Talk:Regni

Regini

Resolved

Hovite, I've rewritten this article considerably. Starting the article with a refutation of a theory that isn't widely known doesn't make for readability, so I've set out the "Regnenses" theory (as I understand it) before coming to the refutation based on Jackson and Rivet & Smith. I hope I haven't damaged the sense or misinterpreted any of your edits. Could you check the spelling of the quotes? I assume "emadation" in the Jackson quote should be "emendation", and although I haven't read the particular article, I suspect "Regini" should be "Regni". I've never seen "Regini" used before, but "Regni" is all over the literature. I've included both at the beginning of the article to be on the safe side. I've also amended the Cogidubnus article with the new reconstruction of the Chichester inscription. --Nicknack009 23:11, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

There are now multiple sources for Regini.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:37, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

Verify source

Moot

Five years later, the quote from Jackson still needs verification. "Emadation" is surely a misspelling. --Nicknack009 (talk) 09:52, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

This text is no longer in the article, so this is moot.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:38, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

Ravennas

Moot

In Jackson's text, "the reading of the genitive plural tribe name in Ravennas.." should "Ravennas" be given a piped link to the Antonine Itinerary? --Wetman (talk) 23:19, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

This text is no longer in the article, so this is moot.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:37, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

Took out words from lead

I took out the words " a British Celtic kingdom and later" from the first sentence because the main text doesn't say this: it says, roughly, that the civitas was set up after the Roman conquest out of territory formerly ruled by the Atrebates. Andrew Dalby 19:47, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

Requested move 4 September 2021

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: moved (non-admin closure) Havelock Jones (talk) 15:43, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

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Regnenses → Regni – When the leading lights of Romano-British history consider *Regneses to be an anachronistic term and non-historical supposition, WP should not be using it as the article title or giving it other WP:UNDUE weight, per WP:FRINGE. Regni is also the most WP:COMMONNAME anyway.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:09, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

• Neutral - either name is appropriate. But of course, it's not up to me to choose. GoodDay (talk) 02:17, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

Side note: Why was the order of the names in the intro changed, right before the opening of this RM? GoodDay (talk) 02:33, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

To better reflect the preferences of the cited sources.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:25, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

The timing of it, makes it appear as an attempt to influence the outcome of the RM. GoodDay (talk) 15:14, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

• Leaning agree, as I note the DGRG uses "Regni" and does not mention any other forms of the name in its brief, one-paragraph article (this does not prove that it is correct, but it does show that classical scholarship has used "Regni" in the past as well as today). But I'm not happy about the fact that we have sources arguing with "Regnenses", which seems like a logical derivation of a nominative from longer, inflected forms that cannot easily be obtained from "Regni", but we do not have the sources that use "Regnenses" clearly identified. If some scholars believe that this is the correct form, or have at least suggested it, then we need to point to them rather than taking sides by presenting only arguments refuting them; otherwise we're violating NPOV. That doesn't mean we can't pick any of them for the article title, present them in a particular order in the lead, or explain the arguments. But we can't wallpaper over the fact that some scholarship uses another form that could logically be inferred from the evidence—irrespective of which opinion we as Wikipedians find persuasive. P Aculeius (talk) 08:42, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

Keep in mind we're not in a position to engage in guesswork about what sources may exist and what they might say; we work with the sources we have, even if we also seek more of them over time and revise accordingly. Given that experts like Jackson and Cunliffe have been objecting to Regnenses since the early 1970s, that's half a century now for a strong case to be made for that term, and we don't have such a case being made in the evidence before us. More importantly, a Google Scholar search shows that Regni is overwhelmingly common compared to Regnenses; the latter rarely appears except as an afterthought [1]. (That said, there are some false-positive hits, as regni could also mean 'realms', in unrelated phrases like regni Franconum, 'Frankish realms'.) I'm reminded of early-20th-century attempts to define various cat breeds as subspecies, with names like Felis catus siamensis. It is sufficient that modern sources which mention these trinomens at all reject them; we do not need to dig into the material of their early proponents for what their rationales were.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:31, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

Nobody's being asked to "guess what sources may exist", but Wikipedia guidelines clearly state that we don't remove material on the grounds that it's unsourced without due diligence to identify sources; here we're given an argument that what's written is wrong and clear evidence that it's well-known in the scholarly community, but no sources that use or advocate it. NPOV means not writing one-sided arguments about disputed issues; due diligence means an effort to identify some sort of sources or explanation for the disputed fact, since we know that it's disputed in scholarly writing and that some sources exist to support it. That hasn't been done in this case; we're just given the sources that deny something and their arguments. As a result, the discussion and the related proposal to move the article on the basis of that discussion fail NPOV. Nobody's saying that you have to agree with the scholars who concluded otherwise; but you can't present the argument in such a way that the article represents the opinions of Wikipedia editors on which scholars are right, without even bothering to include a clear explanation of what it is that the sources they're relying upon are railing against. P Aculeius (talk) 15:53, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

I don't think that concern has anything to do with this RM. No one has requested that the term Regeneses be removed from the article, either. Rather, this RM is, like most of them, requesting a move to the most common name for the subject. That said, I don't think there's anything "unclear" about the sources' objections to the term in the first place. I gather that you want something like a quotation from a proponent of the term, and we could have one, but it is not necessary. The Google Scholar results clearly show a professional consensus against the term, in favor of Regni, and that is sufficient, just as a scientific consensus that the Siamese cat is simply a color pattern of F. catus and not a subspecies is sufficient, without questionably-encyclopedically rehashing counter-arguments. If there was a clearly significant ongoing/recent debate about it in journals, it would be another matter, but 50-odd years is more than long enough for one to have arisen. You seem to be assuming no one has looked, but the Scholar results are where to look, and it's not there.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:34, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

Not what I'm saying. The article doesn't identify any sources or explain the term in any sense; it only argues—at significant length, given the size of the article—that it's wrong, and that's problematic. It's not the arguments that have been presented that are unclear; it's why they have to be made in the first place. Lacking any kind of explanation whatever for the thing that they're arguing against makes the article look biased in favour of one side of a debate, in a way that not addressing it at all did not. The solution is not to eliminate the argument or present two sides as of equal weight (nobody is asking you to present the—or a—counter-argument); it is simply to fill in the context so that the discussion itself makes sense, and does not depend entirely upon sources advocating a particular opinion. It really is not relevant whether "Google Scholar" is the gold standard. Any reliable sources that explain—or lacking a clear explanation or inference, provide—the disputed form of the name would help meet that requirement, whether or not they pop up when consulting "Google Scholar". Due diligence means actively seeking sources, not writing off the task because one particular tool fails to yield the desired results. P Aculeius (talk) 09:31, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

• Comment: I've tried to simplify and declutter the discussion on the names, placing the extended commentary into the reference. I do wish that what we present as one sentence with a clear beginning and end didn't contain four ellipses and span at least four different sentences in the original source—that simply screams "oversimplification" or "manipulated content", even if that is in fact what the source is saying. Perhaps it would be better paraphrased? Feel free to revise the in-line citation format I used in the process; I know it was a bit clunky, but it seemed like the best method at the time. I also managed to identify a modern source that uses "Regnenses", and cited to it. It's not perfect, but at least it demonstrates that the form is in use. Otherwise, I think it would be fair to move the article to the proposed title of "Regni", as there seems to be no opposition. I'd try it myself, but the instructions for closing the discussion appear to forbid me from doing so—and since I'm not an admin, there's a good chance the move would be blocked by a redirect. P Aculeius (talk) 15:42, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

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.