Talk:Sunni

RfV April 2013

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RFV-sense "branch of Islam". Isn't the branch called "Sunni Islam"? Is it ever called plain "Sunni", the way "Christianity" is "Christianity"? Sentences like "his religion was Sunni" strike me as using the adjective, not a proper noun. If a proper noun does exist, how common is it? - -sche (discuss) 01:24, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

In Turkish we say "ben sünnîyim" (lit. I am Sunni). --Furious (talk) 02:52, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

Google results:

Turkish usage:

"Ben bir Sünniyim" (lit. I am a Sunni, noun): 62.500

"Ben Sünniyim" (lit. I am Sunni, adjectives): 6.090

English usage:

I am a Sunni, noun or adjective (a Sunni Muslim, etc.): 295.000

I am Sunni, adjective: 282.000 --Furious (talk) 03:13, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

...I don't see how that's relevant. - -sche (discuss) 03:47, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

They are used interchangeably. Similarly to "I am Shia, one could say "i am Sunni". See

Adil's wife was Sunni, the Prophet was no more Shi'ite that he was Sunni, They asked him if he was Sunni or Shiite Pass a Method (talk) 08:29, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

Maybe you are looking for Sunnism. Pass a Method (talk) 09:27, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

Those are uses of the adjective. — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 15:08, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, as Ungoliant points out, the sentences you've posted are irrelevant. Even if "I am Sunni" were using a noun, it would have to be using a noun meaning something like "a follower of Sunni Islam", not "a branch of Islam", unless religions themselves were having an meeting. "Hi, I'm Christianity. — I'm *Sunni. — I'm Hinduism." That is what I'm looking for: proof that "Sunni" is (as our entry currently claims) a noun meaning "a branch of Islam". I think the nounal names of the branch of Islam are "Sunni^adj Islamⁿ" and "Sunnismⁿ", not *"Sunniⁿ". - -sche (discuss) 19:33, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

I think what we would be looking for is someone saying that they or someone else "belong to Sunni" or "follow Sunni" or "practice/believe in Sunni". All three of those look wrong to me, but, as I've said before, truth can be stranger than fiction. Chuck Entz (talk) 21:23, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

I think I've cited it. Please take a look. DCDuring TALK 21:30, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

Also the adjective, including as a comparative. DCDuring TALK 21:54, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

I don't think the Teju Cole quotation counts; it seems to be using three adjectives, and I note we duly don't define "Kurd" as "a tribe..." but instead as "a member..." (the tribe being "Kurds") and also don't define "Shiite" as "a branch of Islam" but instead as "a member of the Shia branch of Islam". - -sche (discuss) 21:57, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict) The first could be interpreted as a case where Sunni is modifying an understood but not expressed noun. The second is possible, but not ironclad. The third is a one-off bending of the grammatical rules by treating adjectives as if they were nouns- unless you think we should add a "religion" nominal sense to Shiite and a "tribe" nominal sense to Kurd.

I checked Google Books for the wordings I gave above. Almost all of them had the phrase in question followed by a noun which "Sunni" modified: Islam, branch, faith, belief, custom, etc. There were at most a couple of ambiguous, but not particularly compelling exceptions. Chuck Entz (talk) 22:11, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

@Chuck: Ah, the old fused-head argument. I know it well. But "one-off bending grammatical rules" seems to me to be begging the question. If a word is used as a subject, then there is a prima facie case that it is behaving as a noun for some users.

@-sche: I was mainly interested in the foundation point as to whether it is used as a proper noun. If the definition needs adjustment, so be it. It looked encyclopedically - and normatively - over-precise to be a real-world definition anyway. We don't want Wiktionary to get all Victorian, do we? DCDuring TALK 23:48, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

re "whether it is used as a proper noun": in that case, I'd point out that I still see no evidence that the string of letters S-u-n-n-i has any proper noun sense, as long as "Christianity", "Catholicism" etc are considered simple ===Noun===s. (The string does have, I think we all agree, at least one common noun sense: "a believer of the other major branch of Islam besides the Shiite branch".) - -sche (discuss) 00:14, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

Even if there are citations of "Sunni" being used to mean "a branch of Islam", that phenomenon seems significantly less common than the use of "Sunni Islam" and "Sunni" as an adjective, for which reason I still think the entry needs to be overhauled (to put the ===Adjective=== section first). - -sche (discuss) 00:14, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

I'd think the proper definition, if there indeed is a single one for these cites (I don't think there are many more.), is "Sunni Islam". DCDuring TALK 00:32, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

The arabic noun is "sunna", so the english equivalent "sunni" is correct, Leave it as it is Pass a Method (talk) 02:12, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Cited by DCDuring (talk • contribs). — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 12:22, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

Passed. — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 19:02, 18 September 2013 (UTC)