Talk:Filthy Lucre

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Page title

This page catches my eye for the use of the "The" in the article title. In surveying the landscape of mercenary units, all of the ones I searched omit "the" if they have at least two words in their name (Waco Rangers and Eridani Light Horse for example). I also have two of the sourcebooks they're mentioned in and the writers switch back and forth without consistency, the same as I see for the ELH and others. If no one objects, I would like to redirect this page to "Filthy Lucre." Csdavis715 (talk) 00:14, 23 February 2023 (EST)

Maybe it’s because I'm not a native speaker, but my understanding is that in this case the full name would include the "The" part because the unit's name refers to the filthy lucre as an idiom or cultural/poetic/literary concept; by contrast, it is not a self-referencing name in the classic sense like the vanilla naming scheme in BT, [Commander]'s [Descriptor]s. "The Filthy Lucre" as in "yeah, that one you heard about in literature class" sounds and feels more natural than naming the unit after any one unspecific filthy lucre.

Having difficulty explaining my point probably indicates it is not a very strong argument though. :) Frabby (talk) 02:58, 23 February 2023 (EST)

Currently away from my books but I am fairly certain that "The" is actually part of the name. I will check tonight if nobody else beats me to it.--Dmon (talk) 04:44, 23 February 2023 (EST)

If we look at House Steiner (The Lyran Commonwealth), it says on p. 66 ("The Third Succession War"): "During the peace between the first and second wars, the Commonwealth had hired the Narhal Raiders and the Filthy Lucre, both of which..." The tables on p. 82 and p. 121 include "The", but I don't put much stock in them because articles and capitalization do tend to change from normal text. The quoted example above just shows me the writers don't view "The" as part of their name. If you want to compare this to another example, just look at the Bad Dream in the following paragraph. "The" isn't part of the name, but it's included in the tables, and our Sarna page leaves it off.

Frabby: I get what you're saying and that's a reasonable consideration, so I looked up "filthy lucre" in literary/artistic sources. Apparently it first showed in the bible and means money obtained dishonestly. Wikipedia shows a list of its uses, and in all cases it was without "The". Looks like there's some precedence here.Csdavis715 (talk) 09:17, 23 February 2023 (EST)

Just looked through all the cited sources for the page and it really is a bit of a mixed bag. older sources tend to be "the", Combat manual mercs is all over the place with it and 2ndSSW (the latest source) has one of each. As such I have dropped "The" from the title simply based on it being the less common of the titles used when everything is considered.--Dmon (talk) 16:06, 23 February 2023 (EST)