Talk:Astarte

Page move

(from WP:RM)

January 15

`Ashtart → Astarte or Ashtart

I'd do this myself, except that the page histories are such a mess that my privileges aren't sufficient to sort the whole thing out. No such thing as "ASCII spelling" exists; ASCII is an encoding mechanism, and the backtick, apparently used here to represent a glottal stop, has no meaning on its own—least of all in the English language. The English name of this well-known deity is most commonly Astarte (through the Greek) but more accurately Ashtart; both of these are widely used by scholars and either are thoroughly acceptable to me. ADH (t&m) 11:25, Jan 15, 2005 (UTC)

prima facie. Should go to Astarte. Rd232 00:48, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

• Comments: (a) the mark you reference is being used to represent not the glottal stop but a pharyngeal consonant, more commonly represented (as in the rest of the article) with ‘ or ^c, and (b) ASCII is in fact a character set, and the author clearly means that, using only characters available in ASCII (thereby excluding the characters I cited), the name with the pharyngeal is best represented as `Ashtart, which is accurate, I would say. It needs clean-up (Englished), to be sure.
  — Ford 01:53, 2005 Jan 16 (UTC)
  • ... which I have now done. The version that ADH is referring to is here.— Ford 03:27, 2005 Jan 16 (UTC)
  • The pharyngeal consonant I'm familiar with, but only as a superscript letter c, and the backtick is not a left single quote. Even accurate transliterations are only preferable when an English-language name is not common (Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English)), which is clearly not the case here. ADH (t&m) 03:31, Jan 16, 2005 (UTC)
    • Common transliteration in cases where ‘ (pharyngeal fricative) and ’ (glottal stop) are not available — when the character set is confined to ASCII, that is — is to use ` for ‘ and ' for ’. I have seen that convention for quotation marks, for Semitic phonemes, and in other situations as well. You may have missed it elsewhere on the web. But it was pretty clear from the article itself that ‘ (for the pharyngeal) was being used, so it could not have been too difficult to figure out what ` was standing in for. And your last comment may support Astarte, but it argues against Ashtart, which is neither as accurate nor as common.
      — Ford 03:46, 2005 Jan 16 (UTC)
• Support. I get 50 times more hits on the classical Greek Astarte than Ashtart (with or without the backtick), so I'd prefer a move to Astarte. Editors should avoid introducing ad hoc spelling conventions into Wikipedia, especially where, as in this case, the entity in question already has a well established name known to English language readers and in use by English language scholars. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 13:27, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I went to implement this, but got blocked by the compression bug. I feel there is significant history to Astarte so the following steps should be taken:

1. Delete Astarte
2. Move `Ashtart to Astarte
3. Undelete Astarte to restore history.
4. Edit Astarte to restore proper version, if needed.

- UtherSRG 14:42, Jan 21, 2005 (UTC)

• Support. Astarte was a godess known to several Semitic nations. There isn't much sense in preferring incorrectly rendered transcription of one of several variants of her name to the much more common Astarte. -- Naive cynic 01:21, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I've done a swap of the pages - I couldn't see much point waiting with the page in the 'wrong' place. if anyone feels strongly about merging edit histories, delete Astarte, move `Ashtart over it and undelete - but you'll need to wait for the compression bug to be sorted out first. -- ALoan (Talk) 13:48, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Irrelevant image in the infobox

Judging from the archeological context, the image used in the infobox rather obviously isn't Astarte, who is not exactly known for her association with Babylon. Joan Goodnick Westenholz identified it as completely unrelated Nanaya, see here, p. 184; the article is open access. It should be removed from the article altogether. Not every goddess is Astarte, and this one isn't even from the right part of the world.

Given the iconographic record, I would argue going with an Egyptian depiction would be a sound move for the infobox, similarly as in the case of Resheph or Hauron, since due to Egyptian artistic conventions depictions of deities are more likely to be identified with certainty, as discussed ex. by Izak Cornelius. HaniwaEnthusiast (talk) 14:10, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

Requested move 6 February 2023

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: SNOW Close, Universal opposition, nominator has moved their position to neutral (non-admin closure) Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 18:27, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

---

Astarte → ʿAṯtart – The current page name is a Greek form of this ancient West Asian goddess's name. The native Proto-Semitic form of her name is ʿAṯtart, and all the other recorded variants of her name in various languages are derived from it. Therefore, I am proposing that Astarte be renamed to ʿAṯtart. Antiquistik (talk) 21:23, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

This seems too pedantic to me, but I think more people should weigh on it since wikipedia does not really seem to have a set policy on diacritics in page titles. From my point of view, this is a network of what, a dozen cognate names with multiple romanizations. There's no single "native Semitic form". Also, what criteria do you use to determine which form is optimal? Why not Aštart, commonly used in Assyriological literature?

I use diacritics quite often in the titles of freshly created pages, but I do not think they are needed when the form without them is by far the most widely used one. There really are more pressing issues to take care of. HaniwaEnthusiast (talk) 21:33, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

@HaniwaEnthusiast: Sorry, I meant that ʿAṯtart is the native Proto-Semitic form, I will correct this immediately.

I am suggesting ʿAṯtart rather than Aštart because the latter is the 1nd millennium BC Canaanite pronunciation, while ʿAṯtart is the older pronunciation attested in Ugaritic, and possibly non-Ugaritic Amorite, and was the earlier Canaanite pronunciation before the shift from /ṯ/ to /š/ as well, which makes it an adequate form for the page's name since it covers more than merely the Canaanite variant of this deity. Antiquistik (talk) 21:54, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

It's a form not even scholarly sources use consistently. The strength of the current title is the consistency with which it is employed, which I think is preferable for an encyclopedia.

