Wikidata talk:WikiProject Heraldry

Suggested structure

Below is the discussion of the suggested structure of objects describing Coat of Arms as started at Project chat.

An initial clarification. This structure is the recommendation for objects describing a Coat of Arms. The image (or images) depicting the coat of arms would itself be coat of arms image (P94) of that object.

For a country the structure could then look like: <Monaco (Q235)> coat of arms (P237) <coat of arms of Monaco (Q209204)> coat of arms image (P94) <File:Coat_of_Arms_of_Monaco.svg>

/Lokal Profil (talk) 11:09, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

A simple showcase item

coat of arms of the municipality of Östersund (Q10728131)

Made some experiments on coat of arms of the municipality of Östersund (Q10728131)    who has a simple blazon: "I blått fält ett framåtvänt älghuvud av silver." The "direction" of the head was difficult to describe. And from the article, I did not feel safe if it was founded 1911 with the current look, or if the letter "Ö" was still present then, so also if the animal then was a "Alces alces (Q35517)" or a undefined "Cervidae (Q23390)". -- Lavallen (talk) 19:45, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

For the direction of the head (in heraldry the attitude) there are a number of specialized expressions. The correct one seems to be "guardant" in English. We need items for all of them and an own property for "attitude". --Slomox (talk) 12:05, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

Now I wrote head "of" moose, maybe "moose" applies to part (P518) "head" would be better? -- Lavallen (talk) 12:19, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I think, that would be better.

We have an item for moose in heraldry: elk (Q1325472)

We also need to have a dedicated property for the part of an item that is shown in the coat of arms. Perhaps it can be called "part of item shown" or something like that. It will be a common property. File:Wapen Godshem.jpg for example could have "charge: Sagitarria <part of item shown> leaf". --Slomox (talk) 12:59, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

Areas with similar needs

It's perhaps not realistically achievable in the near future and not an important issue to start with, but I'd like to mention it from the start, because if we are interested in it, we shouldkeep it in mind from the very beginning:

Perhaps it is possible to have the logic so flexible that we can also fit in symbols from vexillogy (flags), sigillography (seals), numismatics (coins), Japanese mon and logos in general into this system. We should at least think about it. --Slomox (talk) 11:24, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

The Östersund-example is affected by that. The CoA has it's origin in a seal. -- Lavallen (talk) 12:21, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

Lion tongued Gules, armed Argent

This is a problem, that absolutely needs to be solved somehow to make heraldic descriptions on Wikidata work:

Heraldic charges have in almost all cases only one color/tincture. This can easily be described with properties. There are however cases where charges have additional attributes with another tincture. This usually happens with animals who have claws or tongues in another tincture (see example on the right), but also with other things (I lack a specialized heraldic term that covers the phenomenon in general). It's a problem, because that calls for a structure like "property: coa depicts lion, qualifier: has tongue, qualifier: is Gules". But we cannot have qualifiers for qualifiers.

Stinstedt

Cases:

• armed (claws and horns and tusks)
• langued (tongue)
• vilené or pizzled (penis)
• attired (antlers or very occasionally horns)
• unguled (hooves)
• crined (horse's mane or human hair)
• crowned
• roof and door of a building
• metal fittings and carrying loop of a hunting horn
• fruits, nuts, acorns etc. on a tree
• and many more probably

On the right is an ugly example where the charge (a pilgrim) in the coat of arms is Argent, but he wears an Azure hat, mantle and shoes, an Or staff and an Or shell in his hand.

Possible solutions:

• create a dedicated qualifier for each of the different types: "tincture of arming of heraldic charge". But that's not flexible, because we need to create many different qualifiers which will probably never be used in more than a handful items (how many cases are there for "tincture of shell heraldic charge is holding in his left hand"?).
• create items for types with tincture defined: "charge contains differently tinctured area: armed Gules". But that is an ugly hack because "armed" and "Gules" are two clearly separate features and shouldn't be combined in an item.
• ?

Any ideas? --Slomox (talk) 12:48, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

Do we need to tell that "Lion has tongue" when "lion" is the only subject? Is it not enough to tell that the color of the tongue is red? I mean, where could the tongue be, anywhere else than in the mouth of the lion, if it's the only thing depicted.

If the tongue do not have any special color, we probably have to tell that it exists, but otherwise? -- Lavallen (talk) 13:23, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

But tongues are not always Gules. They can be azure too for example: File:Royal Arms of the Kingdom of Scotland.svg. We need to be able to record the information.

