Talk:Koryo-saram

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: no consensus to move, with no clear MOS rationale one way or the other. (closed by non-admin page mover) Polyamorph (talk) 08:39, 29 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

Koryo-saram → Koryo Saram – WP:COMMONNAME per Google Ngram.[1]

Some sources also use the capitalization Koryo saram, indicating a direct romanization from a foreign language. But our title should be the (more common) anglicized version per WP:ENG. English capitalizes proper names including names of peoples, nations, ethnocultural groups, etcetera.  —Michael Z. 05:44, 10 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

The last is mandated by MOS:PEOPLANG: “Names for peoples and cultures, languages and dialects, nationalities, ethnic and religious groups, demonyms, and the like are capitalized.” —Michael Z. 19:07, 24 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

To be clear, though, what MOS:PEOPLANG mandates is capitalizing the first letter of a name for peoples, not applying title case as may potentially be the case here. (Not saying that is what your argument is here, by the way.) According to MOS:5, "the general rule in English is to not capitalize after a hyphen", such as occurs with "Koryo-saram", "unless what follows the hyphen is itself usually capitalized". Google Ngrams notwithstanding, it would seem that both "Koryo-saram" and "Koryo Saram" are used in about equal measure. It is possible—and I admit that I do not know of an objective means by which to verify this—that the latter is used more often in books, but the former is used more regularly in online sources. I don't believe that the MOS is clear about how to proceed with this proposed change. I'm also not convinced that there really is evidence pointing one way or another to a generally accepted usage. This is an unusual case. —CurryTime7-24 (talk) 20:41, 24 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

1) That hyphen rule is for title case, as used in article titles, and B) the exception to it is “unless what follows the hyphen is itself usually capitalized,” and per PEOPLANG it is capitalized as part of the proper name of a people, so the first part doesn’t apply. “Saram” is not an English term normally un-capitalized, and on its own it is not an English term at all. It is part of a proper name.  —Michael Z. 23:10, 24 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

Comment: "Saram" means "people", which is never capitalized in English when it is used to refer to ethnic groups (e.g. Hui people, Hmong people, Rapa Nui people). —CurryTime7-24 (talk) 06:23, 10 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

No, when you put it that way you are mixing things up or leaving something out. 사람 (romanized saram) means “people” in Korean. But Saram does not mean “people” in English, and the article is not titled Koryo nor Koryo people (maybe it should be Koryo Saram people to serve the WP:CRITERION of recognizability). The respective English proper names, to be capitalized, are Hui, Hmong, Rapa Nui, and Koryo Saram.  —Michael Z. 13:04, 10 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

"Koryo Saram people" would be silly. It'd be like saying "masa dough", "salsa sauce", "harina flour", and so on.

As for the proposed capitalization, I don't think I've seen a similar example used for East Asian peoples and their diaspora. For example, according to your logic, the title for the redirect "Nikkeijin" ought to be "Nikkei Jin", which would be a very unusual rendering.

That being said, I'm not opposed to the proposal, although I'd like to read what other interested editors have to say before making a final decision. —CurryTime7-24 (talk) 17:27, 10 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

Please don’t be argumentative for its own sake. You’re replying to several arguments I never made. It’s not endearing or helpful.

Masa dough appears in hundreds of books, UPC code, which appears in the article’s lead, but that’s immaterial. You’re still ignoring the logical point is that Saram doesn’t mean “people” in English. Inuit literally means “people,” but we capitalize it because we aren’t jerks.

It’s not “my logic” (and shame on you for implying that I argued all names should be written this way). It’s what reliable sources use most. COMMONNAME.  —Michael Z. 19:04, 10 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

I guess you're not a native Spanish speaker (I am) and may not realize how strange "masa dough", etc. sounds. But that's not the point. I'm not attacking you, being argumentative for the sake of it (whatever that means), and not even against your proposal. So, please—chill out. —CurryTime7-24 (talk) 19:53, 10 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

I understand the meaning of the words in all of these cases. It doesn’t matter whether you or I personally are Spanish or Korean speakers or find it silly.

If reliable sources closer to the subject say that it is silly-sounding and that we should use some other name or we should definitely write it a certain way, then we should take that into consideration. But then please show the sources and demonstrate why they deserve extra weight.  —Michael Z. 21:00, 10 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

The only factor that deters me from supporting your proposal outright is the word "saram", which although not an English word, does mean "people" in English. Because of that, your proposed capitalization would seem to contradict guidance in WP:NCET. I tried searching for other ethnic groups whose endonyms include their language's word for "people" and are capitalized in English similarly to your proposal, but couldn't find any.

Again, I would be interested to read what other editors think. —CurryTime7-24 (talk) 00:39, 11 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

Which English dictionaries tell us that “saram” is an English word for “people”? Is it none of them? Should we consider article titles Hui saram, Hmong saram, and Rapa Nui saram?

If it just meant “people,” then why isn’t the article titled Koryo people, per USEENGLISH? Because that would mean something else. Because the name, not English term, saram has more specific meaning and only occurs as part of a full proper name, Koryo Saram. Your argument hinges on an unsupported fact of the supposed meaning of a word.

