Colonel William A. Phillips

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: page moved.  Ronhjones  ^(Talk) 21:29, 25 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Venerable English College, Rome → English College, Rome — There is only one English college in Rome and it is commonly referred to without the Venerable. Cjc13 (talk) 12:18, 17 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Question. Do you have any evidence of that assertion of common usage? At the CFD discussion on the eponymous category I posted the results of a Google search 348,000 ghits with venerable, but only 49,600 ghits without "venerable". I would in general prefer the shortest unambiguous title, but WP:COMMONNAME says follow common usage, and the scanty evidence I have seen so far points to common usage including the prefix "venerable". I'd be delighted if you could prove me wrong. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:57, 17 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Indeed, that is the question. Apart from the historical issue - the college only became "Venerable" in 1818 - there seems a divergence between Catholic sources and general newspapers etc, but there are more of the former. I find the plain version more normal myself, but the ghits suggest otherwise. Johnbod (talk) 14:16, 17 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  I think the ghits numbers largely reflects the use of Venerable in the wikipedia article which is reproduced or referenced on other sites, which leads to numerous ghits. Within Wikipedia, there is wide use of simply "English College, Rome" or "English College in Rome". Using searches in Wikipedia for these exact phrases, theses are in 52 and 30 articles, although there is some overlap, whereas "Venerable English College" appears only in 45 articles. This would seem to indicate that, at least within Wikipedia, the simple "English College, Rome" is the more common name despite the title of the article. Cjc13 (talk) 14:49, 17 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  Redoing the searches with "-wikipedia" barely changes the figures: 310,000 for "Venerable English college" rome -wikipedia, against 50,000 for "English college" rome -wikipedia.

  The hits go up for "English college" rome ? Also not all mirror articles would credit Wikipedia. Cjc13 (talk) 15:48, 17 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  The usage on Wikipedia isn't really relevant, because Wikipedia is not a reliable source. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:11, 17 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  It does indicate usage of the simpler name and seems consistent with the data below. Cjc13 (talk) 15:48, 17 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• More data. Searching google news UK archives, I find 172 hits for "Venerable English college" rome and 585 hits for "English college" rome.
  Redoing the search with Google scholar, I get 159 ghits for "Venerable English college" rome and 2,670 ghits for "English college" rome.
  Is it it safe to assume that hits in google new and google scholar are more likely to be reliable sources than a general google search? If so, I think the evidence points to dropping the "venerable". --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:26, 17 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Support move. I think that google news & google scholar results above justify "English College, Rome" as the more common name. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 11:16, 24 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.