Wikipedia:Naming conventions

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"WP:NAME" redirects here. For the guideline on names of Wikipedia users, see Wikipedia:Username policy. For information on the 18 different types of pages on Wikipedia, see Wikipedia:Namespace.
For the guideline on names of people mentioned in articles, see Wikipedia:Manual of Style (biographies).
"WP:NC" redirects here. For the guideline on naming conflicts, see Wikipedia:Naming conflict.
"WP:NC" redirects here. For the North Carolina WikiProject, see Wikipedia:WikiProject North Carolina.
"WP:TITLE" redirects here. For the guideline on formatting names and titles mentioned in articles, see Wikipedia:Manual of Style (titles).
This page documents an official English Wikipedia policy, a widely accepted standard that all users should follow. When editing this page, please ensure that your revision reflects consensus. If in doubt, consider discussing changes on the talk page.
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This page in a nutshell: Generally, article naming should prefer what the greatest number of English speakers would most easily recognize, with a reasonable minimum of ambiguity, while at the same time making linking to those articles easy and second nature.

Naming conventions are a list of guidelines on how to create and name pages. These are conventions, not rules carved in stone. As Wikipedia grows and changes, some conventions that once made sense may become outdated or otherwise inappropriate. When in doubt, follow convention.

Style and formatting
Manual of Style and its subpages
Related policies and guidelines
Related help, tutorials and proposals
Related to specific cultures

Generally, article naming should prefer what the greatest number of English speakers would most easily recognize, with a reasonable minimum of ambiguity, while at the same time making linking to those articles easy and second nature.

This is justified by the following principle:

The names of Wikipedia articles should be optimized for readers over editors, and for a general audience over specialists.

Following linking conventions as well as naming conventions is more likely to produce working links to the article expected. A redirect should be created for articles that may reasonably be found under two or more names (such as different spellings or former names). Conversely, a term that may be used to describe several different search terms may require a disambiguation page.

If an article has been named inappropriately, it can be renamed by moving the article to a more appropriate title. See Help:Moving a page and Wikipedia:Requested moves for more information.

New naming conventions should be proposed at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions, and explained at Requests for comment, the Village Pump, and any related pages. Once a strong consensus has formed, the proposal can be adopted and listed below. New naming conventions for specific categories of articles often arise from WikiProjects.

Contents

[edit] General conventions

[edit] Lowercase second and subsequent words in titles

Convention: Do not capitalize second and subsequent words unless the title is almost always capitalized in English (for example, proper names). Thus, capitalize John Wayne and Art Nouveau, but not Video Games. The first letter of an item should not be capitalized just because it is a wikilink; upper and lower cases will direct readers to the same page (for example, video games and Video games). However, a "workaround" has been suggested for those who want to conform to more conventional methodologies for titling articles. See Case sensitivity and searching

Rationale and specifics: See Wikipedia:Naming conventions (capitalization) and Wikipedia:Canonicalization.

[edit] Prefer singular nouns

Convention: In general only create page titles that are in the singular, unless that noun is always in a plural form in English, such as scissors or trousers, or concerns a set, such as Arabic numerals, polar coordinates, Bantu languages, or The Beatles, that requires a plural.

Category names follow different pluralization conventions, see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (categories).

Rationale and specifics: See Wikipedia:Naming conventions (plurals)

[edit] Redirect adjectives to nouns

Convention: Adjectives (such as democratic) should redirect to nouns (in this case, democracy).

Rationale and specifics: See Wikipedia:Naming conventions (adjectives)

[edit] Use gerund of verbs

Convention: Use the gerund of verbs (the -ing form in English) unless there is a more common form for a certain verb.

Rationale and specifics: See Wikipedia:Naming conventions (verbs)

[edit] Use English words

Convention: Name your pages in English and place the native transliteration on the first line of the article unless the native form is more commonly recognized by readers than the English form. The choice between anglicized and native spellings should follow English usage (e.g., Besançon, Søren Kierkegaard and Göttingen, but Nuremberg, delicatessen, and Florence). Often this will be the local version, as with Madrid. Sometimes the usual English version will differ somewhat from the local form as in Franz Josef Strauss; and rarely, as with Mount Everest, it will be completely different.

Rationale and specifics: See: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English)

[edit] Use common names of persons and things

Convention: Except where other accepted Wikipedia naming conventions give a different indication, use the most common name of a person or thing that does not conflict with the names of other people or things; use the naming conflict guideline when there is a conflict. Where articles have descriptive names, the given name must be neutrally worded and must not carry POV implications.

