Talk:Daphne

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: not moved. Sennecaster (Chat) 22:57, 15 September 2025 (UTC)

• Daphne → Daphne (naiad)Daphne (naiad)
• Daphne (disambiguation) → Daphne

– Not the primary topic. Being the original source of the name is also not determinative, despite that being a popular misconception. Searches in Google Books, Google Search, [https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=%22Daphne%22&ia=web DuckDuckGo, and Google Scholar overwhelmingly use the word to refer to people and characters named Daphne and the plant genus Daphne. It is not our goal to astonish our readers, but having an obscure Greek naiad at this title is undoubtedly astonishing. (I tried this as a bold move, but it was reverted (with no grounds in policy, I'll note), so here we are.) Cremastra (talk · contribs) 19:32, 16 August 2025 (UTC)

Your bold "overwhelmingly" is not an accurate summary, and your "no grounds in policy" and "so here we are" are unhelpfully flippant: please assume good faith. Calling the Greek mythology character "obscure" is quite a mischaracterization, which says more about your own lack of familiarity with the common stories of Greek mythology and their broad cultural impact than it does about the topic.

Daphne the plant genus consists of a large number (apparently about 75–90) of different species, and Daphne the given name refers to a large number of unrelated people (both article subjects and authors). So there are a large number of (somewhat) unrelated topics mentioning the name "Daphne" involved in a search. When you do your search you are adding these all together, but that is substantially misleading. Some of the people named Daphne who come up toward the top of such a search are not even included in our list at Daphne (given name). If you pick any single species of Daphne or any particular other person named Daphne, you will find that they are mentioned less often than the mythology character in places like books and scholarly literature.

In a scholarly literature search, the use of Daphne to refer to the Greek mythology character vs. the genus of plants (per se) are both common (the name Daphne qua name, is a very rare topic), but biology/medicine are large fields which tend to use many citations, so when there's a paper of vague relevance to some topic (say medicinal plants) then you can end up with a very big citation count, as papers about only marginally related topics keep citing a particular paper. As a result you end up with high-citation-count papers that float toward the top of your list because citation counts are prioritized by your search algorithm. Something similar happens with the long tail of miscellaneous people named Daphne.

We can get a pretty reasonable idea about what readers here are looking for by looking at page views. Over the past few years, our article about the Greek mythology character consistently gets about 3 times as many page views as the article about the plant genus, 6+ times as many views as the article about the given name, and about 30 times as many views as disambiguation page. This indicates that we're currently doing a pretty good job meeting readers' intentions, and putting the disambiguation page first would mostly serve to get in people's way and force an extra click. There are a few people named Daphne who get many page views, e.g. Daphne du Maurier and Daphne Zuniga, but since they have inherently disambiguating full names, readers don't seem to have trouble finding them and don't seem to be searching for them using the name "Daphne" alone.

Many similar articles at Wikipedia follow the same pattern as this one. For example, Jason, Hector, Clio, and Electra aim at the corresponding mythology characters even though these are not uncommon names for people and other things (and of course also more obvious examples like Zeus, Hera, Apollo, etc.). In cases where the Greek mythology character isn't the main topic, it's usually something like Pluto where there's a topic of much wider interest with the same name.

I oppose your move, but there is a change that would be worthwhile: including an extra explicit hatnote pointing from the top of Daphne to the article about the genus of plants, and possibly removing the hatnote pointing at the name article which doesn't seem to be of as much interest as I would have expected. One more change that might be helpful is finding the several people named Daphne who are of most reader interest, and listing those people not only at Daphne (given name) but also explicitly listing them at Daphne (disambiguation). –jacobolus (t) 21:25, 16 August 2025 (UTC)

I'm sorry if my comments came across as flippant. I disagree with your approach to primary topic determination and will respond in full presently. Thanks, Cremastra (talk · contribs) 00:42, 17 August 2025 (UTC)

There's clearly some disagreement in this kind of case. See e.g. the no consensus result at Talk:Jason § Requested move 1 November 2023. –jacobolus (t) 04:07, 17 August 2025 (UTC)

So there are a large number of (somewhat) unrelated topics mentioning the name "Daphne" involved in a search. When you do your search you are adding these all together, but that is substantially misleading. I do not believe this approach is misleading.

I add all the species together because they are all contained with in the genus Daphne. They aren't partial title matches; instead, it's one concept – the genus Daphne – split into many subtopics, each one with its own article. Your approach, which considers any single species of Daphne or any particular other person named Daphne, I think adds divisions which aren't pertinent here.

