Talk:Burns club

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External links modified

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Proposed merge of Robert Burns World Federation into Burns Clubs

It's not clear that this organisation independently meets WP:NORG. The best coverage I found is in this book, which here only really mentions the 'federation' twice in passing, and it makes more sense to have it merged with the other federations. Most of the inline citations in this article are either not independent, unreliable, or don't provide the topic the significant coverage we would expect to establish notability. Most of the news coverage I found in a google search appeared to be in local publications like The Warrnambool Standard, which doesn't establish notability per WP:AUD. Perhaps there's coverage I'm missing-- If so I would be happy close this nomination. Eddie891 ^Talk _Work 18:22, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

• One reference would be Mckay, James A. (1985). "The Burns Federation". Kilmarnock : The Burns Federation. The RBWF publishes the 'Burns Chronicle' annually - http://www.rbwf.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Complete-Chronicle-Index.pdf Rosser Gruffydd 20:05, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

Closing, given the uncontested objection and no support. Klbrain (talk) 13:17, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

Requested move 3 August 2025

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: moved. Although some debate took place, I see the discussion as having converged on a consensus that these terms—when used in the general case, as opposed to naming a specific club or society—are not capitalized consistently enough to merit a divergence from the usual MOS:CAPS standard. (closed by non-admin page mover) ModernDayTrilobite (talk • contribs) 15:35, 26 August 2025 (UTC)

---

• Burns Clubs → Burns club
• Saint Andrew's Society → Saint Andrew's society

– These should be named consistently. In neither case is this the proper name of a particular organisation; each of the two subjects is a general class of organisation type that rarely has any affilition with another of the same type. Per WP:SINGULAR, these must be given in singular form, since they are not "naturally plural" like scissors nor something only encyclopedically addressable as a set/collective, like the Rocky Mountains. Per MOS:CAPS, the closing word "clubs" or "societies" should not be capitalised, because these plural forms are not proper names; only the proper-name elements in these titles should be capitalised ("Burns" and "Saint Andrew"). None of them are actually named either of these things, but have longer names like "[Place] Burns Club", "St Andrew's Society of [Place]", etc., and some also don't use either of the closing words given here but have alternatives: "Burns Society of [Place]", "[Place] St. Andrew's & Caledonian Club", etc., or even are name something else entirely like "North British Association of [Place]", "[Place] Scots", or whatever, but are within the definition of the article subject in question. (Any possibility of confusion that one these subjects, in singular form, refers to a monolithic global organisation, as if all the "[Place] Burns Club" instances are chapters of it, is obviated by the lower-casing change. PS: In a similar vein, we do not pluralize the article title Institute of technology, nor capitalise institute of technology at all except within the proper name of a particular institution, e.g. California Institute of Technology.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:27, 3 August 2025 (UTC) — Relisting. TarnishedPath^talk 13:59, 10 August 2025 (UTC)— Relisting. Tenshi! (Talk page) 21:52, 17 August 2025 (UTC)

PPS: The text in the first articles would need post-move cleanup to de-capitalise "club" outside of proper names of particular local entities; the "society" cleanup has already been done at the second article.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:42, 3 August 2025 (UTC)

• Oppose lowercasing per common name but Support Burns Club (uppercased). The n-grams clearly show uppercase for Saint Andrew's Society. Not as lopsided for the term 'Burns Clubs' plural, but yes, this page should be moved to Burns Club, uppercased (which is overwhelmingly uppercased in n-gram results. Randy Kryn (talk) 23:31, 4 August 2025 (UTC)

Note: WikiProject Scotland and WikiProject Organizations have been notified of this discussion. TarnishedPath^talk 13:59, 10 August 2025 (UTC)

• Support. This is not the name of one particular club. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 21:06, 15 August 2025 (UTC)

  BarrelProof, did you look at the n-grams? Randy Kryn (talk) 22:05, 15 August 2025 (UTC)

