb being there and open to the public. olivier (talk) 21:59, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Requested move

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: Page moved by other user. fuzzy510 (talk) 08:51, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

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Western Han Nanyue King Museum → Museum of the Mausoleum of the Nanyue King — Museum of the Nanyue King Mausoleum Relisted. fuzzy510 (talk) 07:32, 3 March 2011 (UTC) The current title is a word-for-word translation from Chinese that does not appear in any published English-language source. The suggested title is from the museum's Web site here. Every source seems to use a slightly different version of the name, but none of the quality English-language sources use the phrase "Western Han." They also generally include the word "mausoleum" or "tomb", which the current title does not. So these can be considered variations on the suggested name rather than on the current name. Lonely Planet and Fielding's use "Mausoleum of the Nanyue King". Baedeker calls it, Museum of the Mausoleum for the king of Nanyue." --Kauffner (talk) 19:37, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

• Move to "Museum of the Western Han Dynasty Mausoleum of the Nanyue King" per my findings above. _dk(talk) 09:41, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

By my count, the museum uses three English-language names, and I see no basis to think that any one of them is more official than the other two. So I would go with the name as it is given in the guidebooks: Mausoleum of the Nanyue King. It's the second half of the ultra-long form name given above. If Wiki can shorten "United States of America" to United States, we can certainly shorten this monstrosity. "Mausoleum of the Nanyue King" -"Museum of the Western Han Dynasty" gets 6 hits on Google Books, compared to 2 hits for "Museum of the Western Han Dynasty Mausoleum of the Nanyue King". I actually don't buy the theory that the museum's name has changed recently as both of these hits are quite old. Kauffner (talk) 11:23, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

If a shorter version is desired, then I prefer Museum of the Mausoleum of the Nanyue King, since the structure's primary function now is of a museum (while the books were focusing on its archaeological role as a mausoleum). I do note though, the museum itself uses the long name in more instances than the alternatives, if a WP:COMMONNAME solution is sought. _dk (talk) 15:06, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

"Common name" is how the name appears in published sources, not necessarily how the museum gives the name. But Museum of the Mausoleum of the Nanyue King is a fine name. It gets 11 hits on Google scholar and it's just a slight variation on the name Baedeker uses. Kauffner (talk) 17:29, 3 March 2011 (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.