Talk:Elizabeth "Harriot" Wilson

Harriot

When I began this article lo those many years ago, I swear the title had "Harriot" in parentheses. To give the name without them suggests that Harriot was the girl's middle name, but this was not the case. The individual of the historical record was simply Elizabeth Wilson. "Harriot" (always spelled that way, not Harriet) might be described as a literary alias used by publishers as the factual Elizabeth's story became increasingly fictionalized. I don't know how to change the actual title, other than moving the entire text to a new article with the correct title, and placing a "redirect" here. If anyone has a better solution I'd greatly appreciate it. PurpleChez (talk) 19:13, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Restoration

I moved the text of this article from "Elizabeth Harriot Wilson" back to this slot, with the parentheses in the title. I sincerely apologize if there is a Wikipedia format issue of which I'm not aware, and if there is I will be happy to learn more about it. Otherwise, the comment that the parentheses don't belong is incorrect. Without the parentheses, "Harriot" looks like a middle name, which it is not. It is more of a literary alias, used by publishers as the true story of Elizabeth became increasingly fictionalized into something else. Again...if there is a formatting issue of which I'm unaware I apologize and look forward to learning about it. Thank you. PurpleChez (talk) 19:27, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Elizabeth Harriot Wilson

May I ask why you moved Elizabeth Harriot Wilson back to the version with parentheses? As a person who needs a better social life, and who spams the Random Button WAY more than can be healthy, I must say I've never seen any page that has the middle name in parenthesis. Unless there's a section in article names that I've missed, shouldn't it be without parenthesis? -WarthogDemon 01:28, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

As I stated on the "discussion" page, 'Harriot' is NOT a middle name. It might best be described as a literary alias. The historical figure was known as simply Elizabeth Wilson, with no middle name as far as I know. (Apparently a common thing at the time...look at all the presidents who didn't have middle names....) Anyhoo...it appears that as her story became increasingly fictionalized she came to be called "Harriot Wilson", and her brother William became "Amos Wilson". Neither Harriot nor Amos are middle names. The need to be set off with parentheses or maybe quotation marks (a la Larry "Bud" Melman) so that they don't look like middle names.

We could check with an admin to be sure, but I'm 99% positive if that's the case, then the title should become something like: Elizabeth Wilson (folklore) and then at the beginning of the article it would read: Elizabeth "Harriot" Wilson". -WarthogDemon 05:44, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

That'd be cool. PurpleChez (talk) 18:08, 13 June 2010 (UTC)