AuH2ORepublican

Hello. Can you explain what you've been doing? Bianchi-Bihan (kaozeal) 7 Gou 2016 da 05:47 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for reaching out to me. I wanted to explain my changes, but am unable to do so in Breton.

Last week, I noticed that the name and parentage of Cadell, the King of Powys who died in 808, was incorrect in both his English-language Wikipedia article and that of his predecessor as king (Brochfael ap Elisedd). As the Pillar of Eliseg and other sources make clear, Cadell was the son of his predecessor, Brochfael ab Elisedd, and thus his Welsh patronymic name was Cadell ap Brochfael. While this information was all presented correctly in the German-language Wikipedia articles for Cadell ap Brochfael and Brochfael ap Elisedd, the corresponding articles in English, Catalan, Welsh and Breton mistakenly referred to Cadell as "Cadell ap Elisedd," the brother (not the son) of his predecessor Brochfael ap Elisedd. As I mentioned in the Talk pages for the English-language articles on the Pillar of Eliseg (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Pillar_of_Eliseg) and Cadell ap Brochfael (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Cadell_ap_Brochfael), I suspect that the mistake stemmed from a source shortening the long form of King Cadell's name ("Cadell ap Brochfael ap Elisedd") to the erroneous "Cadell ap Elisedd," which naturally led people with knowledge of the use of Welsh patronymics to assume that Cadell was the brother, not the son, of Brochfael ap Elisedd.

After confirming that King Cadell of Powys indeed was the son of Brochfael, I proceeded to correct references to Cadell's name and parentage on the English-language Wikipedia articles mantioning him, including renaming the article about the king so that it is titled "Cadell ap Brochfael." The Welsh-language article on the king was titled "Cadell Powys," so there was no need to rename the article, and I merely modified its text so that (i) his patronymic name is given as "Cadell ap Brochfael" instead of "Cadell ab Elisedd" (the article had used the alternate "ab" prefix sometimes used in Welsh when the father's name starts with a vowel) and (ii) Brochfael is described not as his "frawd," but as his "dad" (which is the spelling used in Welsh-language Wikipedia articles on Kings of Powys instead of the alternate "tad" with which I was more familiar); I also made the corresponsing changes to the Welsh-language page on Brochfael ab Elisedd. Given that I largely understand Catalan due to my fluency in Spanish, I felt comfortable renaming the Catalan-language article titled "Cadell ap Elisedd" (and corrected his name and parentage therein), and made corresponding changes to the Catalan-language pages for Brochfael ap Elisedd and "Regne de Powys" ("Kingdom of Powys"). So far, so good.

Which brings me to the Brteon-language article on Cadell of Powys. Unlike in the case of its close cousin Welsh (with which I have some familiarity, not that I know more than a few words), I was not familiar with Breton, but I quickly figured out that "vreur" (similar to the Welsh "frawd") means "brother," and "dad" of course means "father" (just as in Welsh). However, unlike the case of the Welsh-language article on King Cadell, the Breton-language article included the patronymic in its title, which would require renaming. I proceeded to rename the article, substituting "Brochfael" for "Elisedd"; I then changed the patronymic within the article, and substituted the word "dad" for "vreur" to signify that Brochfael was Cadell's father, not brother. In the article titled "Braochfael ab Elisedd," I also changed Cadell's patronymic from Ëlisedd" to Brochfael." That would have been the extent of my changes had I not realized at such time that the original Breton-language article on Cadell of Powys was titled "Cadell ab [not ap] Elisedd," abd that by substituting "Brochfael" for "Elisedd" I inadvertently had created the cacophonic name "Cadell ab Brochfael." Given that in Welsh the suffix "ab" is reserved for cases in which the word is followed by a word commencing with a vowel, and certainly never would be used to precede a word commencing with the letter "B," I knew that I had to correct my mistake. In hindsight, I should have pressed "undo" and renamed the article correctly, but what I did was to rename the article a second time, in order to title it by its correct name: "Cadell ap Brochfael." I tried to explain the reason for the change by writing "Ap", ne "ab" in the space in which one explains the change made, believing that I had written "Ap, not ab" in Breton; if this was not the case, then I apologize. In any event, I then made the same change in the text of the two Breton-language articles that I had edited so that the name was spelled "Cadell ap Brochfael" each time that it was used.

I see from the change that you made to the "Cadell ap Brochfael" article that substituting "vreur" with "dad" was not suffifient to convey that Cadell had succeeded his father as King of Powys, and for that I apologize as well. My intent was to make clear to all Wikipedia readers, irrespective of their language of choice, that Cadell was the son, not the brother, of Brochfael. Please feel free to make any additional changes that you feel are required to express this fact correctly.

So thank you for your interest, and for your corrective edits. I certainly will be more careful the next time that I find a Breton-language article requiring correction.

AuH2ORepublican (kaozeal) 7 Gou 2016 da 17:49 (UTC)

Thanks for your explanations; Bianchi-Bihan (kaozeal) 7 Gou 2016 da 18:48 (UTC)