Upon reexamination of the argument I feel this is like arguing we should rename the Inanna article to Inan’ak following Royal Statuary of Early Dynastic Mesopotamia and not much beyond that, ignoring that ultimately few if any sources aim at this sort of phonetic hyper-correctness. HaniwaEnthusiast (talk) 22:17, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

On this wider question about diacritics, I think it really does depend what is most normal in secondary literature - Ashurbanipal is in the right place, but it is possible that Libbāli-šarrat is as well. That said, I note that User:Antiquistik has been making a vast number of these moves over the last while, presenting them as "uncontroversial technical requests." In aggregate they probably aren't uncontroversial and unless there's some discussion that I've missed, this should probably be talked about. "Libbāli-šarrat," for example, is called "Libbali-sharrat" in the most recent publication on her. Furius (talk) 13:41, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

@Furius: I made my previous moves based on what appeared to be the most commonly used forms of the names in most sources I had access to. If any of these is controversial, I have no objection to them being reverted or being discussed to reach a new consensus. Antiquistik (talk) 17:41, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose The WP:COMMONNAME is the one we use for the article title, and OP has presented no evidence that the proposed spelling is more common. 162 etc. (talk) 22:29, 6 February 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose on the same grounds after further consideration, see discussion above. I think at least showing familiarity with more than one source would be a good idea before making this sort of radical proposals.HaniwaEnthusiast (talk) 22:36, 6 February 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose. I'm reminded of a past attempt to move Isis to Iset, on the grounds that that was supposedly a more accurate name. I assume Antiquistik has a better grasp of the philology than the proposer of that move did, but WP:Common name is the governing principle here, and this proposal pretty obviously doesn't meet it.

Out of a sense of due diligence, I did an unscientific survey of the sources I have in PDF form on my computer. "Astarte" turns up more than 90 journal articles and a similar number of books. "ʿAṯtart" produces exactly one result, in Transformation of a Goddess: Ishtar, Astarte, Aphrodite (2014), edited by David Sugimoto, in which one quotation from another scholar uses a similar spelling. Even there, the spelling in the quotation is actually "ʿAṯtartu". The study that quotes this author uses the spelling "‛Athtart", but the other studies in the volume pretty consistently use "Astarte", even when discussing the Bronze Age. "Astarte" is clearly the overwhelmingly common name for this deity. A. Parrot (talk) 03:45, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose per WP:COMMONNAME. I also have misgivings about using a name from a reconstructed proto-language. Reconstructions of PIE change regularly and are subject of debate; I get the sense that Proto-Semitic is more static, but it is still ultimately an unattested name. Furius (talk) 13:41, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose and WP:SNOW early close In ictu oculi (talk) 14:50, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose. Very clear common name in English-language sources. -- Necrothesp (talk) 14:00, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

  The counter-arguments to my proposal are all quite fair, and I accept them and change my position wrt the move proposal to Neutral. Antiquistik (talk) 17:42, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Inconsistent transliteration/transcription of Phoenician

In some cases of romanisation of Phoenician in the article, some of the vowels are spelt out and others are not: miqdōš bnʾ la-ʿAštōrt št Baʿl bnʾ bʿlʾ ha-Myddm . This is odd and confusing and I've never seen such a thing in a proper scholarly text on the subject. It should be either a consistent transliteration with no vowels or, more problematically, a consistent transcription of the reconstructed pronunciation with all the vowels. 87.126.21.225 (talk) 21:20, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

Voltaire's Astarté

Added Voltaire's use of the name Astarté in his work Zadig to the "In popular culture section. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mfryc (talk • contribs) 03:55, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

Corrected Greek Form

Changed Greek form of Astarte from Ασταρτη to Ἀστάρτη (added breathing and accent mark). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mfryc (talk • contribs) 04:02, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

WP:COMMONNAME on Egyptian articles, odd transliteration

While perusing the article, I noticed a number of obscure names used in place of more commonly-used variants (for example: Pitaḥ instead of Ptah, Sūtaẖ instead of Set/Sutekh, Knmt instead of Kharga, Pisīḏat instead of Ennead/Pesedjet). I'm unsure of why this is, and would like to know if it would be favorable to change them to the more commonly-used names of these subjects under WP:COMMONNAME. Also to note is that the transliteration of certain names appears to be potentially conjectural or WP:OR such as Pisīḏat, though presently don't have access to all of the sources cited to be sure. Star11308 (talk) 17:26, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

I certainly agree, but these strange spellings are part of a larger problem. The article text includes entire sentences that are quoted in their original writing systems (cuneiform or hieroglyphs), then transliterated, then translated into English. That looks to me like a fixation on the primary sources at the expense of readability.

Some editors seem to forget that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia for general readers. A scholarly book or journal may quote an ancient source in the original language for other scholars to analyze, but there's no benefit for most readers if Wikipedia does the same. If an ancient text is worth quoting, it should be quoted in translation. Transliterations should generally be reserved for individual words that are particularly significant, like the name of a deity in the article about that deity, or a term such as maat that the scholarly sources often don't translate because its exact meaning is difficult to render into English. In nearly all cases, we should be rendering terms into their common names in English: Set instead of Sūtaẖ, Ennead instead of Pisīḏat, and so on. A. Parrot (talk) 20:14, 22 May 2023 (UTC)