We are not trying to determine which is the primary topic between Daphne (naiad) and, say, Daphne acutiloba. The species is not relevent. But the species is part of a set of topics – the genus Daphne – and that set of topics is what is rivalling Daphne (naiad) for PTOPIC. My approach to adding together all the species and genus mentions reflects this. The genus Daphne is not one topic but a whole set of topics. Same with the first name: the given name Daphne is not one topic but a set of topics: all people with the given name Daphne. If we consider each person individually, they are indeed unrelated, but they do more than "mention" the name Daphne: they are part of the name Daphne. The idea of Daphne as a given name is one concept which contains all people named Daphne within it. By considering each person named Daphne and each species in the genus Daphne discretely, we are needlessly splitting apart what act as cohesive sets of topics in the reader's mind. If I'm a reader who types in "Daphne" in the search bar, looking for the genus article, I'm not looking for just the genus, because the genus by definition includes all the species. A genus is literally nothing if it doesn't contain species. Similarly if I'm looking up "Daphne" in the hopes of getting to an article about the given name, all the people with the given name contribute to the notability of the given name. A given name is not a name if no one is given it. A very obscure given name has far less pull on primary topic than a relatively common one, but in both cases there will be few sources discussing the name qua name. But a common given name has more people associated with it; thus, the set of topics the given name contains is larger. We have three sets of topics: the set of species, the set of people, and the set of naiads – the last set only containing one topic. There is no primary topic among the sets, based on my search results.

This is very clear in my head, but I'm not confident I'm communicating this well. Cremastra (talk · contribs) 20:33, 17 August 2025 (UTC)

do more than "mention" the name Daphne: they are part of the name Daphne – By this logic, York should redirect to New York or should be turned into a separate disambiguation page pointing readers toward New York. I don't think it's accurate to say that every multi-part name is "part" of the concept of whatever word forms one part of the name. What we're trying to do here with our naming of articles is not to make a formal declaration that one topic is more important than another, but to help readers find articles about the particular topics they are interested in, hopefully with some efficiency. If someone wants to look up Daphne du Maurier, the topic of interest to them is not the first name, but the (non-mononymous person), and if page views are anything to go by, they aren't getting there by looking for the title "Daphne" and then trying to click through disambiguation pages, but are instead directly searching for the full name or arriving via wikilink. –jacobolus (t) 22:17, 17 August 2025 (UTC)

City names don't work like genus names and people names. (New York) is one thing, the name "Daphne du Maurier" is (Daphne) (du Maurier) because we think of first names and last names as separate entities: hence you might call her "Mrs du Maurier" or "Daphne", but you wouldn't call "New York" just "York", because that obviously refers to a different topic, York. Cremastra (talk · contribs) 18:27, 18 August 2025 (UTC)

• Oppose The naiad is indeed primary by longterm significance, and gets the majority of pageviews. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 23:34, 16 August 2025 (UTC)

  @Zxcvbnm Why is it primary by longterm significance? Wouldn't a living organism have more longterm significance than a character in mythology? Cremastra (talk · contribs) 20:34, 17 August 2025 (UTC)

  As stated below, it's likely the shrub was named after the naiad. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 18:46, 18 August 2025 (UTC)

  The order of naming is lost to obscurity. Perhaps that was already the name of the shrub, and some enterprising myth writer came up with a story after the fact like a just-so story to explain that name. BD2412 T 22:32, 18 August 2025 (UTC)

  What? No, the names of the nymph and the laurel tree are 3+ thousand years old, but Linnaeus named the shrub genus in the 18th century AD. –jacobolus (t) 02:05, 19 August 2025 (UTC)

• Strong support. Contrary to ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ's understanding, clearer primary topic by pageviews would be Daphne Blake, who is universally best known just as "Daphne". We have dozens of people named Daphne, for whom no naiad comes to mind when their names are mentioned. BD2412 T 17:42, 18 August 2025 (UTC)
  • By the way, the huge spike in views for "Daphne" in March of this year, accounting for about 44,000 page views, is almost certainly attributable to the introduction of a major storyline for a new character by this name on the American soap opera, The Bold and the Beautiful. BD2412 T 17:49, 18 August 2025 (UTC)

  The word "Daphne" doesn't appear anywhere on The Bold and the Beautiful; perhaps it would be worth mentioning there if it is of significant interest. But anyway, if you think the spike of interest on the page about the Greek mythology character was related to a soap opera, perhaps readers were curious to learn about the soap opera character's namesake.

