User talk:Paucabot

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[edit] Antoni/Antonio Maura Montaner

Hi, Could you please provide sources that justify your renaming of the "Antonio Maura y Montaner" article to "Antoni Maura Montaner" [1]? I've checked several English-language sources, and the former name seems to be the preferred one (e.g. see [2].) Regards, Jmgonzalez 10:03, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

Hi again. According to this, the "most commonly used name in English" is always preferred. Being Mr. Maura a politician from the beginning of the 20th Century, he's unlikely to be popular in today's media. So I checked reference works and google's English-language media archive. In the first case, both Britannica and Columbia use "Antonio Maura y Montaner". As anecdotal evidence, I also did some browsing in my library. Payne uses "Antonio Maura" ("The Franco Regime, 1936-1975", The University of Wisconsin Press, 1987, ISBN 0299110702). For the English-language media, a quick search on google's news archive produces only "Antonio Maura."

Note that your arguments can also be used to support the use of "Antonio Maura:"

  • on the origin: Spanish is also spoken in Majorca. Mr. Maura's family may have Spanish speakers, or just preferred the Spanish-language form.
  • on the foundation, there's also a Fundación Antonio Maura, but this one was created by his family, which sort of supports the use of the Spanish name.

Jmgonzalez 19:02, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, there's not too much I can say. I find your arguments varying between the specious (whether Mr. Maura's mother language was Catalan, which you haven't provide evidence for, doesn't mean he was Christened using the Catalan form, or that he preferred it to the Spanish form) and the ludicrously irrelevant: Spain may or not respect language minorities more than other countries (I'd argue she does, at least more than the average Western European country). But, this is by no means a valid argument in this discussion. Finally, you should elaborate what you mean by "spanish (sic) [not being] the own language of the island."

Anyway, I'm having doubts we're going to reach any agreement here, so let's not waste more of my time or your time. I sent a request at Wikipedia:Requested moves, and copied my arguments to Talk:Antoni Maura Montaner. You may want to provide your POV in the latter.

Jmgonzalez 19:56, 3 September 2007 (UTC)