Talk:Thomas Aquinas

Thomas vs Aquinas

I note that all over this page, the first name "Thomas" is used instead of "Aquinas". Can anyone tell me why that's appropriate? It's not a hill I'm particularly inclined to die on, but why do we do this? Is there a good reason? It seems odd, and I can't think of any other person that we do that for. Like, in an article about Bill Clinton, we wouldn't say "Bill was elected in 1992." We would say "Clinton was elected in 1992." TRowlette (talk) 14:49, 28 August 2025 (UTC)

At this point in history, individuals in Europe did not have surnames, as communities were usually not big enough to require more than one name to identify a given person within said community. As mentioned, "Aquinas" means "of Aquino"—when important individuals needed to be distinguished outside of their home communities, the place associated with their origin is often used. This is exactly equivalent to "Augustine of Hippo" or "Augustine of Canterbury", and we would never refer to those individuals as "Hippo" or "Canterbury". Remsense 🌈 论 15:27, 28 August 2025 (UTC)

(This was also mentioned in a hatnote at the very top of the article.) Remsense 🌈 论 15:29, 28 August 2025 (UTC)

I am curious what other editors would think of the hatnote saying, "...this article refers to the person by their given name, Thomas," instead of the current hatnote, "...the person is properly referred to by the given name, Thomas." I do agree that it seems to work well for this article to use "Thomas" throughout, but a lot of other scholarship simply calls him "Aquinas" - and I mean peer-reviewed academic work as much as popular writing. Similarly, names in the Middle Ages could go one way or the other with some figures, i.e. Albert the Great would more often be cited as "Albert", but John Duns Scotus ("John of Duns, the Scot") is often just called "Scotus", and even his wikipage has Duns Scotus as its title. Tikwriter (talk) 16:16, 28 August 2025 (UTC)

A lot of other publications use different style guides or conventions, and that's fine. There are reasons for either convention ("Aquinas" is indeed clearly more singular in reference than "Thomas" in all world history), but the reasons for this one are fairly clear also—it's often flat-out misleading to readers to treat like a term is a surname when it isn't—if Thomas weren't a monk, his hypothetical progeny wouldn't've been named Giovanni and Maria Aquinas. No one in his life would've referred to him as such, nor he himself, only posterity.

That said, Duns Scotus is genuinely a worthwhile counterexample to ponder. I actually think his article already makes the right choice, by referring to him in full as "Duns Scotus" each time. Remsense 🌈 论 16:25, 28 August 2025 (UTC)

Perhaps off topic but I think Duns Scotus should be moved to John Duns Scotus, as WP:MONONYM states Using the last name as the page title for a person, when the first name is also known and used, is discouraged, even if that name would be unambiguous, and even if it consists of more than one word. Dantus21 (talk) 03:32, 1 September 2025 (UTC)

For what it's worth a similar discussion on this matter can be found here, although that discussion ultimately went nowhere. I have no strong opinion on what the shorthand should be, but the editing notice should definitely be removed as it seems it's just wrong (how does one remove those notices? Do you jsut put an expiration date on it?) I also went ahead and edited the hatnote to better reflect the reality of the name usage. — Dantus21 (talk) 03:28, 1 September 2025 (UTC)

WikiProject:Catholicism importance assessment

I'm just making a new topic because I saw another editor made a change, changed their mind, and then I went and restored what they did the first time. Thomas Aquinas seems to be a paradigmatic "high" importance topic for WikiProject Catholicism. His article is not indispensible, (i.e. not at the level of the article on the Catholic Church, on Jesus Christ, etc.), so he's not "top". But he is certainly one of the most important theologians, so he can't go any lower than "high". Tikwriter (talk) 15:48, 7 March 2026 (UTC)

Honestly I was a bit internally split on it. He's arguably the most important theologian in the history of Catholicism (or second behind Augustine), he's level 3 Vital, etc. But yeah compared to "Pope" or even "Real Presence", yeah, he himself would not Top that. Nautical Mongoose (talk) 02:12, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

Front page picture

If we're going by the most famous image than surely the "apotheosis of Thomas aquinas" cited later down in the article would be the winner for the main image Augustine0770 (talk) 03:56, 31 March 2026 (UTC)

Family name

The lede blandly assumes "the name Aquinas is an indicator of birthplace, not a family name". It is just wrong : Thomas was not born at Aquino, he was called Aquinas because it is his family's name. His father was not the Count of Aquino either, so it is not a fiefdom name, but a designation for his family group, the "domini de Aquino", mentionned in 1208.

Family names were adopted in the 13th c., especially in the Italian aristocracy, read the works of Klapisch-Zuber or others. You cannot just apply what was observed in english rural communities to Neapolitan noblemen or assume there are universal anthroponymical rules in the medieval We ~2026-11262-41 (talk) 08:45, 23 April 2026 (UTC)