Talk:Frédéric Chopin

Image size

Hi All and @Smerus:, @Nihil novi:,

Am I the only user who believes that the images throughout the article require downsizing? The scale of some is quite overwhelming, especially the portraits which overpower the content. Would anyone be willing to share their thoughts on this concern? Apologies if this was discussed before. Merangs (talk) 14:55, 16 February 2025 (UTC)

@Nihil novi: - can you please justify the tendency to increase image size on this page specifically? I did not receive a reply previously. Merangs (talk) 22:58, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

I'll defer to you. Please feel free to adjust as seems appropriate.

Thanks.

Nihil novi (talk) 04:17, 22 April 2025 (UTC)

Length size of the lead

Hey, there. Taking Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lead section#Length into consideration, how long should the length of this article's lead be? Thanks, Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 05:13, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

Four paragraphs, which this article has. ChopinChemist^Talk? 13:58, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

Requested move 16 March 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: not moved. Arbitrarily0 ^(talk) 19:58, 23 March 2025 (UTC)

---

Frédéric Chopin → Frederic Chopin – Frederic Chopin is the name most frequently featured in English-language writing. "Frédéric" with the French accent diacritics is rare and mostly a French source bias. This move I believe is the most WP:NPOV solution. Hopefully this request gains support. Kind regards. Chick Pea Corea (talk) 19:14, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

• Oppose The current spelling is widely used in reliable English-language sources and presents no NPOV issue. Nikkimaria (talk) 19:22, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

  Please also hold off on making changes to how the name is presented in the lead pending resolution of this RfC. Nikkimaria (talk) 19:26, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

  Source? Since Chopin was a Polish composer - THIS is the consensus - then the French-accented spelling should not be prioritized. That is discriminatory. Chick Pea Corea (talk) 19:30, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

  His birth name was indeed Polish: Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin. But he moved to France at an early age, adopted French citizenship, never returned to Poland, and used the French version of his forenames: Frédéric François. The normal English analogue would be Frederick Francis. But that is never encountered, and to use the French version without its necessary diacritics would be inappropriate, particularly in the modern era when they are all now available on our software, which is why most publications use them, which is why Frédéric François is by far the most usual form of his name. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 19:44, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

  Poland was occupied by three oppressive powers then. He was a refugee. There is not a single France-related piece in his body of work. He introduced several Polish musical genres into formalized classical music and composed in a Polish musical style with the Polish national sensibility in general, with several pieces dedicated to Poland. I find it weird for the French spelling to be prioritized as #1 in the lede for a guy who was a Polish refugee who spoke Polish as his first language. Chick Pea Corea (talk) 20:26, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

The reasons are irrelevant. The fact remains that he is FAR more often referred to by the French form of his names than the Polish. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 11:19, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

• By that logic your proposal is also discriminatory. Examples of sources using the accented spelling include the Routledge research guide, the Kennedy Center, the Atlanta Symphony, the Guardian, and the New York Times. Grove uses the Polish and accented spellings. Nikkimaria (talk) 20:05, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

  Regarding this claim, the Kennedy Center ref also confirms the "François" portion of the name. Nikkimaria (talk) 00:25, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

  How is the Kennedy Center a Reliable Source? It's a private foundation, a hired programmer of which likely based off of this Wikipedia page. Circular logic. Need Reliable primary and secondary sources. Chick Pea Corea (talk) 01:47, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

  Grove also has "Frédéric François". Nikkimaria (talk) 01:52, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

  What's Grove? Chick Pea Corea (talk) 02:09, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

• Grove is a major music reference work. Nikkimaria (talk) 02:12, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

• Oppose Please provide sources for your claim. A quick Google Ngram search reveals that the French spelling is more common in English. Based on a small sampling of five major English language newspapers it seems that NYT, Guardian, WSJ, WaPo prefer to use the French spelling, while only the LA Times uses the non-diacritic spelling. intforce (talk) 19:22, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

• Why are you discriminating against the breadth of sources before 1985 where the English spelling is significantly more predominant? They are just as RS. Chick Pea Corea (talk) 19:29, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

  Where are these pre-1985 sources? And why would 40-year old sources hold sway over this argument? Aza24 (talk) 20:57, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

  I'm referring to the ngram results Chick Pea Corea (talk) 23:32, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

  Then I refer to the second part of my comment Aza24 (talk) 01:43, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

• Comment The majority of English-language sources in history use the English spelling. Obviously. And since Chopin was the Polish composer - which is the consensus - then the French-accented spelling should not be prioritized. Good thing to note: Jeffrey Kallberg is a major name in the field, and he has been calling him just "Chopin" since the 1980s. The trend seems to be leaning toward using the Polish spelling, however. The most influential modern biography is Alan Walker's Fryderyk Chopin: A Life and Times (2018), the most recent English translation of Chopin's correspondence is David Frick's Chopin's Polish Letters (2016), and a current major English-language collection of essays is the 2017 Chopin and His World edited by Jonathan D. Bellman and Halina Goldberg -- all of which call him Fryderyk. Chick Pea Corea (talk) 19:34, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

