Ambiguous Name: The Svengali

Here's an interesting case: the definition of the trope doesn't match what the word actually means. First, can you Guess The Trope, noting that it's from a nineteenth-century book that I'm sure most people haven't read?

The trope The Svengali means "a mentor that manipulates students for the mentor's own gain", and "often claimed about Real Life managers of actors", fitting for such quotes as "I made you! (and I can break you just as easily)."

However, according to the dictionary, The Svengali means (1) a hypnotist, or (2) a deck of cards used for magic tricks, where certain cards are bigger than the others. Furthermore, it is also an album by Gil Evans (because it's an anagram of that artist's name).

Only 32 wicks, so not thriving there. It does have 532 inbounds, but these are shared with its redirect Manipulative Mentor, so that doesn't really tell us anything. The bottom line is that while the trope and the (obscure) word are both based on this 19th-century character, since it's not a narrow character the trope has a different meaning than the word. And That's Terrible.

I vote we swap this one with its redirect.

Trope Namer Syndrome. Support swap.

I'll note that this issue came up not that long ago here and was defeated then. However, I supported a redirect swap then and I'll support it now.

Support rename

It wasn't so much "defeated" half a year ago, but rather died out from lack of interest. The thread has not even ten posts to it.

Strongly oppose renaming. It's a well established pre-existing term.

Wiktionary's definition fits the tropes very well.

svengali (plural svengalis)

One who manipulates or controls another as by some mesmeric or sinister influence; especially a coach, mentor or industry mogul.

Yes, it is an established (if highly obscure) term, but as I stated in the top post, the term means something different than the trope does.

edited 11th Mar '12 3:08:25 PM by Spark9

No, it means very much the definition the Trope uses.

The problem is that there are also uses of the term outside of the wiki that are different than the trope, such as those mentioned in the OP.

"Strongly oppose renaming. It's a well established pre-existing term."

Manipulative Mentor is a far better name and would only help the page's health.

I see no case to rename. Very many words mean more than one thing.

Character named trope is a case for renaming.

No it's potentially a basis for one. Also that's the first time it's been mentioned.

"No, it's not a case, it's potentially a basis for a case". Sheesh, could you get any more meta?

That's not meta at all. The distinction between "thing" and "basis for a thing" is critically important. Big difference between claiming "there is a problem!" and making a case that something should be renamed because of that problem. It's not really character-named, either, tho the description erroneously claims that.

edited 11th Mar '12 5:24:39 PM by rodneyAnonymous

Character named tropes tend to be ambiguous, because the name alone provides no context.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Svengali

32 wiks is low usage.

Character named trope, disuse and ambiguous meaning all point me towards a rename. 32 wicks is not very healthy.

Surprising amount of inbounds, though.

It is not character-named. The definition of the word "svengali" comes from a character named Svengali in a ~70-year-old work.

Is the TRS back on this old hobby-hoss? I thought it was settled last time. It is what the rest of the world calls it. We can't tell the rest of the world they are wrong because they didn't confirm to Tvtropes naming policies. This is what this character type is called, it is the name the industry uses, it is the name the real media uses, this is the name. By all means rustle up some redirects for searching, but it is still a Svengali.

Precisely. Since it comes from a character named Svengali in a ~70-year-old work, it is character-named, by definition.

Got any evidence for that?

edited 11th Mar '12 5:32:26 PM by Spark9

It's not character-named any more than Cassandra Truth is character-named.

• https://www.google.com/search?q=cassandra+definition
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassandra_%28metaphor%29

That meaning of the word comes from the character. The trope is named for the word, not the character.

edited 11th Mar '12 5:47:22 PM by rodneyAnonymous

Previous thread, from September. Manipulative Mentor was added from that thread.

Being named for a character should have no direct bearing on the decision to rename.