Wiktionary talk:Votes/pl-2008-06/Plurals from proper nouns

Unusual circumstances for including common noun senses of proper nouns

My initial thoughts are that I agree with most of these. Regarding the last point "we shall not otherwise include common noun senses of proper nouns, except in unusual circumstances where such inclusion is specially considered suitable." What sort of circumstances are you envisaging?

However we decide to show it, the plural note on the proper noun and the plural would benefit from a link to an appendix detailing how English proper nouns are used. Thryduulf 15:54, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Well, for example, people at the "Jesuses" RFD discussion brought up some specific, unusual meanings of common-noun "Jesus", which may be worth including; names of many authors and other artists can be used as common nouns to refer to their opera (e.g. "an Agatha Christie", "a Rembrandt", etc.), and some of these may be worth including; a number of people's names have been genericized (as in,they've lost their trademark :-P) to refer to people considered similar in some way (Mozart, Hitler, Gandhi, and Einstein come to mind), and some of these may be worth including. So, I wanted to leave open the possibility of discussing special cases (or special classes) separately, while ruling out run-of-the-mill common-noun senses like "person whose first name is Jesus" or "person whose last name is Gandhi", that all names have and all English speakers understand.

And yes, EP's appendix will be good, when he finishes it. It'll revolutionize how we handle English proper nouns. :-) —Ruakh_TALK 00:25, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

I also seem to agree with the proposal. However, I think that all proper nouns, including all person names, may be used as if they were common nouns (though it's much more likely for famous people or places, of course). This does not make them common nouns. Therefore, it is important to define in which cases an entry is deserved. In my opinion, it's when they can be considered as words (which is not the case for Agatha Christie: this is a name, but I think nobody would consider it as a word) and we can find quotations for the word. It's easier in French, because names that become common nouns are not capitalized (e.g. un hercule). Lmaltier 16:00, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Re: "it is important to define in which cases an entry is deserved": Yes, agreed. Just, not as part of this vote. :-) —Ruakh_TALK 16:37, 7 June 2008 (UTC)