Talk:Mickey Mantle

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Mickey Mantle

Proper noun. Not dictionary material. Delete, speedily.​—msh210℠ (talk) 18:49, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

But not the common-noun sense, because it is an attested (IMHO) common noun, albeit a capitalized eponymous one. DCDuring TALK 20:34, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

I would delete: any proper noun may be used this way (antonomasia/archetypal name). It's very easy to find numerous examples of this figure of speech (e.g. Is Jalena Jankovic The Cristiano Ronaldo Of Tennis?). Of course, it's much less common for most people, but it may still happen, for anybody's name. This figure of speech does not make the name a common noun (in French, it's easy: when the name becomes a common noun, it loses its capital, e.g. hercule). Lmaltier 22:33, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps they can potentially, but relatively few have a distinct attestable sense. There are probably only some paltry number of thousands in English. It seems that we have reached a pass in which it is easier to have an entry for a fictional character only mentioned in "independent" fan magazines with no meaning beyond that of a proper noun than for a real-world figure with attestable meaning beyond mere reference to the bearer of the name. This seems quite perverse.

I further note that the "the [proper noun] of" has been invoked in support of various proper noun entries. No one besides me seemed to object to it in those cases. Why is that? Is sauce for the goose not sauce for the gander? DCDuring TALK 00:08, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Delete per Lmaltier. An attestable plural doesn't really mean that much. All most every proper noun can have a plural. Even when it's ridiculous to do so, people still use the plural. Wikipedia seems happy to delete dictionary-only stuff, but we seem very unhappy to delete encyclopedia-only stuff. Mglovesfun (talk) 01:56, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Note the copy of the OED I use has an entry for Newton, Isaac. Of course doesn't have a definition, and people can't be 'defined'. Mglovesfun (talk) 01:59, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

I clarify: I would not delete it because it's a proper noun, I would delete it because it's not considered as a word, but as a name composed of rwo different words. Lmaltier 06:32, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Keep until we get more clarity on the inclusion criteria for names of people; right now, I am rather unsure. The pattern "X is the Y of Z" in which X is one person and Y is another person can be attested in Google books for "Charles Darwin", "Charles Dickens", "George Bush", "Robin Hood" and many other two-word names of people on the position of Y. DCDuring is right that this attestation pattern was used as a justification for inclusion, per one reading of the now defunct attributive-use rule. The real question for me is how many proper names can be attested in this way. If the number of so attestable proper names is not too huge, I would support using this attestation pattern as a justification for inclusion. I am not sure what I mean by "not too huge"; there are going to be hundreds of thousands of English geographic names anyway, if not millions. I very much doubt that each attestable two-word name of a person can be attested in this pattern of use. --Dan Polansky 08:43, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Note that this specific pattern, but without the pattern showing usage with a common meaning, was recently used for a few entries under WT:FICTION. Further, the pattern possibly can be safely generalized to allow any article-determiner in place of "the". Other patterns may also be likely ways of finding usage with a meaning beyond simple reference. DCDuring TALK 12:02, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Dan Polansky, I don't like the idea that we should keep anything that CFI doesn't specifically forbid. Reminds me, by way of an analogy, of reading my own Scrabble rule book from about 2005, code of conduct: "it would be impossible to list all behaviours that are not acceptable during a Scrabble tournament". For example, the manual doesn't specifically outlaw punching your opponent in the face, or urinating on the floor. Doesn't mean that those actions are acceptable by default. Mglovesfun (talk) 13:23, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

I am not saying that we should keep every proper name that CFI does not forbid. I voted keep only because there is a reason to keep this entry: the pattern "X is the Y of Z". I am hesitant about the pattern and the reason, but not enough to confidently vote "delete" or "abstain". The reason was invented neither by me nor by DCDuring; the reason was used before as part of the attributive-use rule. If and after this pattern gets rejected as a justification for keeping, I am more inclined to vote delete. --Dan Polansky 13:39, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

To Dan Polansky: I tried to google "the Dan Polansky" and I found a message from Facebook : Not the Dan Polansky you were looking for?. This does not make it a common noun, even if used as a common noun in this case. Lmaltier 17:35, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

That isn't the pattern. "I [literally] might be called the Dan Polansky of deletionism." would be an example that fits the pattern. I characterize the pattern by the search term "the [proper name] of", but as I apply it the object of "of" needs to be in a relationship to the entity for which the whole expression is part of the predicate that remains the same across the quotations. Dan's version is more particular, but essentially the same, AFAICT. DCDuring TALK 17:49, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

What I mean is that seeing a proper noun used as a common nouns does not automatically make it a common noun (or all proper nous might have to be considered as common nouns). Lmaltier 18:30, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

What tests would semantic or syntactic tests would you propose? Or is the exclusion to be on other grounds? Are you excluding the possibility of conversion of proper nouns to common nouns? Is that exclusion limited only to multi-word terms? If so, why are they different? DCDuring TALK 18:53, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

The criterion is is it a word of the language? If somebody uses the DCDuring of, does this use make DCDuring a word of the English language? Some proper nouns can become common nouns but it's not very common (an example in French is hercule, derived from Hercule, and I think that Zidane won't become a common noun (it won't be spelled zidane). I must admit that the limit is not always clear in English (while it's much easier in French, because of the uncapitalization), but I feel that full names never become common nouns, never become words of the language, their use as common nouns always being analysable as a figure of speech. Lmaltier 19:29, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

The question "Is it a word" is certainly partly answered by whether it is attestable. Capitalizaton is an indicator, not a criterion. I suspect that your particular intuitions about a proper name becoming a common noun is satisfied most easily when the proper name is:

1. transferred from a person to an article of clothing Daisy Dukes Mae West, a poker hand Dolly Parton, a beverage Madame Bishop, an altered body part Prince Albert, a plant Lady Campbell, or a food Granny Smith
2. used in rhyming slang
3. a placeholder name John Doe, Joe Bloggs, Mrs Watanabe.

If so, we should promptly add RfD tags to Mother Teresa and Tom Jones.

The sole quotation of Mickey Mantle so far that would satisfy this is the one concerning the hen. DCDuring TALK 20:02, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I was wrong, a full name can become a common noun (when it's not applied to somebody, metaphorically), I'm convinced by your examples. But I still think that it's not the case for Mickey Mantle. Lmaltier 20:08, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

That's an empirical question. I believe that applying the term to hens, soups, and musical comedies should suffice to satisfy even your stringent definition. Too bad we couldn't have applied such stringency to, say, placenames and other encyclopedic content connected with proper names. DCDuring TALK 20:28, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

We should address all words (including placenames), but only words, and not encyclopedically. Lmaltier 11:12, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

• Delete. Ƿidsiþ 20:23, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

  Why? DCDuring TALK 20:29, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

deleted per Wiktionary:Votes/pl-2010-12/Names of individuals. -- Prince Kassad 10:22, 18 March 2011 (UTC)