  A search for «"Daphne Blake"» gives almost no results in searches of books or academic literature, and «daphne "scooby doo"» gives only marginally more. I don't see any evidence that people looking for the Scooby Doo character were going to Daphne on their way to trying to find Daphne Blake. Is there a way to get data about this? As for "universally best known just as "Daphne'", I don't see any particular evidence of this: If I search the web for «daphne scooby doo», basically every result I can see is either titled "Daphne Blake" or mentions "Daphne Blake" near the top. –jacobolus (t) 18:01, 18 August 2025 (UTC)

  perhaps readers were curious to learn about the soap opera character's namesake. Respectfully, that seems highly unlikely. The average person is not very interested in Greek mythology, and this character is obscure for the ordinary person. I consider myself to have an average, ie very limited, knowledge of Greek mythology, and I cannot name you a single naiad. Cremastra (talk · contribs) 18:24, 18 August 2025 (UTC)

  The newly introduced Daphne character appears on List of The Bold and the Beautiful cast members. BD2412 T 19:54, 18 August 2025 (UTC)

  If readers are, indeed, very interested in the "Daphne" character per se, perhaps it should be mentioned on the main page about the show. The actress also doesn't seem to have a Wikipedia page. –jacobolus (t) 20:29, 18 August 2025 (UTC)

  Are you just ignoring longterm significance entirely? How would a Scooby character have more longterm significance than a mythological Greek figure?

  While there is an argument for the shrub genus, one has to assume that it was also named after the mythological figure and didn't just randomly happen to have the same name. Thus, the naiad is the clear winner when it comes to longterm significance, even if not pageviews. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 18:43, 18 August 2025 (UTC)

  @Zxcvbnm While there is an argument for the shrub genus, one has to assume that it was also named after the mythological figure and didn't just randomly happen to have the same name.

  That is a classic misconception of how long-term significance works. Please read my opening statement again. Being the original source of the name is also not determinative. Cremastra (talk · contribs) 18:47, 18 August 2025 (UTC)

  The actual misconception is believing that "not determinative" means that it "cannot be used to determine" things. While the source of the name does not NECESSARILY mean it is primary, it can still factor into it. An identical error happened fairly recently at User talk:Zxcvbnm#Talk:Grok (chatbot).

  To sum things up, the naiad is both important in history and has significant pageviews. The Scooby character is popular, but unimportant in history, while the shrub is important, but less popular and was likely named after the naiad. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 18:51, 18 August 2025 (UTC)

  To sum things up, the naiad is both important in history Pssh, no.

  and has significant pageviews. Likely misguided ones from confused people looking for other things.

  while the shrub is important, but less popular and was likely named after the naiad Who cares if it was named after the naiad!? You say The actual misconception is believing that "not determinative" means that it "cannot be used to determine" things. That's so self-evidently ludicrous I'd ask you to read that a few times to yourself out loud. "Not determinative" does, in fact, mean it "cannot be used to dertermine" things. That is what it means. While the source of the name does not NECESSARILY mean it is primary, it can still factor into it. No, it shouldn't. An identical error happened fairly recently at User talk:Zxcvbnm#Talk:Grok (chatbot). By "error" I assume you mean your own error in misinterpreting policy. I think 162 etc. for pointing this out on your talk page. Cremastra (talk · contribs) 18:57, 18 August 2025 (UTC)

  Without responding to the rest of it, WikiNav indicates that 7% of the pageviews proceed to the DAB page. This still does not make up for the view discrepancy, which is more than 50%. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 19:26, 18 August 2025 (UTC)

  Are you seriously questioning the comparable cultural significance of Scooby Doo? The naiad Daphne has appeared in one Webcomic, Lore Olympus. The Scooby Doo version of Daphne has appeared in literally dozens of media instalments over a half-century, including TV series and films. BD2412 T 19:52, 18 August 2025 (UTC)

  "has appeared in one Webcomic" – I can only assume you did basically no searching at all. The Greek mythology character appeared in Ovid's Metamorphoses, one of the most influential works in the history of western civilization. In reference to Ovid's version of the Daphne myth alone, "A simple list of such imitations occupies no fewer than eleven closely-printed pages of Jane Reid's monumental reference work, The Oxford Guide to Classical Mythology in the Arts, 1300-1900s." (here's a link) Some other appearances include Petrarch's Il Canzoniere, plays by Lope de Vega and Calderón, Busenello's opera Gli amori d'Apollo e di Dafne, Strauss's opera Daphne, Harry Partch's Daphne of the Dunes, various Sylvia Plath poems, E. M. Forster's short story Other Kingdom, the sculpture Apollo and Daphne by Bernini, a wide range of famous paintings including by Rubens, Waterhouse, etc., and obviously also shows up in most discussions/collections of common Greek myths. Scooby Doo is a fleeting fad by comparison. –jacobolus (t) 20:25, 18 August 2025 (UTC)