  You seem to be of two minds. Your proposal is simply to move from Frédéric to Frederic. But now you seem to be arguing for Fryderyk. What is your actual position? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 19:44, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

  User Nikkimaria and Intforce tied my minor good faith edit reformatting the first sentence of the lede a bit, to this Requested move... which is awkward. This Requested move is of course only about simplifying the page name. My lede edit is about placing his original Polish name in front of the French spelling, which should be sidelined. Chick Pea Corea (talk) 19:50, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

  Doesn't the first sentence of an article always reflect the name of the article, in terms of order of preference, if there are spelling variations? Martinevans123 (talk) 20:24, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

  On Wikipedia, the order of the first sentence is such: the full proper name, then (if different) the birth name, then AKAs and foreign spellings Chick Pea Corea (talk) 20:27, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

  So why were you "placing his original Polish name in front of the French spelling"? Thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 22:06, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

  As his full proper name is only in Polish. The French spelling is an AKA Chick Pea Corea (talk) 23:35, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

• Comment I want to add another strong example from Wikipedia: Maria Skłodowska-Curie. Look at the order of names given in the lede. Chick Pea Corea (talk) 00:15, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

  A slightly different case, as she wasn't born into a French family, changed her name through marriage and is universally known by her married French name? Martinevans123 (talk) 10:39, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

• Support per nomination. Polish composer and pianist Chopin spent his first 20 years in the land of his birth and the remaining 18 years of his life in France. In his native Poland, he is known as Fryderyk Chopin or by the phonetic form Szopen. In his adopted homeland of France, he is known as Frédéric Chopin and, in the English-speaking world, he is generally known as Frederic Chopin although, taking into account Biographies of Frédéric Chopin, an argument may be made that the main title header of his English Wikipedia entry shoud be Fryderyk Chopin, per Walker, Alan (2018). Fryderyk Chopin: A Life and Times. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 9780374714376. —Roman Spinner (talk • contribs) 02:49, 17 March 2025 (UTC)
• Oppose per Nikkimaria and intforce. Ligaturama (talk) 08:46, 17 March 2025 (UTC)
• Oppose Happy to follow Grove. In any case, I guess he is widely known as just Chopin. Martinevans123 (talk) 09:07, 17 March 2025 (UTC)
• Oppose - kosboot (talk) 12:31, 17 March 2025 (UTC)
• Oppose per Nikkimaria. BTW, if you work on music and musician articles, you should familiarize yourself with Grove, the major music reference work in this area. -- Ssilvers (talk) 14:12, 17 March 2025 (UTC)
• Oppose per Nikkimaria and many others. - SchroCat (talk)
• Oppose. I've trawled through a couple of dozen English and American reference books and the choice is clearly between Fryderyk Frantizek and Frédéric François: I didn't run across one unaccented Frederic, and I think it would be a bad mistake to make our Wikipedia article an outlier by imposing that title on it. It would be a solecism on a par with omitting Gabriel Fauré's aigu or spelling Wagner's opera as Gotterdammerung. Tim riley talk 16:38, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

  Rather, it would be akin to the Maria Skłodowska-Curie page. Chick Pea Corea (talk) 14:50, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

  Marie Curie had no accents in her name. Martinevans123 (talk) 15:02, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

  I'm talking about the order of names in the lede. Chick Pea Corea (talk) 15:11, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

  And I thought this RM concerned the name of the article. Quite confused now. Martinevans123 (talk) 15:24, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

• Oppose per preceding "oppose" arguments. Nihil novi (talk) 19:22, 17 March 2025 (UTC)
• Oppose. On the contrary, the accents are very commonly seen indeed. -- Necrothesp (talk) 14:42, 18 March 2025 (UTC)
• Oppose Former spelling Frédéric is still dominantly used in academic writing and many reliable sources. I don't see why a French name would violate NPOV. ChopinChemist^Talk? 03:10, 21 March 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.

Order of names in the lead

Chopin never recorded his middle name as Francois. That is quite some fantastical invention. His naturalised-Polish french father named him Fryderyk Franciszek with clear intent. Note that he was born in 1810, so under Napoleon! Polish was his first language, he spent 20 of his 38 years of life in Poland, dedicated pieces and genres to Poland and Polish music, in his letters one can even find an aversion to France/Parisian society and a desire to escape. Many hold this wiki page should be akin to that of Maria Skłodowska-Curie. The lede there is a good example to be based on.

Option 1, more authentic to the person

Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin (spelled in French: Frédéric Chopin; 1 March 1810 – 17 October 1849) was a Polish ...

