Theophilus77

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Copy-paste move

Unfortunately, there are problems with your copying and pasting Gerd Theissen to Gerd Theißen. First, and most important, copying the contents of an a article and pasting them to another article is not an acceptable way of moving an article, as it loses the edit history, which must be kept for copyright reasons. Secondly, Wikipedia's naming convention, as specified in the Manual of Style, is based on a number of principles, the primary one being that we normally use the form of a name most commonly recognised in English, not on some concept of the "official" or "correct" name. Thirdly, while writing a double s as "ß" rather than as "ss" is common practice in modern German, it is not obligatory, and using two separate s letters is an acceptable alternative, even in German. The new article you created has been deleted, as it was an improper copy-paste move. However, before considering moving it, you should really consider which form of the name qualifies according to Wikipedia's Manual of Style. My searches suggest that in English, the spelling with "ss" is by far the more common, whatever may be the case in German. JamesBWatson (talk) 19:49, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

Hello JamesBWatson, I haven't done a lot of edits here in the English Wikipedia, so I am sorry, if I misunderstood some principles. I usually translate English articles into German and have to do only some minor changes.

I understand your first point: the loss of the edit history.

The 2nd point: The MoS states, that proper names should use the original spelling. Gerd Theißen's name is de:Theißen and not at all Theissen. Theissen is the family name of e.g. Bennett Theissen (* 1953), an American writer, Mario Theissen (* 1952), a German manager aso., but Theißen is another family name, e.g. of Günter Theißen (* 1962), German Genetics' reseacher or of Sven Theißen (* 1988), a German football player.

Third point: Writing a double s as "ß" rather than as "ss" is not common practice in modern German, it is indicating a so-called "sharp S". The pronounciation is different. It's not possible in German language to simply replace a ß with ss or vice-versa. There are some rules about that.

Gerd Theißen is quite often (wrongly) named Gerd Theissen in English articles, probably because of the same error, which you seem to follow. Should Wikipedia articles really support this mistake? It's some sort of showing respect to another language to write their names in a correct way. We also distinguish between Meier, Meyer, Maier, Mayer aso. Gerd Theißen never wrote his name wrongly as Theissen. --Theophilus77 (talk) 20:29, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

Check how Gerd Theissen spells his own name on the front covers of these books. You may notice that in all the English-language books he uses 'ss' but in the German-language book shown there, he uses the esszet. For the English Wikipedia, what we care about is how he is most commonly referred to in English-language publications. EdJohnston (talk) 03:48, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

Hello Ed, thanks for this information. I understand the point. I still think, it is strange, that Theißen let's his name be written as Theissen. I guess it's a form of accommodation. With regards, --Theophilus77 (talk) 08:35, 11 August 2012 (UTC)