Rationale and specifics: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names)

[edit] Be precise when necessary

Convention: Please, do not write or put an article on a page with an ambiguously named title as though that title had no other meanings. If all possible words have multiple meanings, go with the rule of thumb of naming guidelines and use the more popular term.

Rationale and specifics: See: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (precision) and Wikipedia:Disambiguation

[edit] Prefer spelled-out phrases to abbreviations

Convention: Avoid the use of abbreviations, including acronyms, in page naming unless the term you are naming is almost exclusively known only by its abbreviation and is widely known and used in that form. NATO, NASA, laser, radar, and scuba are good examples of acronyms that are commonly thought of as words. On the other hand, abbreviations like assn and UK should not be used, although UK (for United Kingdom) is acceptable for use in disambiguation.

Rationale and specifics: See: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (abbreviations)

[edit] Avoid the definite article ("the") and the indefinite article ("a"/"an") at the beginning of the page name

Convention: If the definite or indefinite article would be capitalized in running text, then include it at the beginning of the page name. This would be the case for the title of a work such as a novel. Otherwise, do not include it at the beginning of the page name.

Examples: "Netherlands" instead of "The Netherlands", or "Punisher" instead of "The Punisher". Exceptions: "The Gambia", The Hague, The Cheat, The Old Man and the Sea

Rationale, specifics and exceptions: See: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (definite and indefinite articles at beginning of name)

[edit] Use of "and"

Sometimes two or more closely related or complementary concepts are most sensibly discussed on a common page rather than a page each. Where possible, use a name covering all cases: for example Endianness covers Big-endian and Little-endian, both of which redirect to it. Where an overarching name is not practicable, use each individual name in the article title, joined by "and". Examples: Acronym and initialism, Pioneer 6, 7, 8 and 9, Promotion and relegation. Each word should redirect (or be linked from a disambiguation page) to the combined name, e.g. Pioneer 8. If there is no obvious ordering, place the more commonly encountered word first where applicable. If one is not commonly encountered first place the words alphabetically. Either way, the reverse-ordered name should exist as a redirect (e.g. Initialism and acronym).

Do not use "and" to bias article names. For example, the article would be Islamic terrorism, rather than "Islam and terrorism".

[edit] Do not use an article name that suggests a hierarchy of articles

Since Transport in Azerbaijan could just as well be considered a subdivision of Transport as of Azerbaijan, do not use a name like Azerbaijan/Transportation (the old Wikipedia software created a subpage when the article name contained a forward slash; this feature is discontinued for articles, but you may use it on user, portal and talk pages).

[edit] Special characters

See also: Avoid non alpha-numeric characters used only for emphasis

Some special characters either cannot be used or may cause problems. For example you should not use a piping character (|), curly braces ({}), or square brackets ([]) in a name.

Titles must not begin with an interlanguage link code followed by a colon. For example a page with the title FR:example will produce a link to the page titled "Example" on the French Wikipedia. The same applies to interwiki links.

For words containing letters with accent marks (Diacritics), see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English).

Separate accent-like and/or quote-like characters (including, but not limited to ʻ, ʾ, ʿ, ᾿, ῾, ‘, “, ’, ”, c, combining diacritical marks combined with a "space" character,...) should be avoided in page names. A common exception is the apostrophe ' character (e.g. Anthony d'Offay), which should however be used sparingly (e.g. Shia instead of Shi'a). Another exception are printable characters in redirect pages.

For use of hyphens, dashes and hair spaces in page names, see Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dashes).

Non-language characters such as "♥", "★", and "*", sometimes found in advertisements or logos, are not the common English usage. See Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names) and Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English).

See Wikipedia:Naming conventions (technical restrictions).

[edit] Avoid non alpha-numeric characters used only for emphasis

To maintain the functionality of Alphabetical Indexing and avoid needless redirect pages, page names should not begin with non alpha-numeric (A-Z,0-9) characters used solely for emphasis. Also keep in mind that Wikipedia is not a collection of standalone quotations; that is what Wikiquote is for. If a quotation is worthy of an article do not use quotation marks to start the page name, just use the quotation.

Non alpha-numeric characters may still be appropriate if a common term for the article is generally expressed as a non alpha-numeric phrase. In these cases the character(s) are not being used solely for emphasis. A redirect page may be helpful in such cases.