  I'm aware of the old media. I'm talking about new media. Do you think the average reader is more familiar with the works of Ovid and old plays and operas, or blockbuster films and cartoon characters in use for decades? You might as well be arguing that Mickey from the 1918 film, Mickey is a bigger deal than Mickey Mouse. Do you imagine that knowledge of Greek myths will persist while knowledge of the world famous and still productive cartoon character will fade into obscurity? BD2412 T 21:29, 18 August 2025 (UTC)

  This is a fair point. At this point the naiad occupies a very dusty plinth in the cultural consciousness. We don't have to encourage it, but we should reflect it. Daphne (given name), on the other hand, is timeless, as is Daphne (plant). Cremastra (talk · contribs) 21:50, 18 August 2025 (UTC)

  As a historical encyclopedia, only considering a mythological figure's impact on "new media" is pure WP:RECENTISM. The impact on media throughout history should be considered, and it is profound, as noted above. Being the source of the other names, while not determinative, is also still absolutely a consideration. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 22:55, 18 August 2025 (UTC)

  We shouldn't be prey to recentism's opposite, either, where we give older topics undue weight. In the course of history, the naiad is extremely minor. Cremastra (talk · contribs) 23:41, 18 August 2025 (UTC)

  Yes, Greek myths are not going anywhere, and Scooby Doo is likely to become obscure within the next century or less. –jacobolus (t) 02:07, 19 August 2025 (UTC)

  The notion that "Scooby Doo is likely to become obscure within the next century or less" is no less absurd than if someone had said in 1865 that the 1818 book Frankenstein would fall into obscurity, or had said in 1650 that the 1597 play Romeo and Juliet would be unknown by 1700. That is just not how popular culture works at all. The Scooby Gang are iconic archetype characters, and the scène à faire of a fake monster-of-the-week being unmasked as an old man who would have gotten away with his scheme but for the meddling kids is now far more ingrained in our social imagination than that of a supernatural girl being turned into a plant to escape the lust of a god. As much so as the sewn-together corpse brought to life with lightning bolts, or the star-crossed lovers who accidentally commit suicide together, or for that matter the rogue archer who steals from the rich and gives to the poor, or the brilliant detective who deduces everything about a person from a handful of barely noticeable clues. These characters are up there with the Looney Tunes and the Disney characters and a few others like the Flintstones and the Jetsons as what people a century or more from now will study as "the classics" of the most potent explosion of creativity the world had seen up to that point. In fact, they occupy a unique position in that regard. People from Kinshasa to Kolkata to Beijing to Buenas Aires know about the Scooby Gang, and probably know nothing about Greek naiads, because Scooby Doo achieved popularity just as global broadcasting became possible, and has endured ever since, retaining that popularity into the era when properties multiplied to the point where newer ones were just obscured by sheer numbers of inventions. BD2412 T 02:48, 19 August 2025 (UTC)

  Any particular bit of pop culture is highly unlikely to have the same staying power as Greek mythology, which has been persistently broadly influential for thousands of years, and continues to inspire sculptures, paintings, plays, poems, musical numbers, films, and heaps of literary criticism and historical analysis.

  For a comparable media format to cartoons, you should probably not be looking at one of the most famous and persistently popular stage play of all time, by the single most famous and influential author in English, but at something like Dime novels, Penny dreadfuls, or Pulp magazines. How many people today are still invested in The Liberty Boys of '76, Varney the Vampire, or The Phantom Detective?

  Of course we don't have any crystal ball, but empirically most popular media steadily loses relevance over time. It's hard to evaluate that within the first few decades, but over time most media loses its currency/relevance, and becomes a retro curiosity.