Option 2, more French textbook-like

Frédéric Chopin (born Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin; 1 March 1810 – 17 October 1849) was a Polish

Thoughts? I think the current lede, bloating and prioritizing an ahistorical "French full name" of his, makes his identity seem French-first, which is just incorrect and against the consensus. Chick Pea Corea (talk) 15:11, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

By the way, just to note, I abhor cultural appropriation. Chick Pea Corea (talk) 15:13, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

But Grove is a highly respected English-language work? You're saying they just made it up? But if you have a good source that says "Chopin never recorded his middle name as Francois", I'm sure other editors would like to see it. Thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 15:21, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

Grove's neither a primary nor a secondary source, it's a tertiary source. The idea is to follow the example of the Marie Curie page Chick Pea Corea (talk) 15:48, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

I assume your source for "Chopin never recorded his middle name as Francois" isn't WP:PRIMARY. It's fine to have "good ideas", but WP requires sources. Martinevans123 (talk) 15:51, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

@Chick Pea Corea If you want to be taken seriously, you need to stop with these two lines of thinking (which you used earlier as well).

1. Grove is the most authoritative English-language encyclopedia of music. There is absolutely no rule against using tertiary sources, in fact, they are explicitly recommended (see WP:TERTIARY) when there is disagreement between primary and secondary sources—which directly applies to this situation. Regardless, the author of the Grove article is a leading scholar on the life of Chopin, and would qualify as a subject matter expert even if they were writing a blog. I highly recommend you read WP:TSF.

2. Marie Curie is a completely different article on a subject from a completely different period/background/context. Wikipedia articles are evaluated individually and in reference to reliable sources. Wikipedia articles are not evaluated between each other, as Wikipedia is not a reliable source. See WP:OTHERCONTENT Aza24 (talk) 23:24, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

Why isn't the status quo listed as an option? In what sense are your proposals less bloated?

And what do you mean by just incorrect and against the consensus? The current format has stood since this was discussed in 2020. Given that your changes have been reverted several times by various editors, I see no evidence that they reflect consensus or that "many hold" that this article should copy what's done in Marie Curie.

Discussions should be based on policy rather than how Polish Chopin was. I believe the relevant guidelines are MOS:FULLNAME and MOS:BIRTHNAME.

Regarding his middle name, MOS:FULLNAME says the subject's full name, if known, should usually be given in the lead sentence (including middle names, if known, or middle initials) which, as shown elsewhere, includes "François".

Regarding the ordering of the names, the status quo reflects the examples in MOS:BIRTHNAME. It seems sensible to put the French version first as this is what he is most commonly known as in English sources. Ligaturama (talk) 15:59, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

The options are the proposals, status quo isn't my proposal Chick Pea Corea (talk) 17:49, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

Should you not wait for the outcome of the above RM, before asking people for their views on this? Your option 2 has accents, contrary to your original RM? Martinevans123 (talk) 17:56, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

• Option 3: Retain the current version: "Frédéric François Chopin (born Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin;..."

There are a lot of highly dubious claims in the opening statement and it's poor form to push two alternatives without acknowledging the possibility of retaining the status quo version. This is to counterbalance that problematic lack of choice. - SchroCat (talk) 18:59, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

• Support as nominator and per many of the arguments outlined in the page move discussion. - SchroCat (talk) 18:59, 18 March 2025 (UTC)
• SUPPORT option 3. Nihil novi (talk) 22:39, 18 March 2025 (UTC)
• Also support option 3. Open to persuasion, but I think the existing version captures it pretty well. Antandrus (talk) 22:53, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

• Option 3. Consistent with the relevant guidelines and sources. Nikkimaria (talk) 00:35, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

• Support option 3 per my comment above. Ligaturama (talk) 11:39, 19 March 2025 (UTC)
• Option 3 seems to me clearly the most sensible. Tim riley talk 10:04, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 8 April 2025

In the section regarding Chopin in media, I suggest adding mention of the video game Eternal_Sonata, which depicts a fictionalized version of Chopin experiencing a prolonged dream in his final moments of living. The game goes into great detail concerning historical information from Chopin's life, to the level that it displays extended expositions of Chopin's life, accompanied with some of his works. This game's localization was checked by the Frederick Chopin Society in Warsaw, and its educational information is considered quite historically accurate.

Example of a scene of Eternal Sonata's educational cutscenes Chrizzz42 (talk) 18:56, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

Do you have secondary sourcing suggesting that this game is significant to the topic? See MOS:IPC. Nikkimaria (talk) 04:41, 9 April 2025 (UTC)

Citizenship

Chopin was a dual Polish and French national since 1835. Not only because his father was French, but because Chopin himself has worked in France for most if not all of his life. Drzejstan (talk) 10:41, 9 April 2025 (UTC)

• The concept of "citizenship" in the modern sense was a little shaky back then. The lead already deals with both his Polish background and his long connection with Paris and France. Is there a change you are suggesting, because at the moment, it doesn't look like it. (If you're asking why it only says Polish in the lead sentence, there is an answer in question 1 of the Frequently asked questions at the top of the page. - SchroCat (talk) 10:46, 9 April 2025 (UTC)

Photograph date

The daguerreotype is from 1847, not 1849. The biographer Alan Walker tackles the issue. The photograph was taken by the end of 1847 shortly after his break up with George Sand. 88.8.212.233 (talk) 23:42, 26 April 2025 (UTC)