You are going down that rabbit hole where your argument increasingly appeals to bespoke facts and logic and, increasingly declines to refer to either broad or specific sources, or to our guidelines. Engaging this way becomes a distraction.  —Michael Z. 13:47, 11 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

(-_________________-) CurryTime7-24 (talk) 14:38, 11 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

I will try to write less.  —Michael Z. 16:02, 11 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

Tentative support? I think ngrams is wonky here, still don't understand how it works. But a non-rigorous scroll through Google Books and Google Scholar seems to show the proposed spelling has the edge. I think it's not a clear win though; "Koryo-saram" is also prominently used, and sometimes "Koryo-Saram". I personally think it's a less attractive spelling, but irrelevant.

I also oppose "Koryo Saram people" because it wouldn't be a common name for them, and because it has the undesirable property that @CurryTime7-24 points out. Even if that may follow the letter of the law, it would bug every visitor who knows what the word "saram" means (probably a good chunk of people for this niche topic), and we'd get endless "erm ackshually"s that assume we don't know the meaning.

Side notes:

• To my understanding there's a similar consistency issue in Cyrllic.
• The South Korean term is consistently 고려인 in Korean and "Koryoin" in English. (English examples [2][3][4]). But international scholars don't use this term I think.

toobigtokale (talk) 02:55, 12 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

What do you mean about Cyrillic? In Russian, for example, it’s all lowercase корё-сарам according to that language’s standard rules. We should be consistent with this language’s standard rules according to the CRITERION of recognizability and the principle of not surprising or confounding the reader with non-standard exceptions for no reason.

Koryoin also does not register in Google Ngram,[5] presumably because it “does not appear in at least 40 books.”[6]  —Michael Z. 13:54, 12 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

Just a heads up that I'm not trynna get into a debate about the side notes, they don't impact the overall argument.

Cyrllic I'm just telling you what I've seen. If you search for the term on [7] (pretty significant site for Koryo-saram), you get multiple variants of the spelling. Other examples: [8][9][10]. I'm not saying what they're doing is correct, just saying this is what I've seen.

And I didn't know that about Google Ngram, thanks toobigtokale (talk) 17:13, 12 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

Comment — I will support either Koryo Saram or Koryo saram, based on whichever is the most commonly used in English language sources. I did a quick cursory search on Google Scholar and my (Canadian) university's database, and their usage seems quite even, along with Koryo-saram. This is because, unfortunately, there is no numeric indicator and the searches aren't case-sensitive, so unless one is used way more often than the other, it's not obvious to me.

If someone can give a numeric indicator as to which of the two are used more in English language sources, I'll support that one. Yue🌙 17:50, 15 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

The Ngram chart linked in the first line of the request[11] shows that except for the proposed version, all of the other variants don’t “occur in at least 40 books”[12] and therefore are not charted.  —Michael Z. 18:21, 15 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

Comment: Koryo people use different names for themselves depending on the language, such as "고려인" (Goryeo-in / Koryŏ'in) in Korean, and "Кореец" (Koréjec) and "Корё сарам" (Koryo saram) as Koryo language in Russian. [13][14] --Dubukimchi (talk) 20:12, 15 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

• Oppose capitalizing Saram. As several have noted, the lowercase saram is nearly equally common in sources. The criterion in MOS:CAPS is "only words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources are capitalized in Wikipedia". This doesn't meet that criterion. Neutral on the hyphen or not. Dicklyon (talk) 03:01, 22 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

  I see no evidence that it is “nearly equally common” at all. What am I missing? In fact, the Ngram chart shows that lowercased versions are so rare they don’t even register[15] (Google Ngram says “we only consider ngrams that occur in at least 40 books”)[16] Meanwhile, Google Books shows over 370 results of all versions combined,[17] so the lowercased versions appear to be at best about 10% of the total.  —Michael Z. 13:41, 22 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

  Agree with @Mzajac; my initial impression was incorrect. I didn't know how Ngrams worked so was skeptical of it, because I've had my own troubles with Google Books so assumed that maybe it was just faulty? But I think of Ngrams as more trustworthy now. toobigtokale (talk) 13:46, 22 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

  Ngram has limitations, but it is designed specifically for comparing frequency of occurrence in sources (while book search results numbers at the top have no direct relationship to the number of results returned). And it is case-sensitive.  —Michael Z. 14:03, 22 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

  The "nearly equally common" is an observation, e.g. by looking at this book search, I saw 5 lowercase in the first page of 10. It's clear short of the "consistently capitalized" threshold, even if you knock off some of those for various reasons. The n-grams do say the capped version is higher, but doesn't say how much higher. Likely it's a bit above the threshold for including in the n-gram dataset, while the lowercase is just below. That's not strong evidence for "consistently capitalized in sources" when it's easy to find lowercase ones in sources, which is what Yue and I observed. Dicklyon (talk) 02:39, 23 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

  You also find quite a few lowercase in news (e.g. [18], [19] [20]). Clearly not "consistently capitalized". Dicklyon (talk) 02:50, 23 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