  We can get some indication of "ingrained in our social imagination" by a Google scholar search of the recent academic literature. If we limit ourselves to only papers from the past 15 years, to give a better idea of recent interest, «Daphne Apollo» returns 13,900 results, and «Daphne Scooby» returns 385. –jacobolus (t) 03:09, 19 August 2025 (UTC)

  A Newspapers.com search for the past half century yields 57,054 matches for Daphne and Apollo and 82,469 matches for Daphne and Scooby. Different databases are going to give different returns based on the type of audience they gauge, but it remains the case that the Scooby character has gotten more visits from Wikipedia users year over year than the mythological figure every single year since page views have been recorded. That adds up to a clear absence of a primary topic for the term, and that is only evaluating the mythological figure against one of dozens of alternatives, including, of course, the plant. BD2412 T 03:49, 19 August 2025 (UTC)

  The vast, vast majority of those newspaper entries consists of marketing material, stuff like TV guides or movie show times accompanied by a brief synopsis, and huge numbers of redundant copies syndicated reviews. Few if any of them says anything substantive about the show (or films, etc.), let alone discusses the character of "Daphne". –jacobolus (t) 03:57, 19 August 2025 (UTC)

  The name of the show is Scooby-Doo; in order for an entry to be mentioning "Daphne" at all, they have to be saying more about the show than the show time. BD2412 T 18:38, 20 August 2025 (UTC)

  I don't think these sources are meaningful evidence of anything except that Scooby Doo shows/films have been shown on cable TV. There are thousands of duplicate entries in every random newspaper, automatically pulled from some database, along the lines of: 7 p.m. on CARTOON: Scooby Doo and the Alien Invaders. This adventure finds Fred, Shaggy, Velma, Daphne and Scooby stranded in a remote desert town [...]. –jacobolus (t) 18:49, 20 August 2025 (UTC)

  How does pointing out the cultural ubiquity of the show diminish the primacy of the character? By the way, once you get through the first few dozen pages of Google Scholar hits, those citations are no better for the mythic figure. There are plenty of passing mentions in formally unpublished graduate student theses and the like. However, there are also things in newspapers like this full-page 2002 article in The Winnipeg Sun, "Puppy Love: Sarah puts a new spin on Daphne". BD2412 T 21:49, 20 August 2025 (UTC)

  I don't recognize your definition of "cultural ubiquity". Again, it mostly indicates that there was a character named Daphne included in a show and various films which routinely played on cable TV, and thus were mentioned in sources describing TV schedules, which used to include a dedicated appendix-like section of many local newspapers.

  Your linked article is better. It's a profile of Sarah Michelle Gellar, primarily focused on the actress, which discusses her then-current Scooby Doo role, among other roles. (Aside: notice that our article Sarah is about the namesake bible character, not about the actress.)

  None of this seems like particularly strong evidence to me vis-à-vis this discussion, though it does a good job supporting the notability of Daphne Blake as an article to include in Wikipedia. –jacobolus (t) 22:52, 20 August 2025 (UTC)

  The Biblical matriarch Sarah, believed by billions of people to be an actual historical person, is incalculably more important a figure than a one-shot Greek myth figure of ever-declining significance. No one really worships the Greek Gods any more, or assigns actual historical provenance to their stories. BD2412 T 18:33, 22 August 2025 (UTC)

  Precisely this. Also, the Greek myth character in question is not one of enduring historical significance like Zeus, Hera, or Achilles who most people have heard of. The average person on the street, has, I promise you, never heard of Daphne the naiad. She is of no relevance today and the fact that she occupies the base page name is nothing more than evidence of Wikipedia editors' undue obsession with all things Classical and Ancient, where we must have an article for every conceivable topic. Cremastra (talk · contribs) 18:39, 22 August 2025 (UTC)

  I think you are projecting from your own personal environment, personal interests, and gaps in personal knowledge. Sarah the bible character is just as culturally obscure to non-Christians as characters from Greek mythology. Judging by a search, Sarah's appearance in modern times is mostly in the context of niche Christian-focused media with limited reach to the broader popular culture.

  If you added up all of the mentions of people named "Sarah" you would certainly dwarf the number of mentions of the bible character, because Sarah is an extremely popular given name. In an academic literature search I see a Mathematica package, "StochAstic Recursive grAdient algoritHm", Sarah, Plain and Tall, Sarah Palin, many articles written by people named Sarah, various biographies of other people named Sarah, and it's not until several pages in that an occasional scattered reference to the bible appears. Looking at page views, Sarah Palin, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Sarah, Duchess of York, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Sarah Silverman, and Sarah Jessica Parker all dwarf the views for Sarah.

