Forum:Zola what's-her-name

I've started this topic for discussion of an issue which I raised a long time ago, which has now come to a head.

I had felt that, despite our general policy of accepting the Cast List as the final authority for character names, it would be reasonable to apply some intelligence and judgement to the use of those names for our purposes, which are different from those of the Foglios' Cast List

The Cast List is very useful for information that is not always present in a single place in the comic itself, and should still be considered an important resource.

Originally, I had felt, however, that the name

Zola "Heterodyne"

wasn't appropriate as an article title, since the title of an article is intended to serve as an index for looking up the character.

At the time the issue was raised by me, what ended up happening was that the article was moved back to its original title, but I was able to make the more modest change of having the article alphabetized under Z rather than under H, which at least addressed the most glaring issue.

Now, the comic has revealed Zola's "real name" to us:

ZOLA LA SIRÈNE D'OR

given the limitations of comic-book typography.

So someone else moved the article to reflect our new knowledge of her real name, to

Zola La Sirène d'Or

and then I, in shock at the solecism, changed the article title to

Zola la Sirène d'Or

since one doesn't capitalize a definite article in the middle of a title.

However, while this is the name as it was uttered by Gilgamesh Wulfenbach, it doesn't quite make sense as it stands. "La Sirène d'Or" is not a surname; it is obviously a stage name. The page title probably really should be

Zola, "La Sirène d'Or"

but this would be taking a liberty with what appeared in the canon (adding punctuation on our own account!) that I suspect others working on this wiki would not find acceptable.

Until such time as her birth surname becomes available (or she gets married... some have speculated she might yet end up as Zola Sturmvoraus, for example, and that it would serve Tarvek right) I am still very much of the opinion that it would be most appropriate for our purpose to just title the article "Zola". --Quadibloc 21:23, October 21, 2009 (UTC)