Talk:William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham

Contents

1 Naming, Part the First 2 Naming, Part the Second 3 Prime Minister - once or twice? 4 Merging

Naming, Part the First

we should probably move him back to "William Pitt the Elder", since that is what he is known as most comonly -- Tarquin 00:26, 7 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I agree. See Wikipedia:Naming conventions and more specifically Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names). These basically say to use the most common name of a person. 30 pages link to William Pitt the Elder and only 3 to the other version. Angela 00:34, 7 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Naming, Part the Second

Once again convention prevails against common sense. A man universally known as "William Pitt the Elder" is now treated under "William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham", by which he was not known, nor ever could be: the surname and the title are not used together. Why do we not treat him under "William Pitt, 1st Viscount Pitt of Burton Pynsset, 1st Earl of Chatham"? - Binky 03:23, 5 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Move this to William Pitt the Elder. Lirath Q. Pynnor

This is ridiculous. He is very frequently known as William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham. Certainly more often than Disraeli is Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield. Go over there and complain first. Until you get that moved back to Benjamin Disraeli, Chatham stays. john 05:42, 5 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Again, there's a discussion of this over at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Peerage. Go voice your opinion there. The current consensus seems to be that most people should be known by their highest title, with some exceptions (I tend to think that many 20th century personages who were given peerage titles after retirement - and probably earlier figures in similar situations like Robert Walpole) should be given their common name. Most other people should be listed by their higher title. Certainly there's absolutely no excuse for referring to an eighteenth century personage, who is very commonly referred to as Chatham (there are 4,220 hits on Google for "Earl of Chatham" - I'd imagine that most of these are for the first earl, rather than his elder son. And there are 2,040 hits for "Lord Chatham". Certainly nowhere near as many as for "William Pitt", but both have more hits than does "William Pitt the Elder"). For the latter part of his career, he is certainly universally known as "Chatham". This should be enough for Chatham to be the name in use, since obviously isn't going to be called "Chatham" for the time before he received the title. john 05:52, 5 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Also, Binky says: the surname and the title are not used together. Please tell this to the hundreds of other articles on peers which do exactly this, and the numerous lists of officeholders which do the same, including those in Handbook of British Chronology. Note such fine articles as Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston, Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, Archibald Philip Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery, Edward Geoffrey Smith Stanley, 14th Earl of Derby, Edward Henry Stanley, 15th Earl of Derby, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. If you have a problem with the official naming convention take it up on the names and titles convention page, or on the wikiproject peerage page. john 05:59, 5 Jan 2004 (UTC)

In regards to the surnames being used with titles, I concur entirely with John Kenney. There are severable respected sources that use surnames with titles, including Britannica. -- Lord Emsworth 21:24, Jan 5, 2004 (UTC)

Prime Minister - once or twice?

After a brief interlude, Pitt was recalled by King George II and became Prime Minister in a coalition government with Newcastle. As wartime Prime Minister Pitt oversaw the defeat of France in India and Canada before his disagreements with King George III led to his resignation in 1761.

According to List_of_Prime_Ministers_of_the_United_Kingdom he was Prime Minister once (between 1766-68). One of the articles has to be wrong. --Nk 13:40, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)

As Secretary of the State for the Southern Department between 1757 and 1761, Pitt was the leading figure in the ministry, and might be unofficially referred to as "Prime Minister." Newcastle was the official head of the ministry, at least insofar a ministries at this point can be said to have "official" heads - prime minister at this point was still an informal office. john k 15:29, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Have rewritten to get round using the term "Prime Minister". Timrollpickering 16:24, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Merging

Does anyone feel brave enough to merge the two sets of text into a single article? Timrollpickering 16:24, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Argh, this page needs to be merged sometime... ugen64 23:37, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Typical - you make a stab at merging, then someone suddenly notices that it's a copyvio, and it all gets deleted.

*sighs*

James F. (talk) 00:53, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)