  The example is quite similar to that of Daphne. In both cases, we have the namesake at the main article title, because we (in my opinion correctly) assume that most readers looking up a specific other person with a common given name will search using the full name or some other context. –jacobolus (t) 19:02, 22 August 2025 (UTC)

  @Jacobolus: In my 20 years on Wikipedia, I have written over 9,000 articles on the entire range of subjects in the human experience. I have also been involved in the disambiguation project since the beginning. My own personal environment is the environment that has allowed me to accomplish this. My own personal interests are the interests that cover the entire range of this work. At the risk of veering into WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS territory, Sarah the bible character is not "just as culturally obscure to non-Christians as characters from Greek mythology". The character is also know to Judaism, of course, and in Islam (even though unnamed in the Quran itself). There is no genus of plants called "Sarah", and while Sarah averages about 2.5 times as many pageviews per day as Daphne, there is no other topic primarily known as "Sarah" that approaches the number of pageviews received by the article on the Biblical figure, which receives a substantial majority of all views for all topics by that name. For "Daphne" the situation is the opposite, with the article at that title falling well below a third of page views. An argument could also be made that the Biblical figure is not the primary topic of "Sarah", but that is not the discussion we are having here. BD2412 T 23:36, 22 August 2025 (UTC)

  A more similar situation is Rebecca, where I've started an RM. Cremastra (talk · contribs) 00:19, 23 August 2025 (UTC)

  The shrubs were named by Linnaeus because some of them have leaves that look similar to laurel leaves. (The myth goes that the nymph was turned into a laurel tree, and daphne also means "laurel" in Greek.) Arguably it's a very confusing name for the shrub genus, since laurels are magnoliids and Daphne shrubs are eudicots, so the two are not at all related, but we're stuck with it now. –jacobolus (t) 19:19, 18 August 2025 (UTC)

  Yes, but are shrub genera normally named after Greek rather than Latin terms? Either he turned around and decided to use the Greek word for laurel because he felt like it, or due to its association with the naiad. Of course, I fully accept I may be wrong here, in which case my argument kind of falls apart and there is indeed no primary topic. And a source for that information would also be helpful, of course - it should definitely be added to the article on the shrub, which lacks an etymology section. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 19:23, 18 August 2025 (UTC)

  As far as I can tell he didn't name it after the nymph per se, but based on the Ancient Greek word for laurel, though it's hard to be sure (maybe there's some research into Linnaeus's naming somewhere?). Some of the plants were already called something like "laurel", e.g. "spurge laurel" Daphne laureola (which is, confusingly, neither a spurge nor a laurel) From what I understand in Ancient Greek culture laurels were closely associated with the nymph and with Apollo due to this myth, but I'm not an expert. –jacobolus (t) 19:30, 18 August 2025 (UTC)

  @Jacobolus: Which is why the name is hyphenated as spurge-laurel^[1] - MPF (talk) 17:25, 20 August 2025 (UTC)

  Scientific names of organisms are often derived from Greek, as well as other languages besides Latin. And it is not unheard of for a Greek-derived scientific name to be applied to a different organism than what was referred to in classical Greek. Cactus was Greek for cardoon, and Cedrus was Greek for juniper. Plantdrew (talk) 15:40, 20 August 2025 (UTC)

• Oppose for the reasons already stated. Deiadameian (talk) 10:43, 20 August 2025 (UTC)

• Oppose as this appears to be the primary topic by both long-term significance and by page views. The long-term significance argument is obvious, given that nearly all other uses directly or indirectly refer back to the nymph. As for page views, the disambiguation page has hardly any traffic, and WikiNav suggests that very few people go there from here, despite a hatnote; the given name would be a better candidate, but still receives only a small fraction of the page views. The genus of shrubs is not really a candidate, but receives much more traffic than any of the other topics besides this one.

The arguments being advanced for moving this page appear to be erroneously characterized to mean "long-term significance is irrelevant when the subject is mythological", "figures from Greek mythology cannot be primary topics once other things are named after them," and "if you name something that has existed for millions of years after a mythological figure, that thing becomes primary by long-term significance because it is millions of years old". These arguments twist Wikipedia policy and guidelines into saying the opposite of what they they were intended to.

If there appeared to be real confusion or astonishment with readers reaching this article, there might be an argument for a page move. But the evidence strongly indicates that there is not. You can always find someone who was expecting to find something else, but that is normal for all articles, which is why only a fraction of article titles go directly to disambiguation pages. This appears to be less a "primary topic grab" than a "primary topic shove", disdain for a certain class of articles manifesting as a desire to see primary topic status removed, irrespective of what readers are most likely to be looking for. That is not a valid reason to change the primary topic. P Aculeius (talk) 14:58, 21 August 2025 (UTC)

The long-term significance argument is obvious, given that nearly all other uses directly or indirectly refer back to the nymph. As I've said many times in this discussion, that is not how we determine long-term significance. Cremastra (talk · contribs) 15:12, 21 August 2025 (UTC)

Your interpretation of long-term significance renders the clear language of the policy meaningless. It is wrong, and the proposed move should fail for that reason, as well as the lack of even a shadow of an argument based on page views. P Aculeius (talk) 22:38, 21 August 2025 (UTC)

@P Aculeius: Then "Boston" should be about Boston, Lincolnshire, the namesake of all later uses of the word, yes? Also, what pageviews are you looking at? BD2412 T 23:41, 21 August 2025 (UTC)

You're turning the plain language of the policy on its head. The fact that a topic has numerous namesakes is evidence of long-term significance, though that alone does not prove that the topic is primary. The backwards argument here is that a topic having lots of namesakes is evidence that it is not primary—and that long-term significance is therefore irrelevant to the discussion.

