Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of English-language surnames

=[[List of English-language surnames]]=

:{{la|List of English-language surnames}} – (View AfDView log{{•}} {{plainlink|1=http://toolserver.org/~betacommand/cgi-bin/afdparser?afd={{urlencode:Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of English-language surnames}}|2=AfD statistics}})

:({{Find sources|List of English-language surnames}})

Recently created article, unsourced. Besides some of the surnames listed not originating in the English language (D'Oyly, for example, being French) I ran a search for other similar articles to assess protocol and came across Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Lists of surnames. Not sure if this is a recreation? roleplayer 11:12, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

  • Delete I see all sorts of problems with this one, the main one being that there are thousands of surnames that can be traced to English origins. One of the problems is that on the English-language Wikipedia, people can already figure out that surnames like Brown, Groom and Weeks are also words in English even without a source, while on others less obvious, there's no point in listing them without an explanation (I have ancestors named Taylor, and I always figured that the origin was that they couldn't spell "tailor"). Nobody wants to see a long Boring list of blue links. Mandsford 14:48, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
  • Delete I wasn't aware the WP allowed articles on individual surnames. I'm not sure if that's a good idea or not. Anyway this list is not very useful. I checked out a few of the articles and Williams (to give one example) does not seem to be an English word, beyond its use as a name. Steve Dufour (talk) 15:48, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
  • Comment :Category:Surnames by language appears to be fairly comprehensive. I think splitting it into individual and unmanageable lists is unhelpful. -- roleplayer 15:51, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
  • Delete per WP:NOTDIR. This is just going to be a gigantic list of names with no explanation, no text, no prose. This is not encyclopedic. There are plenty of previous AfD's on similar articles to show a clear precedent of deletion. SnottyWong confer 23:37, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
  • Transwiki to Wiktionary as wikt:Appendix:English-language surnames. 76.66.200.95 (talk) 04:39, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
  • Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 15:22, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
  • Delete - this kind of article can have one of two fates, either to have massive gaps or to be a giant collection of mostly-useless information, neither of which we want. As User:Roleplayer said, categories already exist and serve the intended purpose better. Roscelese (talk) 03:53, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
  • Delete This article seems pointless. Aside from the title of the article, I have no idea what it's even supposed to be informing the reader about. BlueRobe (talk) 08:13, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

:The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.