  The Ngrams are mostly derived from partial matches in longer names, like Burns Club of Atlanta, West New York Burns Club, Ayrshire Association of Burns Clubs, Edinburgh & District Burns Clubs Association, Alamo Burns Club, Alexandria Burns Club, Dalry Burns Club, Greenock Burns Club, Irvine Burns Club, St. Andrew's Society of Washington, D.C., St. Andrew's Society of Connecticut, St. Andrew's Society of Hong Kong, St. Andrew's Society of Charleston, South Carolina, St. Andrew's Society of Montreal, Saint Andrew's Society of the State of New York, etc. "Burns Club" by itself is mostly not the name of one particular club. Instead, it is a type of club and thus a common noun and should be lowercase. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 22:43, 15 August 2025 (UTC)

  Burns Club, singluar, is uppercased in the sources. Saint Andrew's Society which you also want to lowercase while the n-grams on that one clearly show that the uppercase name is correct. We won't change each other's minds, but this one seems to meet uppercase criteria. Randy Kryn (talk) 23:02, 15 August 2025 (UTC)

  The first sentence of the History of Burns clubs cited in the article, says "Burns clubs [lowercase] are societies devoted to the life and work of Robert Burns." The "Memorialising Burns" source cited in the article says "There was a similar race to form Burns clubs [lowercase] and societies and ..." The home page of the Alexandria Burns club cited in the article says "There was a similar race to form Burns clubs [lowercase] and societies ..." —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 23:13, 15 August 2025 (UTC)

• Support: There are many Burns clubs just like there are many football clubs. Each of those clubs has a proper name, but the general term for the kind of club, the topic of an encyclopedia article, would be Burns club or football club. Similarly there are many Saint Andrew's societies, the name of each of which would be capitalized as a proper name, but the article about the general topic would be Saint Andrew's society. SchreiberBike | ⌨  23:21, 15 August 2025 (UTC)

SchreiberBike, do you have an example of similarly named football clubs spread out across the globe? Thanks. Randy Kryn (talk) 03:16, 16 August 2025 (UTC)

• Question. Does anyone have an example of a lowercase Saint Andrew's Society from the last 40+ years? SMcCandlish, BarrelProof, SchreiberBike, literally no significant n-grams for its lowercase form register since 1983. Saint Andrew's Society, uppercased, is the proper name of the group of independent fraternities which have been closely affiliated by a shared name for centuries. Randy Kryn (talk) 03:27, 16 August 2025 (UTC)

The Wikipedia article's first sentence is "A Saint Andrew's Society or Caledonian society is any of a variety of independent organizations celebrating Scottish heritage." The link above to the St. Andrew's Society Registry lists a number of Saint Andrew's societies. As organizations tend to do, they capitalize a lot of words which are not proper nouns. Neither of those support the idea that the kind of organization is a proper noun. If that article were instead a list, List of Saint Andrew's Societies, might be defensible. SchreiberBike | ⌨  11:26, 16 August 2025 (UTC)

I haven't looked very hard, but here is one cited in the article whose opening sentence is "The Saint Andrew's society [lowercase] of Athens represents ..." The Wikipedia article in question is primarily a list of particular Saint Andrew's societies, and what I find on their websites is mostly a discussion of each individual society rather than a discussion of Saint Andrew's societies in general. The Bylaws of the Saint Andrew's Society of Los Angeles talks about "the high purposes of Saint Andrew's societies everywhere" [lowercase]. The Carolina Piper says "There are several hundred St. Andrew's societies [lowercase] in the world" and says something was named "to honor Saint Andrew's societies in the U.S." [lowercase]. This memorial is for "the Saint Andrew's societies worldwide" [lowercase]. This journal paper talks about "North American Saint Andrew's societies" [lowercase]. This newsletter talks about "a growing number of local Saint Andrew's societies" [lowercase]. It seems a bit harder to search for "society" in the singular, because it gets so many partial matches to the names of particular Saint Andrew's societies. Here is one that has "a St Andrew's society" [lowercase]. Here is another one. Here is another one. Here is one from the BBC. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 22:38, 16 August 2025 (UTC)

• Rename per nom. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 21:23, 18 August 2025 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.