Talk:Gogol

Gogol
"Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol, Russian writer, April 1, 1809 — March 4, 1852." I know we never ended up figuring out the US presidents issue but this almost certainly does not make any sense to keep. --Yair rand 07:24, 22 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Please don't rush! surnames are allowed. The detailed description allows this entry in any case, it's just any surname. If you ask me about the presidents' names' issue, they should be kept as well. --Anatoli 07:51, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
 * The entry does not include the surname definition at the moment. I am nominating the definition that refers specifically to one person. --Yair rand 08:08, 22 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Yair rand, Gogol is a surname and Nikolai Gogol happened to bear it. Please check if the current format is sufficient. --Anatoli 08:36, 22 December 2009 (UTC)


 * The sense line content about the author seems encycylopedic. The WP link should be to the disambiguation page if we are to retain our focus on words. The alternative is to be a short-attention-span version of WP. I like the etymology, though I'm not sure how best to present the species information. DCDuring TALK * Holiday Greetings! 11:50, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
 * The information that Gogol is a Russian and Ukrainian surname meets CFI and should be kept, but the information that the name also belongs to Nikolai Gogol (which was all that was there when I RFD'd this) is unnecessary and should be deleted from Gogol and all translations. (BTW, should I have used since it was clear that the surname sense still needed to be added?) --Yair rand 17:58, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

Delete, per nom, the stuff that was nominated for deletion. —Ruakh TALK 21:02, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete, however if it is attestable as a surname in a Latin language, add that and delete this. Mglovesfun (talk) 20:20, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

Keep; I tend to favor keeping shorthand versions of the names of well-known authors. Their surnames are frequently used metonymically to refer to the corpus of their works, or to an individual copy of a work by that author. Metonymic usage is inherently idiomatic. --EncycloPetey 04:34, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

FYI I've split the senses and moved the RFD to rfd-sense, as it is the sense that is being sent to deletion, not the entry.

I rather keep the definition "Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol, Russian writer, April 1, 1809 — March 4, 1852", as:
 * (a) we have Aristotle--"An ancient Greek philosopher (382–322 BC), student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great" along with "Aristotelian",
 * (b) "Gogolian" is attestable per, and
 * (c) "Gogolian" needs to be defined in some way, but it cannot be defined merely as "of or pertaining to any Russian notable person bearing the surname 'Gogol'", as that is clearly not what it means; it unambiguously picks Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol.

This admittedly opens the door for similarly formed encyclopedic one-line summaries of various notable people who have managed through their notability to generate an adjective derived from their surname that unambiguously refers to them. A case in point is "Popper"--"Karl Popper, an Austrian and British philosopher"--per "Popperian", or "Kuhn"--"Thomas Samuel Kuhn, an American intellectual"--per Kuhnian. --Dan Polansky 13:21, 27 December 2009 (UTC)


 * I think stuff like Shakespeare and Voltaire can be considered an uncountable common noun - I read some Voltaire last night. Admittedly this would allow a lot of extra entries, thousands or even tens of thousands. Mglovesfun (talk) 14:16, 27 December 2009 (UTC)


 * What about Bangsian? It seems like this could open quite a door.--Prosfilaes 15:35, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

Delete the specific-person sense, but keep the surname. Gogolian “opens the door” only to mentioning the person in its own etymology. —Michael Z. 2010-03-22 18:20 z 

Delete the person sense, keep the surname sense. Gogolian should mention this Russian writer in its definition with a link to Wikipedia, not Wiktionary. --Vahagn Petrosyan 15:22, 28 March 2010 (UTC)
 * The US president entries now have been deleted, and this is being deleted as well. Fails. Mglovesfun (talk) 08:22, 4 April 2010 (UTC)