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Sometimes I see some edits made just to insert "Lord" in front of Rama in the entire text. This is the internet and this site is for discussion. One person's idea of honorific may not suit another person.

Titles such as "Lord", "Ji", "Maa" etc are extremely subjective.

Actual Question Examples:

  • Why did Lord Shiva fight with Lord Vishnu?
  • Is Buddha an avatar of lord Vishnu?

Why isn't Buddha editted to be Lord Buddha? Why only Vishnu gets to be "Lord"?

I think all these worship/respect honorifics and adjectives should be banned.

It would improve the quality of the site and make it more polished and professional.

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  • 6
    Nice suggestion, but again, it is good to refer gods with lord, because not everything we talk about here is god, for example, Kamsa isn't a god so we only write Kamsa, so this way it gets differentiated that yes, Ravana, Kamsa etc aren't lords but demons or usual persons but again, edits which are just adding minor changes to the post should be rejected
    – Mr. Alien
    Jul 30, 2014 at 11:18
  • Why don't you add this under answers?
    – a20
    Jul 30, 2014 at 11:20
  • Because I am not sure and hence I am preferring to comment
    – Mr. Alien
    Jul 30, 2014 at 11:23
  • I think your answer adds a view point, and is valuable to the discussion :)
    – a20
    Jul 30, 2014 at 11:26
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    Why isn't Buddha editted to be Lord Buddha? yes Buddha should be edited with lord Buddha. It is just a mistake I think.
    – Mr_Green
    Jul 30, 2014 at 11:29
  • Your follow-up is good. The only point I'd disagree with is point 4; if a user says "Ramji", we should simply change it to Rama, not to Sri Rama or Lord Rama. We shouldn't put an honorific that the user didn't intend to use. We can allow the user to decide for themselves if they want to put.a Lord or Sri after we take out the ji.
    – Keshav Srinivasan Mod
    Jul 31, 2014 at 16:24
  • @KeshavSrinivasan I think it's a valid and good suggestion. However I'm unsure how to codify this. Is Ji an honorific? Yes, I suppose. So then why should this not be changed to an equivalent ..
    – a20
    Aug 1, 2014 at 3:06
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    @a20 Well, because different honorifics mean different things. "Ji" simply denotes respect, so an atheist might be willing to write "Krishnaji", but they might be uncomfortable saying "Lord Krishna" because that means acknowledging his divinity. So it's better to just take out the Ji and let the user decide whether they want to add in some other honorific.
    – Keshav Srinivasan Mod
    Aug 1, 2014 at 3:18
  • Ok thanks for the clarification, I'll modify my edit & close this discussion.
    – a20
    Aug 4, 2014 at 6:33

3 Answers 3

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Keshav has the right idea here - it is usually inappropriate to edit other user's posts to add, remove, or alter honorifics.

The only time I would edit a user's honorifics is if they were annoyingly inconsistent (and then too, only as part of a larger improvement to a post). For example, suppose a hypothetical user has posted the following:

y does lord shiva have a 3ird eye? where can i learn more about shivas eyes?

I would probably edit it to something like this:

Why does Lord Shiva have a third eye? Where can I learn more about Lord Shiva's eyes?

This is roughly in keeping with the idea behind Please use consistent spelling in your posts - in this case, what I'm basically saying is "please use consistent forms of address in your posts (unless you have a good reason not to".

I disagree with Keshav's position in the comments on his answer, in that I don't think it is a good idea to create a list of approved honorifics or anything like that. This is likely to engender a problem: how do we decide which honorifics go on the list? Can we reasonably do that without offending someone or the other? I think that we could solve this problem if we put enough thought into it, but I don't think that we would get enough benefit out of creating a list of approved honorifics to make it worthwhile.

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  • Do you think it's at least worth editing when the OP is using a really cumbersome form of address, like "Bhagavan Sri Ram Jee went to the kingdom of Kishkindha"?
    – Keshav Srinivasan Mod
    Aug 3, 2014 at 0:54
  • And yeah, on reflection a standard list of names seems unnecessary.
    – Keshav Srinivasan Mod
    Aug 3, 2014 at 0:56
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I think we should allow users to put words like Lord, Sri, etc. in their own posts if they want to, but it should be up to them; we should respect the poster's choice of style and reject edits that either add or remove such appellations.

I'm a devout Hindu, and if I wrote "Sriman Narayana" in a question and someone edited it to simply Narayana, I might be pretty annoyed at them. And I imagine that an atheist that just wants to learn about how many brothers Krishna had would be pretty annoyed if he has to assert the divinity of Krishna just to ask the question. So the reasonable compromise is just to leave the choice of such appellations to the writer of the post. Islam.SE has a similar policy concerning the use of "PBUH" after the name of Mohammed.

By the way, although I think it's fine for there to be variation in the use or absence of honorifics, the one thing the community should police is the spelling of names, as I discuss here.

