Talk:Cook

RFD discussion: May–September 2019

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Cook

Rfd-sense: James Cook. We are not Wikipedia. 2600:1000:B11D:99F:6CB8:1F86:45CB:CDFF 10:49, 7 May 2019 (UTC)

I moved the sense into its proper position. I am less interested in keeping villages and ghost towns than famous explorers. -Mike (talk) 16:05, 7 May 2019 (UTC)

Not only were the Cook Islands named after Capt. Cook, also Cook Strait and Mount Cook, the highest mountain in NZ. DonnanZ (talk) 16:19, 7 May 2019 (UTC)

I think we should keep it - as an explanation of the various placenames containing his surname. SemperBlotto (talk) 16:22, 7 May 2019 (UTC)

Collapse into the definition in the manner of Darwin or Mao. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 16:48, 7 May 2019 (UTC)

I agree with Semper. Keep. DonnanZ (talk) 17:47, 7 May 2019 (UTC)

Keep, per above. --Robbie SWE (talk) 09:27, 9 May 2019 (UTC)

Should not IMO have a dictionary sense line. Maybe under "see also" etc. Equinox ◑ 10:41, 9 May 2019 (UTC)

• Actually, I don't see any harm in adding an image of a famous bearer of a name. I did this for Fridtjof. It could also be done for Washington, Lincoln, Churchill etc. DonnanZ (talk) 11:26, 10 May 2019 (UTC)

  Regardless of how famous they are, I don't agree that any specific person is really a "sense" of a word. The sense is "a surname", and then there's a further general rule of English that you can refer to any person by their surname. (They needn't be famous, either: if I'm referring to some obscure academic paper by Quentin Z Cook I will still call him "Cook" for the same reason.) Equinox ◑ 14:05, 10 May 2019 (UTC)

  But take for example this sentence, "Captain Cook, as soon as he had anchored, ordered the boats to be hoisted out." The word Cook in the context from which it was taken doesn't mean "a surname", but rather "the person with the surname of Cook who was also given the name of James", or in short "James Cook". Of course, you can have a less specific meaning in a sentence, "He read aloud the name Cook." In that case Cook would mean "an English surname" because it doesn't refer to anyone specifically. -Mike (talk) 16:38, 10 May 2019 (UTC)

  I'm not all that convinced. If "Cook" alone means "that person" then how are we to analyse "Bob Cook" or "Mr Cook" (or indeed your "Captain Cook")? It's the whole NP that refers to the person. Equinox ◑ 01:18, 16 May 2019 (UTC)

  "Cook" alone does refer to "that person", e.g. in "Having made up his mind how to proceed, Cook went to a rendezvous at Wapping and volunteered into H.M.S. Eagle, a fourth-rate, 60-gun ship, with a complement of 400 men and 56 marines, at that time moored in Portsmouth Harbour." "Cook" does not mean surname but rather is a surname. That said, there is a legitimate disagreement about whether to include certain persons on sense lines of surnames. --Dan Polansky (talk) 18:50, 28 June 2019 (UTC)

Delete. When an etymology (e.g. for a place name) refers to an individual, we should link to that individual in Wikipedia. People are encyclopedia content, not linguistic content. Mike's example would also support including every individual with the first name "James" since people often say things like "James is on his way" not meaning the name James but rather an individual with the name James plus a surname, also perhaps a title and a middle name as well. Cook never means "an English surname", it is an English surname. You cannot define a surname because it is not have meaning. - TheDaveRoss 17:36, 10 May 2019 (UTC)

Delete, and add a link to w:Cook (surname). Since we don't have a notability requirement in CFI, there's nothing to stop someone from adding a sense for, say, w:James Cook (Australian footballer). Chuck Entz (talk) 19:03, 10 May 2019 (UTC)

Added the direct link. DonnanZ (talk) 23:57, 10 May 2019 (UTC)

Delete as an independent sense; collapse into the general surname defimition, per Meta. But we don't seem to have any consisteny practice on this; Hitler also has a separate sense for the specific tyrant. (Also: Stalin is defined as a surname, but is it, or was it just a codename formed from the word for "steel", like "Lenin" may have been a codename formed from the river Lena? For added confusion, our entry on Lenin has no surname definition even though the etymology section mentioning a Nikolay Lenin suggests one might exist...) - -sche (discuss) 23:35, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

Keep; governed by WT:NSE. In Category:en:Individuals we have philosophers (Plato), poets (Keats), politicians (Churchill), writers (Emerson), playwrights (Shakespeare), composers (Chopin), etc. However, I support Metaknowledge proposal to Collapse [the separate sense] into the [surname] definition like in Darwin and Mao. As for what other dicts are doing (not binding since WT:LEMMING has no consensus), M-W has the biographical name Cook[1]. The objection to overflood can be countered by pointing out that WT:LEMMING provides a useful guidance putting a limit on the overflood. --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:38, 31 May 2019 (UTC)

• RFD kept: no consensus to delete. --Dan Polansky (talk) 18:12, 6 September 2019 (UTC)