Commons:Village pump/Archive/2026/01

Surnames

We have a longstanding and slightly stale Commons:Categories for discussion/2024/07/Category:Surnames, mostly about the fact that we currently supposedly have two flat-list categories for surnames. It impacts probably 10,000+ categories in terms of their parent categories, and hasn't gotten a lot of attention, so I'd like to see more voices there before considering the matter resolved.

Please, unless you find my wording here non-neutral (which you should certainly address here), let's keep the discussion on the CfD, not here. - Jmabel ! talk 19:10, 2 January 2026 (UTC)

Can anyone work out the name of the photographer, and if they have a Wikidata entry

See: File:Pamela Colman Smith, "In Private life" (1904).jpg RAN (talk) 11:48, 3 January 2026 (UTC)

R.D. Macpherson? (Robert Macpherson) Nakonana (talk) 11:59, 3 January 2026 (UTC)

The "D." is written like the Greek letter Delta or Cyrillic cursive "d". Nakonana (talk) 12:00, 3 January 2026 (UTC)

Or maybe not "Robert" but some other name because this Robert died before 1904. Nakonana (talk) 12:03, 3 January 2026 (UTC)

Maybe it's not a "D" after all but a "J" instead? R.J. Macpherson [1]? According to Google search there may also be something about R.J. Macpherson at [2] but the page doesn't load for me to confirm. Going by Flickr, R.J. was active around 1895, so the time would fit. Nakonana (talk) 17:26, 3 January 2026 (UTC)

And it looks like he was based in Jamaica. The woman in the photo is half Jamaican and lived in Jamaica for some time, right? Nakonana (talk) 17:28, 3 January 2026 (UTC)

• Excellent detective work, "Macpherson", now I see it. I will see if I can find more images from him. --RAN (talk) 14:13, 3 January 2026 (UTC)

en:Duncan Macpherson (photographer)? Nevermind, he was likely too young in 1904. -Nard (Hablemonos) (Let's talk) 14:43, 3 January 2026 (UTC)