With respect to page views, over the last ninety days, this article receives over 300 daily page views. Over the same span, the disambiguation page receives an average of 12, about half that of the Strauss opera. The page about the name, which is not proposed as the primary topic, gets about 68, about half as many as the genus of shrubs. The feature films, the ships, the asteroid, and the comedy team all get considerably less traffic than that. So by page views, this is far and away the most heavily visited page from among all of the alternatives. Since both of the main criteria for determining a primary topic agree that this is it, it makes no sense to change the primary topic from a frequently-viewed page to a list that relatively few people visit. P Aculeius (talk) 00:34, 22 August 2025 (UTC)

BD's argument on pageviews. Cremastra (talk · contribs) 00:11, 22 August 2025 (UTC)

Here is a much more substantial look at pageviews for topics called "Daphne", of which the naiad, despite being the base page name, gets less that 27.5% of page views. BD2412 T 00:47, 22 August 2025 (UTC)

• Oppose. If the clearer primary topic by pageviews would be Daphne Blake, we can safely discount pageviews, leaving only one sense of primacy ... relevant, which is: enduring notability and educational value. That an ancient figure of mythology has endured notably longer than its competitors is straightforward. The comment above that People from Kinshasa to Kolkata to Beijing to Buenas (sic) Aires know about the Scooby Gang, and probably know nothing about Greek naiads demonstrates the educational value of the current situation. Come here to learn about Greek naiads! Srnec (talk) 03:56, 22 August 2025 (UTC)
  • @Srnec: Are you saying that we should discount page views because the subject of the nomination is not the primary topic by page views? That sounds impermissibly circular. I would also note that with the mythological character getting less than 28% of all page views, it is still not the primary topic even if the cartoon character is eliminated from consideration altogether. BD2412 T 15:39, 22 August 2025 (UTC)
    • I am saying we should discount pageviews because nobody has yet argued that the clearest primary topic by pageviews of all the topics that could go by the plain name "Daphne" should be the primary topic. And I do not foresee anyone doing so. In other words, nobody seems to be arguing that this is a PT1 case (i.e., nobody is arguing that there is a PT by the first criterion). I take it that this is a PT2 case and, indeed, everybody seems to be arguing as much. Either the naiad (or dryad) is PT2 or there is no PT. Pageviews are not relevant. Note that apple, the canonical example actually cited in the relevant guideline, gets far less than 28% of pageviews. Srnec (talk) 06:13, 23 August 2025 (UTC)
      • The mythical character used in one story is as important to human history as the actually-existing staple fruit, the apple? BD2412 T 16:02, 23 August 2025 (UTC)
        • The competing Daphnes are not exactly Apple Inc. Srnec (talk) 17:18, 23 August 2025 (UTC)
          • They don't have to be for there to be a clear absence of a primary topic. None of the uses of this term are at a high level of historical importance. Compare Narcissus. BD2412 T 18:19, 23 August 2025 (UTC)

            Narcissus is an excellent example of this situation. Cremastra (talk · contribs) 19:31, 23 August 2025 (UTC)

            Yes, there should clearly be a move there. Feel free to recommend the move Narcissus (mythology) -> Narcissus -> Narcissus (disambiguation). –jacobolus (t) 20:29, 23 August 2025 (UTC)

            @Jacobolus Do you object to a DAB page occupying the base page name (Narcissus) or do you honestly think that the mythological character is the primary topic over the plant – one of the best-known and recognized genera in the Western world? Cremastra (talk · contribs) 21:02, 23 August 2025 (UTC)

            Yes, the mythological character is the primary topic for the name "Narcissus". If you say "narcissus" to a typical person, they will first think of two things: the mythological character and associated myth, or the personality feature of narcissism which is named after him.