  I have shown clear evidence that the proposal represents the COMMONNAME. You have mischaracterized your anecdotal observations with unfounded “nearly equally common,” “clear short,” and “likely,” and irrelevant “easy to find.” You simply have offered no comparison, merely the evidence of the existence of other forms.  —Michael Z. 03:01, 23 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

  COMMONNAME has little to do with how Wikipedia styles text, including titles. For capitalization issues, MOS:CAPS is the relevant guideline. Dicklyon (talk) 03:39, 24 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

  The relevant MOSCAPS section is MOS:PEOPLANG: “Names for peoples and cultures, languages and dialects, nationalities, ethnic and religious groups, demonyms, and the like are capitalized.” —Michael Z. 19:05, 24 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

  I agree with @Mzajac on this issue as well. toobigtokale (talk) 06:01, 24 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

  As Koryo-saram, it's already capitalized. If people prefer the two-word version for some reason, the caps might be more acceptable. But I see no good reason for a move at this point. Dicklyon (talk) 17:05, 25 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

  Wrong, and this has already been addressed above.

  Capitalizing compounds means capitalizing every word, whether hyphenated or not. The exceptions are articles (a, the) and prepositions (to, until) or when using affixes that cannot stand alone (so Co-operative, because co is not a standalone term, but Mid-Century, because mid can be, as in “the mid twentieth century”).

  The guideline doesn’t say hyphenated names are exceptional. It even gives an example Austro-Hungarian. And when open compounds are hyphenated as adjectives we don’t lowercase part of them (e.g., a Crimean-Tatar mosque, not Crimean-tatar mosque)

  We also have Afro-Ukrainians, Amur-Ussuri Cossacks, Armeno-Tats, Awa-Kwaiker, Bissau-Guinean or Guinea-Bissauan, Canelos-Quichua, Franco-Manitoban, Franco-Ténois, Indo-Iranians, Kichwa-Lamista people, Mashco-Piro, Mechta-Afalou, Megleno-Romanians, Quijos-Quichua, Shipibo-Conibo, Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau, Uru-Murato, Waimiri-Atroari, Semi-Bantu, for example.  —Michael Z. 18:01, 25 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

  However, almost all the compounds you listed consist of component words which each refer to a people. (I do not know the etymology or meaning of the constituent words in Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau, possibly the sole outlier.)

  "Koryo-Saram" may misleadingly imply that "Koryo" and "Saram" are each demonyms, and that their hyphenation signifies a union similar to Austro-Hungarian. —CurryTime7-24 (talk) 19:40, 25 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

  Sorry, how does your rationale for “it's already capitalized” fit into this? The guideline says capitalize names of peoples. This is how to capitalize names. This is how names of peoples are capitalized: By capitalizing all the initials!

  And you first said “it doesn’t have to be capitalized,” now “it’s already capitalized according to the special scheme for this one and only name of a people.”

  This is nonsense. Capitalize it.  —Michael Z. 20:58, 27 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

• Oppose uppercase / support no hyphen MOS:PEOPLANG does not mandate capitalisation here. The guidance must be read in full and would further say: If in doubt, check how multiple high-quality reliable sources in English treat the name or phrase. This is such a case. In essence, it invokes the general guidance at MOS:CAPS. Ngrams is often a useful tool to resolve such issues because it draws on a large corpus of material; however, it is nonetheless a sub-set of published work and can suffer sampling errors for terms which are infrequently used. This appears to be such a case. Google Books, Google Scholar and JSTOR are all indicating mixed capitalisation of saram insufficient to meet the threshold set by the general guidance at MOS:CAPS (ie it is not consistently capped in sources). I would also observe that other languages do not capitalise the second word, supporting the view that this is not a proper noun phrase. They tend to be more rigorous with capitalisation, whereas English will often capitalise for emphasis or distinction - but we don't do that on WP per MOS:SIGNIFCAPS. Reviewing these searches, it would appear to me that the unhyphenated version is somewhat more common. Because of the nature of the words, I don't see any possible ambiguity arising from them not being explicitly co-joined by a hyphen. Cinderella157 (talk) 02:17, 26 October 2023 (UTC)Reply
• Oppose: After reading through comments by other editors, I'm convinced that there is no pressing need to change this article's name, at least for now. MOS, opinions to the contrary notwithstanding, is unclear and did not anticipate this somewhat unique situation. There is also no definitive evidence that scholarship prefers "Koryo-saram", "Koryo-Saram", Koryo saram", "Koryosaram", or "Koryo Saram". Perhaps in time that may change, but until then we should wait. What swayed me to ultimately oppose were the examples cited of hyphenated compounds that were purported to represent the guidance of the MOS: all (save for possibly one) consisted of component words that each refer to a people (e.g. Indo-Iranians). "Koryo-Saram" would be potentially misleading. —CurryTime7-24 (talk) 22:08, 27 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

  Where is the evidence that purports to represent that it should not be capitalized, either in conventional English or according to guidelines?  —Michael Z. 01:42, 28 October 2023 (UTC)Reply