What if there are two animals in a coat of arms like in File:Wappen Karlsburg.png? One is tongued Or and the other shows a tongue in Gules (although formally it is not tongued at all). --Slomox (talk) 13:54, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

Tongues are not always Gules, yes. I cannot read anything in "Wappen Karlsburg" since it's written in de, and Google does not help me, I'm afraid. Maybe we have to split such complex arms in four items? The main item can tell there is three sub-subjects ordered in a special way. In some cases we maybe simply can tell that it is composed by two/(three/four) other arms. Like this county-arms is based on two province-arms. Field I: Ångermanland province arms, Field II: Medelpad province arms. I guess we can do this even if the parts never stands alone. That allows us even to add such things as symbolisms in the smaller parts. From Karlsburg I understand that there is symbolism in every part. -- Lavallen (talk) 16:46, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

It's possible to split them in different items. But it seems messy to me to do it for coats of arms that never stand alone. Would be great if we can avoid that. And I don't know how well this is received in the community if we not only create one item per coat of arms but even several... I feel that would garner some opposition. --Slomox (talk) 08:07, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

It will have some opposition, today, yes. But as soon as some bugs have been solved, I think it will be a more common habit, since it then will be obvious how useful it could be. -- Lavallen (talk) 08:46, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

distribution of charges

I added an entry to the list of "Properties/Qualifiers that need to be created": "distribution of charges". It is meant to describe how the charges are arranged in the field.

My first thought is to give the direction first (h for horizontal, v for vertical, d for diagonal, c for circular) followed by a ":" and then the number of charges in that row, rows separated by ";"

Examples:

File:Herb Zaremba.jpg : "h:2;1"

File:Wappen Armstorf.png : "h:4;3"

File:Wappen Donnern.png : "h:4;3"

File:Wappen Büttel.svg : "c:3"

File:Wappen Hymendorf.png : "d:2"

File:DEU Osterbruch COA.png : "h:1;2"

File:Wappen Samtgemeinde Beverstedt.png : "c:9"

File:Wapen Hoop.jpg : "h:2;1" (interlocked, how to describe that?)

File:Wapen Wehldörp.jpg : "h:1;2;2;1"

File:Wackerow Wappen.png : "" (I don't know the blazon, looks weird in the image)

File:Wappen Zempin.svg : "v:2"

I am lacking the English word that is necessary to describe the difference between File:Wappen Armstorf.png and File:Wappen Donnern.png. Donnern has them in a completely new row, while Armstorf has them in the gaps between the one in the row above.

Somehow we also need to differentiate between diagonal from upper dexter to lower sinister and diagonal from upper sinister to lower dexter.

We also probably need a property that tells us how the charges are oriented. They can be oriented to the center (File:Wappen Büttel.svg), oriented to the top or bottom, oriented to a middle line (symmetrical; horizontal or vertical). Or do we have to include it in the distribution so we have a way to cover complex orientations that don't follow any clear scheme (I have no example for this, it's probably rare. But it wouldn't be bad to be prepared.) File:Wappen Zempin.svg is probably an example where we need to have the orientation explicitly specified.

I probably missed points. Any ideas? --Slomox (talk) 08:01, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

Looks good to me, this far. -- Lavallen (talk) 08:51, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

Is there a reason not to use the heraldic terms (for the diagonals, "per bend" and "per bend sinister"; for vertical "per pale", etc.)? Just curious if I am missing something. - PKM (talk) 03:19, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

Constraints on coat of arms image (P94)

FYI, there is discussion on Property talk:P94#Unique value. Cdlt, VIGNERON (talk) 11:52, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

Wikimania 2016

Only this week left for comments: Wikidata:Wikimania 2016 (Thank you for translating this message). --Tobias1984 (talk) 11:48, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

Merge?

Is anyone still active here?

Despite their different labels in the various Wikipedias, I am wondering if line (heraldry) (Q1088910) and line (heraldry) (Q15141075) actually cover the same concept - lines of partition and their modifications - and can be merged. - PKM (talk) 21:34, 29 August 2018 (UTC)

Just merging them would be too simplistic. These articles describe various concepts; but there are also some cross-overs between the two WD items, as some articles attached to line (heraldry) (Q1088910) describe the same thing as some articles attached to line (heraldry) (Q15141075). I haven't gone through all the articles, but here a couple of examples:

• [1] and [2] do not describe the same concept, but they are both attached to line (heraldry) (Q1088910). And I'm not sure whether "Wappenschnitt" (de) could be subsumed under "Attribut géométrique" (fr).
• [3] and [4] describe the same concept but are attached to two different Q numbers.

Sorting this out requires a systematic analysis of the various articles and some terminological work putting the various concepts in relation to each other. Cheers, Beat Estermann (talk) 07:06, 30 August 2018 (UTC)