            The flowers are usually called "daffodils" except in technical botany contexts (and it is entirely appropriate that the name "daffodil" redirects to the flower). The less common scientific name "narcissus" for it was presumably chosen based on the mythological character. –jacobolus (t) 21:12, 23 August 2025 (UTC)

            You have a point, but I'm not entirely convinced. Cremastra (talk · contribs) 21:37, 23 August 2025 (UTC)

            I'll add that I have heard "Narcissus" used for the flowers often enough (along with other synonyms) that I was beginning to wonder if "daffodil" was an informal name. Though it's what I've always called them. However, until recently I wasn't aware of the distinction between daffodils and jonquils, so that may have been a factor (I'm not sure). P Aculeius (talk) 16:02, 24 August 2025 (UTC)

• Oppose, it may be that Daphne was originally from the Pre-Greek substrate, and the name may refer to the laurel tree. As such she may have been a dryad before settling on naiad. Abductive (reasoning) 08:12, 22 August 2025 (UTC)

  it may be that Daphne was originally from the Pre-Greek substrate, and the name may refer to the laurel tree. As such she may have been a dryad before settling on naiad. I'm not sure I follow your argument. Cremastra (talk · contribs) 13:54, 22 August 2025 (UTC)

  Can't be moved to Daphne (naiad). Abductive (reasoning) 18:24, 22 August 2025 (UTC)

  It could presumably be Daphne (mythology) or whatever. I don't think there's particularly much support for such a move though. –jacobolus (t) 18:26, 22 August 2025 (UTC)

  I think it is best to withdraw this nomination. Abductive (reasoning) 18:59, 22 August 2025 (UTC)

  Why? Because people disagree with me? It is a discussion, after all. Cremastra (talk · contribs) 19:07, 22 August 2025 (UTC)

  The best course is the best course. Abductive (reasoning) 19:13, 22 August 2025 (UTC)

  You have given no reasoning for your opposition and no reason you think the nomination should be withdrawn. In fact, it can't be withdrawn since a second user has supported the move. And now you respond with irrelevant and tautological comments. I have no idea what you're talking about, and, quite frankly, suspect you're being deliberately cryptic and obstructive. Cremastra (talk · contribs) 19:58, 22 August 2025 (UTC)

  The reasoning is quite sound. The move to Daphne (naiad) is a bad idea because Daphne is not necessarily a naiad; she may originally have been a dryad. Asserting that a fellow editor is "obstructive" for opposing a move is uncool. You are engaging in WP:BLUDGEONING and I urge you to stop. Abductive (reasoning) 10:23, 23 August 2025 (UTC)

  Well, suggest an alt move to Daphne (Greek mythology), then. Disambiguators are always up for discussion in RMs. I may have been bludgeoning a tad, but that doesn't excuse your own bizzarely uncommunicative behaviour. Cremastra (talk · contribs) 14:12, 23 August 2025 (UTC)

• Oppose per historical significance and other factors mentioned during the discussion. Randy Kryn (talk) 15:08, 23 August 2025 (UTC)
• Strong Support per nominator, and for reasons listed by other users (including reasons listed by User:BD2412 above). There's no clear primary topic for this name, and the mythological figure only gets a fraction of the pageviews. Paintspot Infez (talk) 21:33, 24 August 2025 (UTC)
• Oppose. There is a clear primary, and it is the Daphne from Greek mythology.4meter4 (talk) 03:13, 26 August 2025 (UTC)

Oppose. Wikinav indicates that only 7% of the outgoing pageviews are to the disambiguation page and just under 7% are to the page for the given name (which is linked in the hatnote), indicating that a small minority of users are dissatisfied with the page they've been presented. This suggests to me that the current arrangement is entirely adequate, and dispels, I think, the argument on the basis of WP:ASTONISH. Assessing the situation by PT1, I'm unconvinced by arguments above that we should include fictional characters (or other individuals) with the given name "Daphne" in our considerations, and when such figures are excluded this page receives pretty much exactly half of the pageviews. As to PT2, in my view the mythological figure outstrips the other topics in terms of long-term significance.

I also have reservations about the target title "Daphne (naiad)", as I'm unable to find a source which explicitly calls her a naiad. Does the nominator know of one? If not, I'd suggest the proposed title is changed to "Daphne (mythology)" (or similar). She is indeed a nymph in Ovid's version, and that her father is Peneus in the poem might suggest she is a naiad there, though it's still original research to use this label unless we have a explicit source for it. It also isn't clear to me that Daphne is a nymph at all in the (earlier) version from Phylarchus, meaning that the use of the term in the title would be shaky even if we had a source which verified that she's a naiad in Ovid's account. – Michael Aurel (talk) 14:06, 26 August 2025 (UTC)