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  • Can "Sriman Narayana" be edited to "Lord Narayana"?
    – Mr_Green
    Jul 31, 2014 at 5:56
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    @Mr_Green No, I don't see any reason to make edits like that. I think we should leave the choice of honorifics or lack thereof to the OP.
    – Keshav Srinivasan Mod
    Jul 31, 2014 at 6:01
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    But if we say so then the honorifics changes related to Individual users like "Shri Narayan", "Shriman Narayan", "Narayanji", "Prabhu Narayana" etc.. I think we should stick to one Honorific and also It might confuse some non-hindu users which might let them think the same deity as different ones. Let me know if I am wrong.
    – Mr_Green
    Jul 31, 2014 at 6:11
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    @Mr_Green You do have a point. I'd be open to at least banning nonstandard honorifics like "Ji" and "Prabhu". Maybe we should only allow "Lord" and "Sri" (and maybe a few others).
    – Keshav Srinivasan Mod
    Jul 31, 2014 at 6:20
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    @Mr_Green Also, it occurs to me that we may want more standardization in question titles than in the body of a question, because the title is what people see first. So maybe we can just discourage (nonstandard) honorifics in the title and allow them in the body at user's discretions.
    – Keshav Srinivasan Mod
    Jul 31, 2014 at 6:22
  • @KeshavSrinivasan I don't agree with you.. having a single standard honorific like "Lord" is enough I suppose. ("Lord" prefix is just an example but I prefer "God"/"Godesses")
    – Mr_Green
    Jul 31, 2014 at 6:27
  • I mentioned "lord" as prefix because we are following it from very start of this site.
    – Mr_Green
    Jul 31, 2014 at 6:36
  • @Mr_Green I don't think we should police Sri vs Lord. Both are common enough in English language discourse about Hinduism that they should be tolerated. Ji and Prabhu on the other hand, are almost never used in English discourse about Hinduism.
    – Keshav Srinivasan Mod
    Jul 31, 2014 at 6:40
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    @KeshavSrinivasan I agree but you also mentioned that we should consider few other prefixes too.. this is what I disagree with.. I think we should follow some standard rule for honorifics. if we have more than one (or two) honorifics then it is not good I think.
    – Mr_Green
    Jul 31, 2014 at 6:43
  • I agree with Mr_Green on this, and furthermore, where appropriate, we should remove or edit other honorifics to become the standard honorifics with standard spellings. If the OP didn't include any honorific in the first place, we shouldn't meddle and add some there.
    – a20
    Jul 31, 2014 at 6:50
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    @Mr_Green Ignore what I said. I was just hedging my statement in case I thought of another common one. In any case, I agree with you, we should come up with a standard list. But I don't think we should ever add an honorific to a post that the OP didn't intend, even if the OP happens to have used another honorific. Like if someone writes "Ramji", we should just change it to Rama and then allow them to change it to "Lord Rama" if they want.
    – Keshav Srinivasan Mod
    Jul 31, 2014 at 6:59
  • @KeshavSrinivasan, pls see my question edit and confirm if everything pertinent has been captured there.
    – a20
    Jul 31, 2014 at 7:29
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This site is for Hinduism and most of the users here are from Hinduism background. If we use just name instead of prefix "lord" then to be honest, we might offend other users who believes/worship these Gods.

Apart from the above explanation, adding a prefix is just "showing respect towards God". As Mr_Alien commented, God is not equal to Demon

I suggest we should keep this prefix to Gods.

It would improve the quality of the site and make it more polished and professional.

The quality shouldn't be bothered with "lord" as prefix. I can't see any relation though.

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    Why exactly do you think people will understand what "!==" means? Not everyone is a geek here.
    – user3459110
    Jul 30, 2014 at 12:21
  • @AwalGarg edited.
    – Mr_Green
    Jul 30, 2014 at 12:49
  • Nice answer, +1 from me :)
    – user3459110
    Jul 30, 2014 at 13:31
  • "Most of the users here are from Hinduism background" Probably true, but it's an assumption. Even then, not everybody is a hardcore RSS level Hindu. Keshav Srinivasan's answer below to respect different people's approach is much more sensible.
    – a20
    Jul 30, 2014 at 21:57
  • Regarding quality, what I'm trying to say is that we can talk & educate about Hinduism intelligently without having too much religious passion and fervor. It shouldn't be imposed on people either.
    – a20
    Jul 30, 2014 at 22:01
  • Also, please answer my question: "If we talk about Jesus and Mohammed? What honorifics do we use then?" Is it only that Hindu figures will have honorifics? Or is it that all respectable figures will have honorifics? Will the editors have to go around adding all these honorifics for Buddha, Mohammed, Jesus too? No disrespect to you, but your proposal is not clear. Please clarify how these things will be enforced.
    – a20
    Jul 30, 2014 at 22:18
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    @a20 Jesus is well known as just "Jesus" in English. I know here we are preferring English. but the gods related to Hinduism are mentioned as "Shri" or "Ji" as prefix/suffix in Sanskrit and even other local languages of Hindu religion. Not using the same respect using English even when there is available prefix as "lord" is not good in my opinion.
    – Mr_Green
    Jul 31, 2014 at 5:51
  • @Mr_Green Ok, that's a good point regarding traditionally how we address Hindu figures. Regarding other religious figures, Jesus can be Son Of God Jesus, Prophet Jesus, Lord Jesus, Our Saviour etc, depending on who you talk to. So I think while trimming down excessive honorifics, we should generally let people specify their own honorifics from an approved list. Anything outside those words would be changed to one of the approved honorifics. This applies to Hindu honorifics only, for non-Hindu honorifics, we'd just trim the excessive ones. Thoughts?
    – a20
    Jul 31, 2014 at 7:05
  • @a20 I agree. but having an approved list just for a single honorific would not be good I think. Add a new post which let other users decide what honorific we should use everytime.
    – Mr_Green
    Jul 31, 2014 at 7:13
  • @Mr_Green, pls see my question edit and confirm if everything pertinent has been captured there. I'll accept Keshav's answer.
    – a20
    Jul 31, 2014 at 7:30

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