Requested move 26 November 2016

The following is a closed discussion of arequested move.Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider amove review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was:not moved.QEDK(T☕C)18:22, 3 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It was proposed in this section thatSouthern Min berenamed and moved toMinnan. The discussion has been closed, and the result will be found in the closer's comment. Links:current log •target log

Southern Min →Minnan –WP:COMMONNAME "Southern Min" may be common in academic literature but it's really notWP:RECOGNIZABLE to most lay people. Google web search results show 7,400,000 for "Min Nan", 776,000 hits for "Minnan", and just 10,300 for "Southern Min". In Google Books it is 13,800 for "Min Nan", 22,400 for "Minnan", and 7,750 for "Southern Min".WP:CONSISTENCY doesn't need to be achieved with the otherMin Chinese branches since they are relatively more obscure in English discourse anyways, and in those cases may actually be more commonly referred to by an English directional name.--Prisencolin (talk) 08:09, 26 November 2016 (UTC)Prisencolin (talk)08:09, 26 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose, per common usage in English-language sources.

  As noted at the previous RM, "Southern Min" is used in English-language texts by experts such as

  • Jerry Norman, who has written extensively on Min dialectology
  • Yan, Margaret Mian (2006).Introduction to Chinese Dialectology. LINCOM Europa.ISBN 978-3-89586-629-6.
  • Lien, Chinfa (2015). "Min Languages".The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Linguistics. Oxford University Press.ISBN 978-0-19-985633-6.
  • Yue, Anne O. (2003). "Chinese dialects: grammar". In Thurgood, Graham; LaPolla, Randy J. (eds.) (eds.).The Sino-Tibetan languages. Routledge. pp. 84–125.ISBN 978-0-7007-1129-1.{{cite book}}:|editor2-first= has generic name (help)
  • Baxter, William;Sagart, Laurent (2014).Old Chinese: A New Reconstruction. Oxford University Press.ISBN 978-0-19-994537-5.

  It's also more accessible to the English-language target readership of WP. The Mandarin name "Minnan" will be more familiar to Chinese speakers, but then they also know that "nan" means "South".

  This ngram shows "Minnan" occurring a little more than "Southern Min" (and the two-word form "Min Nan" much less), but that is because "Minnan" is also a common name for southern Fujian as a cultural and economic region.Kanguole10:48, 26 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

WP:USEENGLISH should only be done if the English name is clearly more prevalent than the non-English name or is useful in understanding what a term means. It could even be suggested that we should rename Beijing as "Northern capital" or this page as "Southern Fujian" or even "Southern building happiness". Because "Min" is a foreign term already, it's impossible to avoid in its entirety. Also, the fact that the name means that it originates from southern Fujian is now somewhat trivial since it has spread across Southeast Asia and thus has obscured the original meaning of the term. Also the fact that "Minnan" is theWP:COMMONNAME for the region suggests that this page should be name so too forWP:CONSISTENCY.--Prisencolin (talk)00:58, 27 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Unlike "Southern Min", none of the translations you list is used in the literature on those subjects.

As for usefulness, when one is reading about the Min dialects, the subgroup namesSouthern Min,Eastern Min,Northern Min andCentral Min certainly give a helpful indication of their relationship in their homeland – perhaps that's why authors use them.Kanguole01:28, 27 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

According tothis article:

Southern Min speakers refer to themselves as bân-lâm-lâng, which is usually written with sinographs meaning "Southern Min person" 閩南人, but should actually be written with sinographs meaning "Southern barbarian fellow" 蠻南儂. (Hong 1988: 343) The graph pronounced lâm in Taiwanese is the notorious mán ("barbarians [of the south]") as pronounced in MSM. Here is how Xu Shen explains the graph used to write lâm / mán: "Southern barbarians [who are a] snake race. [The character is formed] from [the] insect / serpent [radical and takes its pronunciation from] luàn 南蠻蛇種从虫looks the the 巒 character, minus the 'shan' at the bottom聲." 8 (Xu 100: 282b) The Mán inhabitants of Mǐn are thus doubly southern, doubly barbarian, and doubly serpentine. Since these explanations have been enshrined in the most authoritative, foundational dictionary of the sinographs, a dictionary which is still invoked with reverence today, there is no denying them."

In other words, Banlam (Minnan) doesn't even originate from "Southern Fujian" thus the fact that Minnan means Southern Fujian doesn't need to be emphasized in English. In this case I'm not sure how Eastern/Central Min originated from, maybe it was a back-formation or it could have originated from "Southern Min" (province) to begin with.--Prisencolin (talk)01:48, 2 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

No-one is emphasizing "Southern Fujian" in English. The cited authors are distinguishing subgroups of the Min dialect group. Chinese etymologies are not relevant for names in English.Kanguole02:12, 2 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• A better target would beMinnan. It is not ne ces sa ry to se pa rate syl la bles with spa ces. — AjaxSmack 03:09, 27 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Just changed the target, in any case the prevalence of both terms combined suggests that the current title is inadequate.--Prisencolin (talk)09:33, 27 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment Don't forgetWP:CONSISTENCY withNorthern Min,Eastern Min andCentral Min. Otherwise I'm neutral, but "Southern Min" gets moved the others should as well.Timmyshin (talk)04:50, 29 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose. The ngram Kanguole gives refutes the claim that "Minnam" is the common name. "Min" treated as separated word in various other contexts, so consistency suggests doing the same in this context.Pandas and people (talk)19:54, 2 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of arequested move.Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in amove review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Hoklo ethnicity and other problems

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