Talk:Oath of Abjuration

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I have some difficulty with the title of this article: "Oath of abjuration". First of all, I always thought that the common English expression used to refer tot the "Plakkaat of Verlating(h)e" was "Act (not oath) of Abjuration". It may well be that some refer to it as "Oath", but this may be a misunderstanding.

In the first place, as I discovered yesterday to my astonishment when I finally closely read the Act to its end, it turns out there is no "oath of abjuration" mentioned in it. The magistrates are relieved from their old oath, and required to take a new one, but there is no explicit "oath of abjuration." As a matter of fact such an oath may actually be alien to the Dutch system of jurisprudence then in operation. It seems to be more in accordance with English jurisprudence.

As a matter of fact, there turns out to be an *English* Oath of Abjuration, that English MPs were required to swear on taking office, to renounce the Jacobite Pretender, as required in the Act of Succession of 1701 (See e.g.[1]). The other oaths they had to take were the oath of allegiance and the oath of supremacy. In other words, by using this title for the article, we may be blocking the way for a "proper" article on that "Oath of Abjuration".

Meanwhile, the lack of "abjuration" in the Dutch Plakkaat does not mean we can't use the term "Act of Abjuration", of course, as this appears to be the historically established English common expression. My suggestion would therefore be to change the title in this sense, but I am loath to do this, as I don't want to mess up wikipedia's internal linkages. Could someone in Authority please help?--Ereunetes (talk) 20:52, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

All four references use "Act of abjuration" (even the first one -- it gives the literal Dutch translation of that phrase as a subtitle). So the authorities are on your side, and so is the dictionary.

A rename makes sense to me. Wikipedia handles that by making the old name a referral, so cross-references from other articles still work although it is then considered good practice to clean those up to refer to the new name. Clicking on "what links here" produces those articles; there are about 40 of them which isn't a big deal.

If there's no objection I'll do the legwork in a couple of days. Paul Koning (talk) 21:30, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

In general, Wikipedia is descriptive, not prescriptive: we don't give articles the name that they should have, but the name that they usually are called by. So it is not very important if the document really contains an oath; it is important what name is generally used. Here are some google counts:

	"plakkaat"	"act of abjuration"	"oath of abjuration"
Google (English pages)	1090 hits	2880 hits	4370 hits
Google Scholar	161 hits	61 hits	26 hits
Google Scholar (since 2000)	24 hits	14 hits	4 hits

So "oath" is more common in English, but the academic world prefers "act". (Many of the "plakkaat" hits are Dutch articles.) In my opinion, this means that there is no real preference for the location of the article in Wikipedia. -- Eugène van der Pijll (talk) 23:25, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

I did the google search myself, but noted that many of the "oath" hits actually refer to the English Oath of Abjuration from the Act of Succession. So I still think "Act" would be better, if only to avoid a disambiguation problem if somebody decides to write an article about the "real" oath. Meanwhile, I don't really care one way or the other. If Paul wouldn't mind doing all the legwork I would be very grateful, however, because he probably has the technical knowledge I lack.--Ereunetes (talk) 19:56, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

The other consideration is that Wikipedia prefers to follow authoritative sources. That's clearly true for the content; I would apply it to naming as well. If we do the rename, then "Oath of abjuration" will still work (as a redirect). If it is determined that "oath..." should instead be an article about the English one, then that too work; the redirect changes to an article, with a note at the top saying "This article is about... for the Dutch Act of Abjuration, see..." Paul Koning (talk) 16:50, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

I would be all for the change then--Ereunetes (talk) 20:30, 25 March 2008 (UTC)