The Panopticon/Naming of human groups
Continuing a discussion that started on Talk:Iberians
I do believe that we should keep the "s" at the end of articles like Gepids or Ostrogoths
The main factor for me is the distinction between many individuals vs a collective group that is one singular civilisation. I definitely agree that an article like "Dalek" should be singular because we can point to one individual Dalek as a member of the species.
However, there is a difference in the Huns, Iberians or Burgundians as a civilisation vs all individual Huns, Iberians or Burgundians put together. With e.g. "Dalek", the page is about the species. Pages on these civilisations and ethnic groups are more comparable to a page like "Dalek Empire."
For a point of comparison, let's consider geographic features like Canary Islands or Catskill Mountains. You can have one island that is part of the Canaries, but several islands or mountains come together to create a bigger whole - one singular island chain called the "Canary Islands" and one singular mountain range called the "Catskill Mountains." Similarly, lots of individual people make one collective group -- one singular culture/ethnicity that can be called "the Iberians", "the Huns" or "the Burgundians."
So we can have:
- 1 Iberian (individuals)
- 2 Iberians (individuals)
- 1 civilisation that is referred to as "the Iberians."
This article, and other articles like the Huns and Burgundians, would be about the last option.
While it can't be an "official, legal" name as these are about ancient groups of people which no longer exist, I'd say there is a strong precedent of using the term like this. Wikipedia may be a go-to example, but you can find a lot of encyclopaedias or history group using "the Huns" to refer to one, singular civilisation, rather than multiple civilisations or the actions of multiple individuals in that group. So there is a strong precedent of this distinction.
