Talk:John Whitney (industrialist)

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Requested move 2 October 2024

It has been proposed in this section that John Whitney (industrialist) be renamed and moved to Major John Whitney.

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John Whitney (industrialist) → Major John Whitney – I understand honourifics are avoided in article titles but Whitney is referred to as either 'Major John Whitney' or 'Major Whitney' in every source I've seen bar one. It also serves as a way to disambiguate the article without the current unnatural title Traumnovelle (talk) 03:08, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose Correct, we don't disambiguate by titles. And I shall point out that the most authoritative source of them all, his Dictionary of New Zealand Biography entry, does not refer to him as 'Major John Whitney' or 'Major Whitney'. Schwede 66 07:30, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It isn't just a disambiguation, it is his common name, just like Colonel Sanders

Both the NZH and Franklin Times ref in the article use 'Major', as does Auckland Council: [1], An Auckland Regional Council report from 1989, The National Library website description of him: [2], Auckland Museum: [3], Heritage NZ: [4], and the modern NZH: [5] Traumnovelle (talk) 07:48, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose ranks shouldn't be used as a disambiguator. I wouldn't place any weight on the example of Colonel Sanders; that was a deliberate marketing gimmick where the styling as a colonel was for branding purposes, to the point that Colonel Sanders is actually a trademark (in NZ, TM139157). As Schwede66 points out, the most robust source, the DNZB, doesn't use Whitney's rank. The National Library website is given as an example for major being part of his common name, but there are examples at that website which refer to him without the rank, e.g. [6]. There are other instances where he is referred to without the rank, e.g. [7] and [8]. Also, unless I'm missing it, the Heritage NZ example given above actually refers to him as Captain John Whitney, not Major John Whitney. Zawed (talk) 10:28, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

A few instances, esp. those that would drop titles doesn't mean it wasn't part of his common name. Heritage NZ calls him Major John Whitney you just need to expand the boxes. Paperspast has 500+ results for 'Major John Whitney' and 750+ for 'Major Whitney' (there are some results counted twice). It is simply just how he was - and still is - known to people. Traumnovelle (talk) 18:24, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]