Talk:Panagia tou Harou

Name

I do admit to being unfamiliar with this icon and church. However, it strikes me that "Panagia tou Harou" may not fit with OrthodoxWiki's attempt to name articles with "standard English spelling and usage." I don't know enough about this instance to say whether it should be an exception, but I would like to ask someone who does know or can find out whether "Virgin Mary of Haron" or "Panagia of Haron" would be more in keeping with the Style Manual's naming conventions. It is not a question of "believing" whether this is the name of the icon, but whether this particular name is commonly used in English-speaking countries, rather than being a transliteration of the Greek. I hope I'm making sense here. —magda (talk) 00:34, May 2, 2008 (UTC)

You ARE making sence but if you take out the "believing" you take out the "essence" and you become the wolf clothed in the skin of the sheep ...be careful that this site does not OVER-homogenise Orthodoxy and take out the hidden pearl that the Americans fell in love with in the first place!

It is not very hard for an English person to come to know the original icons the way they are known in their original home towns, such as PANAGIA OF HAROU (and I even bow down to Our Lady of Tikvon icon, bravo for using that terminology since that is how you know her). But please Do not change all the names from these articles, please! They make sence to BE - That IS - Who she IS as she IS.

Also, the Style Manual is a dynamic document which gets modified AS IT SUITS to implement a set of 'rules' for consistency, I get that but the Theotokos should not be restricted to a set of rules ... if in some countries, she is referred to as "Panagia", I think we should honour her that way, in others she is referred to as "Virgin Mary" and in others as "Maria Theotokos" - we must honour each individual icon as closely as possible to its original name, not to what is 'easiest' for the English world. Remember - there is always the list of Icons of the Theotokos, if someone is interested.

My opinion. Please do not change this article's name. Vasiliki 01:36, May 2, 2008 (UTC)

"Original name" is not the OrthodoxWiki standard. (If it were, our article on Jesus Christ would instead be named Yeshua el-Mashiach.) It is true that the Style Manual has been modified over time, but it's been a very long time since there were any truly major modifications.

Using whatever is the English-speaking Orthodox standard is, I think, going to remain standard—the reason for that is so that the primary readers of OrthodoxWiki—English-speaking Orthodox—can easily look up what they're trying to find. OrthodoxWiki's naming conventions are not to promote some particular nomenclature, but rather to represent what is currently dominant among English-speaking Orthodox. It's not a question of what's "easy" or "original," but rather of what is the most common reference in English-speaking Orthodoxy.

None of this restricts the Theotokos or any of our subjects to a set of rules, but it does restrict the articles. It's really for practical reasons—ease of reference. This is standard for any encyclopedia. You wouldn't look in a Greek-language encyclopedia for "United States of America," but rather for Ηνωμένες Πολιτείες της Αμερικής (despite the English version being the original). The same principle applies here. —Fr. Andrew ^talk contribs (THINK!) 01:49, May 2, 2008 (UTC)