A number of biographies of historical scientists have been protected from renaming (mainly of those scientists whose names where originally written in a non-Latin scripts). The reason for this is that these biographies are renamed frequently by relatively inexperienced editors without regard to academic literature or prior discussion. Without exception these renaming result in a title which is significantly less preferable, inconsistent with other biographical articles, or plain wrong.
The names used are (the shortened from of[1]) the full name given in the Dictionary of Scientific Biography, unless there are very compelling reasons to use an alternative name.[2] These names are consistent with or identical to the names used in contemporary English-language academic literature on the history of science.
Full, common and short name
edit| Lenght | Example 1 | Example 2 | Usage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full name | Barack Hussein Obama II | Abū ʿAbdallāh Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī |
|
| Common name | Barack Obama | Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī |
|
| Short name | Obama | Al-Khwārizmī |
|
Note that in most biographical dictionaries an entry would be put under "Khwārizmī, Abū ʿAbdallāh Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-". The full name is given, the common name is marked in boldface, and the short name is given at the beginning (minus the grammatical article).
Notes
edit- ^ To comply with Wikipedia's policy of using the common instead of the full name for article titles.
- ^ In the rare case where there is an error or inconsistency with contemporary literature in the Dictionary of Scientific Biography. This is generally worth an explanation in a footnote to the article.
- ^ Currently certain diacritics, such as underdots, should not be used in article titles, due to technical restrictions of older webbrowsers and operating systems.