Talk:Kithara

The following is a closed discussion of a requested 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 a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: moved per consensus below. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 17:34, 21 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Cithara → Kithara – This move is necessary because the vast majority of scholarly sources all use the Greek spelling of this instrument. I further note that there are many factual errors in this article, as the word kithara had different meanings across time as the round-based western lyre extant during the time of Homer (who was the first to use the words kithara and kitharis in surviving literature) was later replaced by a different construct of instrument with a flat base in the Hellenistic period that was also referred to as a Kithara. Scholars today divide the kithara into separate groups, the round-based "cylinder kithara" and the flat-based "concert kithara". In some cases the word kithara was also used to encompass both the kithara and the phorminx; and there has been some inter-changeability of the terms in literature and antiquity depending on the period of the writer. There is a highly detailed article which sorts through all the various uses of the term across history/scholarship in Martha Maas (2002). "Kithara" (Document). Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.15077. There is also further content, placing the kithara in relation the history of the lyre family in Klaus Wachsmann, Bo Lawergren, Ulrich Wegner and John Clark (2002). "Lyre (from Gk.; Lat. lyra)" (Document). Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.50534.{{cite document}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) Other scholarly works using kithara include [1], [2], [3]. I am willing to completely re-write the article with these sources providing we move the article to the correct title. I also note, that while the 1911 version of Encyclopedia Britannica used cithara, the current version of the encyclopedia uses kithara; which demonstrates a move in the scholarly literature away from the Romanized spelling. 4meter4 (talk) 20:33, 29 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

— Relisting. User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 02:00, 14 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• I have no strong feelings about the spelling (and to tell the embarrassing truth I thought at first glance we were talking about Poulenc's L'embarquement pour Cythère) but as the Oxford English Dictionary is clear that "cithara" is correct in English usage, I'd be inclined to stay with that. The OED's prefatory comment: "Of multiple origins. Partly a borrowing from Latin. Partly a borrowing from Greek. Etymons: Latin cithara; Greek κιθάρα" seems to me to leave the matter open, but if we're putting Latin up against Greek I'd say if it ain't broke, don't fix it − Si fractum non sit, noli id reficere (I think that's right). There is a mention in Grove of "cithara", and ditto the Oxford Companion to Music. But I by no means press the point and if the Greek consonant is preferred I shall not protest. Tim riley talk 21:48, 29 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Tim riley I linked Grove above which titles their entry by Martha Maas "Kithara". So does the Oxford Dictionary of Music. 4meter4 (talk) 22:26, 29 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

As I say, I have no strong views, but with a Wikipedian hat on I just note that we adopt some eccentric spellings such as Rachmaninoff rather than the usual Rachmaninov, in other works of reference. Personally, I'd stick to the OED's spelling of Cithara, but I'm not going to complain if we don't. Tim riley talk 23:33, 29 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• Support. I don't object to the name change, as long as cithara is under other names in the infobox. I recognize 3 of the 4 scholars you mention above, and their use of one name over the other gives that name weight. I look forward to your rewrite. Jacqke (talk) 10:58, 30 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose. The article is written in English, not ancient Greek; respelling Greek words that have traditionally used Latin orthography in English—practically all of them—is trendy, but there is no scholarly basis for it; it's a matter of personal preference, and nothing more. The fact that the nominator's willingness to "correct" all of the "mistakes" in the article appears to be conditioned on the proposed move suggests that this is more about nationalism than scholarship. P Aculeius (talk) 11:50, 30 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

