Talk:Samuel Isaac Joseph Schereschewsky

Saints banner and category

Based on this individual being included in the Calendar of saints (Episcopal Church in the United States of America), I am adding the Category:Anglican saints and the Saints WikiProject banner to this article. I am awaiting reliable sources which can be used to add the content to the article. John Carter 19:53, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Boxer rebellion?

I noticed that Schereschewsky died in Tokyo after the Boxer rebellion in China. The article mentions only that he died poor and used a wheelchair during his last few years, but nothing about his evacuation from China. Unfortunately, I know little about the Anglican/Episcopal missions in either China or Japan, and don't have the time or resources now to do the research. Thus I hope someone can fill in this gap.Jweaver28 (talk) 13:06, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Move back to SIJ Schereschewksy?

I appreciate the idea of making the name of the article approachable, but a few searches seem to show that the "common name" was the previous one, SIJS.

• Google Search + Joseph Schereschewsky on the first three pages gets only one hits for Joseph S., the rest are SIJS. This is nearly conclusive that the common name is SIJS.

• WorldCat Search = Joseph Schereschewsky returns books by or about SIJS. The items by "Joseph" are another person.
• WorldCat Authority Page = Schereschewsky, S. I. J. (Samuel Isaac Joseph) 1831-1906, doesn't give Joseph. The books by or about him use SIJS or initials, but I don't see "Joseph S."
• Google Search "Joseph Schereschewsky -samuel", that is, to see how many hits there are for "Joseph S." without "Samuel," does indeed return a lot of hits, but many are to some other form of the name including "Joseph," not to "Joseph S."
• Calendar of saints (Episcopal Church)#Calendar (October) gives SIJS.

I may be missing something, but I don't see a common reference to him as "Joseph S." Would it be ok to move it back?

ch (talk) 04:46, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Although they also include his full name, both THIS WEBPAGE and THIS ONE, which I am assuming are based on official Episcopal Church sources, refer to him simply in the prayers as Joseph Schereschewsky. This is a very strong indication that this is how he was commonly known by those who did actually know him.

It is not surprising that older and more formal sources include his full name. That was once common practice in older church sources with bishops. Such sources can be misleading as they can give the false impression that this was how bishops were normally known.

It seems clear to me, however, that his usual name was Joseph Schereschewsky and that this is therefore the appropriate article name. Cheers, Anglicanus (talk) 08:20, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for your prompt reply and the insights. Still, Wikipedia WP:COMMONNAME guidelines should be followed, and these two examples are further indications that SIJS was the Common Name in the Wikipedia sense even if he was known as JS to his friends. As you say, SIJS was "more formal" and was his "full name," which are just what the guidelines say we should use. The Google, Google Scholar, and WOrldCat searches overwhelmingly show that the Common Name was SIJS, and not just in "older sources" but in recent writings. Tiedemann's Handbook of Christianity in China Vol Two, for instance, indexes him under Samuel Isaac. But it's hard to find public references to him as JS.

While we're at it, would you like to add a pronunciation of his name? This would be a service! ch (talk) 20:52, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

Although I appreciate that these things can sometimes be complicated, I believe that my comments do accurately express the WP:COMMONNAME principles. The principles do not say that we should use people's full names for article names unless that is how they were also commonly known.

Also, I did not say anything about how he was known to his friends (this is not necessarily a person's "common name") and I have provided recent online sources which I believe reliably and clearly show that his common name was in fact "Joseph" (such as also on the Episcopal Church's official website which often uses people's full names at first, even when it's not their common name (George Bell being another example on this website) but then uses their common name in the appointed prayers.

Which first name a person is commonly known by is much more important than how many sources use the full name. You seem to be confused about what "common name" actually means as opposed to a person's full name or formal name as usually used in the kinds of references you have mentioned. Those kind of sources would normally use his full or formal name rather than his common name. And the Handbook of Christianity in China has obviously made a mistake by not including "Joseph" at all in his name. This is not an uncommon mistake in publications when people are not known by the first of their "first names" ~ especially when it also isn't the second of the person's names.

