Wikinomen

I am proposing that a new Wikimedia project be created specifically for every aspect of a given name, and (eventually) a surname. After searching for information on a name (Alma) on Wikipedia and finding that it had been deleted because "06:27, 20 July 2009 Closedmouth (talk | contribs) deleted "Alma (given name)" (Article has no meaningful, substantive content (CSD A3))", I decided to create a page for it. Now, given the sometimes rampant ways of Deletionists (which I believe are a vital part of Wiki-projects and I am not bashing anyone in particular, especially because I do not know anyone personally) it is no surprise that names of this kind would not be found or considered for deletion. I decided to do a search for a lot of names, and lesser popular names. What I discovered was that most popular names had decent information on them (ex:Julia) and yet some (ex:Gloria) have nothing, at least searchable, on them. In fact, most intermediately popular names could only give a sentence typically on a disambiguation page. And obviously, the rarer ones have no pages.
I began moving between Wikipedia and Wiktionary, and it appears that both have significant disadvantages for providing all-inclusive information on given names; and virtually do not host any surname information. I attribute this to the foundation of both mentioned projects. In the scope of an Encyclopedia or a Dictionary, some properties and information are omitted because it is deemed non-notable, which is fine. I believe that it is important for there to be obvious differences between projects, and that is why creating a new Wikimedia project would be advantageous.
Some things I've thought would be good to have:

• Sex: M/F (by % if applies)
• Pronunciation by IPA, break down of syllables
  • sound file for pronunciation(s)
• Image
• Etymology
• History
  • cause of use in vernacular
• Meaning (in other languages if others exist)
• Region of use (possibly by use of map template)
• Derived from (possibly some type of templated tree)
• Derivatives succeeding (possibly some type of templated tree))
• Variants (alternative spellings, possibly from other languages/countries)
• Name day (if applicable)
  • (many european countries host these kind of days)
• Time period of popularity and what caused it/where
• Namesakes
• Popularity (year vs % on a graph)
• Use as first name/middle name/surname
• Name numerology (maybe a template since there will be a lot of repeat occurences)
  • admittedly not scientific, but this would not be an encyclopedia
• Arithmetic sum (names and other words and in a template)
• Name vs. profession (I read that given names can impact job choice, some even by how it sounds (there are more Larrys' and Laras' that are lawyers then any other name))
• Name vs. personality (may have read in the same place that some names can influence characteristics, like someone named Elizabeth will likely be stronger willed then someone named Gertrude)
• Rhyming names
• And of course, the mega-long lists you can see in Wikipedia where they categorize by name (which I personally have NEVER used...)maybe expandable/hidden.

This is a proposal for a new Wikimedia sister project.

Status of the proposal
Status	closed
Technical requirements

and then, a very neat categorization along the footer:

• Categories (like African, Chinese or names made popular by a play/noblemen)

those are just my ideas for given names, there are probably more things we can do for surnames, I would love to hear what you guys think!
I think that there is a lot of potential and interesting information to be found with this proposal.

Proposed by

Theornamentalist 23:42, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Alternative names

Wikiname

Domain names

http://wikinomen.org

Demos

Is there a place where we can build this within the Wikimedia domain? And if there are any builders out there who are talented and interested...

People interested

Note: I think it would be very iteresting to see how names of people, streets and places relate. Not sure if I would like to edit it by hand, but openstreetmap has a huge database of such names. Mdupont

1. Theornamentalist 04:10, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
2. Mdupont 18:00, 16 March 2010 (CET)
3. Count me in! Let me know when the project starts so I can contribute. I was thinking about creating a wiki for surnames, especially because of those weird English pronunciations of Celto-British surnames such as 'McLeod' (pronounced, oh dear: "Makloud") Carlvincent 00:37, 10 April 2010 (UTC)