That's absolutely ridiculous. I am not Greek by ethnicity or national origin and have a long standing editing history on wikipedia across many articles. My objection is purely based on the spelling used almost universally in published encyclopedias and other major reference works like Grove. I just find it incredibly annoying that our encyclopedia uses a strange spelling not used in most RS; particularly when much of scholarship in Grove deals with differences in Greek and its attachment to different iterations of the instrument (ie. Kithara v.s. Kitharis v.s. psilokitharistikē) which would be difficult to write on with a Romanized spelling (I'm not sure how I would even do that without SYNTH coming into play as there are no Romanized spellings of these versions of the instrument in the RS).4meter4 (talk) 17:00, 30 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Most Ancient Greek words used in English come to us through Latin, in part because we inherited some of them from Roman sources, and in part because the Greek alphabet is not directly equivalent to the Roman alphabet that we use in English. The trend in recent decades has been to treat this as if it were some form of colonialism that needs to be corrected by retranscribing Greek words more literally, as though none of the standard conventions for rendering Greek words in English existed. This ngram indicates that "cithara" is the form that has historically been used in most published English works, and despite increasing use of "kithara", it remains so. You cannot describe the use of "kithara" as "almost universal" without excluding the majority of recent publications, as well as the overwhelming majority of English-language works published before 1976. If variations of the word do not appear using standard English conventions for rendering Ancient Greek, then feel free to use whatever forms you can find for them—there is nothing in English-language scholarship that requires all variations of a subject to be spelled consistently according to their etymology—but in the case of this article's topic there is a well-established English form. P Aculeius (talk) 16:10, 1 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

What recent publications? All of the recent encyclopedias, both general and specialized, all use the greek spelling Kithara in the title. I've linked some of them above. We can certainly go with title practices that were abandoned nearly 50 years ago, but that seems a rather antiquated approach not based in current scholarship. I would assume that wikipedia would want to emulate the titling practices used by other standard reference works in the English language like Encyclopædia Britannica or widely recognized music encyclopedias like The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. 4meter4 (talk) 17:31, 1 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

So in order to claim "almost universal" use, you have to restrict your sources to certain encyclopedias, disregarding all other—and all older—materials. The ngram shows that "cithara" remains as common or more commonly used in English today—looking back through time only tells us that the majority of sources likely to be found in English use over the last two centuries used "cithara" to an even greater extent. Your argument is essentially one of recentism, not of correctness; certain sources prefer a different orthography than the traditional one, but this tells us nothing about the reasons, and they could just as easily turn around and do it the other way tomorrow, because one is not more "correct" than the other. Per Wikipedia article titling policy, we generally prefer the common names of things; articles are not moved merely because another name has some claim of "officialness" or is trending within a particular academic discipline. That's why we have "Turkey" instead of "Türkiye" and "Clytemnestra" rather than "Klytaimnestra". P Aculeius (talk) 18:40, 1 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Those are WP:OTHERSTUFF rationales. I'm not claiming any sort of need for a uniform change that would impact other articles. I'm only looking at the way current reference in English are titling their articles on this individual topic. Per WP:TITLE "Generally, article titles are based on what the subject is called in reliable sources." While granted cithara is used in some English language sources (particularly older ones), it is not the spelling used in the majority of the best English language publications on this topic as pointed out by Aza24 below and myself above. I prefer to model article titling after the best sources in the English language per our policies.4meter4 (talk) 21:06, 1 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

So, not the common name, but the name that occurs in the most recent sources that I personally consider authoritative, and disregarding all other usage, especially when it disagrees with me. Sorry, but there are many, many "reliable" sources—and there is nothing fundamentally "unreliable" about older scholarship about Ancient Greek music. This is nothing more than a question of personal preference in any source—and a popularity contest between traditional English orthography and hypercorrectness—an artificial and inauthentic respelling intended to redress an imaginary injury. P Aculeius (talk) 00:08, 2 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

At this point, I am done interacting with you. Your tone is uncivil, and I am not seeing any way of productively engaging with you here.4meter4 (talk) 04:41, 2 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• Slight support? – Really on the edge with this one. In my experience, the four main publications on Ancient Greek music are currently West 1992, Anderson 1994, Mathiesen 1999 and Hagel 2009. All three but Hagel use the "Kithara" spelling (though it's safe to say that Hagel's is the least known of the four), and it's use in Grove is rather convincing as well. Aza24 (talk) 19:02, 1 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Support, per nomination and discussion (the nominator seems to have proven their case) . Randy Kryn (talk) 12:15, 14 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Support per nom.--Ortizesp (talk) 15:38, 14 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Support per nom. Shwcz (talk) 02:01, 21 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]