The following part of the WP:COMMONNAMES guidelines needs noting:

Ambiguous or inaccurate names for the article subject, as determined in reliable sources,

are often avoided even though they may be more frequently used by reliable sources.

On this principle I would maintain that using his full name, "even though (it) may be more frequently used by reliable sources", is "inaccurate" for the article subject as it appears clear from other sources that his common name was actually Joseph Schereschewsky. If you are still unconvinced then I suggest that you consider seeking other editors' thoughts on how the common name principles apply to this article.

I am not the person to ask about the pronunciation of his surname. Cheers, Anglicanus (talk) 04:06, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

Thank you again for your thoughtful reply and explanation of your reasoning! However it still seems clear that WP:COMMONNAME calls for SIJS.

Wikipedia usually prefers the name that is most commonly used (as determined by its prevalence in reliable English-language sources) as such names will be the most recognizable and the most natural

And:

it prefers to use the name that is most frequently used to refer to the subject in English-language reliable sources, including other encyclpedias and those sources used as references for the article.

You are right that this allows for the use of other names if the full name is "ambiguous or inaccurate," and I am grateful for this reference, which I will keep in mind for use in other articles.

WP:CRITERIA calls for

• Recognizability -- in real life I am familiar with this general field and when I saw "JS" I did not recognize it.
• Naturalness, that is, "one that readers are likely to look for... that editors would naturally use to link..." The "what links here" show only links from SIJS. This means that no other Wikipedia articles use JS.
• Precision: Each is precise enough, but JS is the name of other men and might need to be disambiguated (see WorldCat). This is not an important argument.
• Conciseness. SIJS is less concise.
• Consistency: It is consistent with Arthur Henderson Smith, Tarleton Perry Crawford, neither of whom was normally called by those names, and any number of the articles in the category Category:Christian missionaries in China. A search of Wikipedia for "Joseph Schereschewsky" yields something like 18 hits for SIJS, one for JS, and one for SJ. There is no reference to JS in the Wikipedia article now titled JS (the first sentence is SIJS; the references to other encyclopedias in the External Links are both SIJS (the article in Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Christianity is written by Paul Clasper, surely a leading authority on the history of the church in China!)

I sincerely searched for WorldCat and Google references to JS, but found only the one you gave. There may well be others, but I am still hard put to see SIJS as inaccurate or ambiguous on the basis of one reference. Can we say "common name was actually JS"? The Episcopal Official Website is the source from which the other two references are drawn (neither of these two is a Reliable Source in any case). The church website needs your expertise to be interpreted. (Interpreting a Primary Source is WP:OR, but that's not an important argument).

In short, the evidence for the fact that his "common name was actually JS" is actually only one reference.

Summary

Before we call in other editors, let me sum up what I see as the considerations in weighing the guidelines in WP:COMMONNAME:

• SJIS is the most widely (almost exclusively) used name: in his own publications; in scholarship concerning him; in general use, as found the in searches above; in Wikipedia generally; in the references in the article (as well as in the article itself); JS is (so far) used only in a church document which requires interpretation, perhaps WP:OR.
• These findings do not require the use of SJIS because they are inaccurate or ambiguous: The Episcopal Church website, under the listing SJIS, refers to him as JS.

Is this fair?

I would be happy to see the first sentence of the article say something like "Samuel Isaac Joseph Schereschewsky, known as Joseph Schereschewsky..." (now that I look at it, the part about his Chinese name doesn't look right, but that's another matter).

All the best.

ch (talk) 17:21, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

PS I found a pronunciation at the External Link American Encyclopedia 1920 article titled (ahem!) SJIS: skĕr-ĕs-kūs'kĭ. ch (talk) 17:21, 20 January 2014 (UTC)