Examples of improper article names: ****Encyclopedia**** , !List of Things I like , "Catching Fish".
Example of proper non alpha-numeric naming: *69
Examples of proper article names about quotations: To be, or not to be ; Cogito ergo sum

[edit] Controversial names

See also: Wikipedia:naming conflict

The purpose of an article's title is to enable that article to be found by interested readers, and nothing more. In particular, the current title of a page does not imply either a preference for that name, or that any alternative name is discouraged in the text of articles. Generally, an article's title should not be used as a precedent for the naming of any other articles. Editors are strongly discouraged from editing for the sole purpose of changing one controversial name to another. If an article name has been stable for a long time, and there is no good reason to change it, it should remain. Especially when there is no other basis for a decision, the name given the article by its creator should prevail. Any proposal to change between names should be examined on a case-by-case basis, and discussed on talk pages before a name is changed. However, debating controversial names is often unproductive, and there are many other ways to help improve Wikipedia. An incomplete list of controversial names includes: Roman Catholic Church vs. Catholic Church; BC/AD vs. BCE/CE; Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia vs. Republic of Macedonia vs. Macedonia; Palestinian Arabs vs. Palestinians vs. Palestinian People. There are many others.

[edit] Use standard English for titles even if trademarks encourage otherwise

Convention: Follow standard English text formatting for article names that are trademarks. Items in full or partial uppercase (such as Invader ZIM) should have standard capitalisation (Invader Zim).

Exceptions include article titles with the first letter lowercase and the second letter uppercase, such as iPod and eBay

Rationale and specifics: See Wikipedia:Manual of Style (trademarks).

[edit] Other specific conventions

[edit] Aircraft names

Aircraft names are too varied to give full guidelines here; see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (aircraft).

[edit] Animals, plants, and other organisms

Insofar as there is any consensus among Wikipedia editors about capitalization of common names of species, it is that each WikiProject can decide on its own rules for capitalization. In general, common (vernacular) names of flora and fauna should be written in lower case — for example, "oak" or "lion". There are a limited number of exceptions to this:

  1. Automatic capitalisation of the first letter of a page name, example: clicking bluebarred pygmy sunfish goes to a page of which the title reads "Bluebarred pygmy sunfish";
  2. Where the common name contains a proper noun, such as the name of a person or place, that proper noun should be capitalised, example: Allyn Smith's banded snail;
  3. For specific groups of organisms, there are specific rules of capitalization based on current and historic usage among those who study the organisms. These should ordinarily be followed:
  4. In a very few cases, a set of officially-established common names are recognized only within a country or a geographic region. Those common names may be capitalized according to local custom but it should be understood that not all editors will have access to the references needed to support these names; in such cases, using the general recommendation is also acceptable.

In a hyphenated name, the part after the hyphen is not capitalized. For example, White-tailed deer, Red-winged Blackbird, Wilson's Storm-petrel. If in doubt, check with a field guide or official list.

When you create a new entry, whatever the capitalization chosen, always create a redirect in the alternative case. For example, name the entry Bald Eagle but create a redirect to it from bald eagle or vice versa. Creating the redirect is not optional, but will not be needed for single word species names (see: Wikipedia:Redirect). There are some rare instances where lower case and capitalized versions have different meanings. Suitable links or disambiguation should then be used (see: Wikipedia: Naming conventions (precision)#Minor spelling variations).

See: Wikipedia:WikiProject Tree of Life#Article_titles_and_common_names
 See: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (fauna)
 See: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (flora)
 See: Capitalization

[edit] Armenian

See: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Armenian)

[edit] Books - literary works

Convention: Use the title of the work as the article's title, following all applicable general conventions.

To disambiguate, add the type of literary work in parentheses, such as "(novel)", "(novella)", "(short story)", etc. You may use "(book)" to disambiguate a non-fiction book. If further disambiguation is needed, add the author's surname inside the parentheses: "(Orwell novel)", "(Asimov short story)", etc.

Rationale, specifics and exceptions: see: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (books)

[edit] Broadcasting

Radio and television stations in countries where call signs are customarily used, such as North America, should always be titled with the official call sign as assigned by that country's regulatory authority. In places where call signs are not normally assigned to broadcast stations, the article title should be the officially registered name of the station, or else the name by which the station most commonly identifies itself (for instance, Voice of Russia or Radio Sawa). Many countries have stations or networks with similar names (e.g., "Radio One" in much of the English-speaking world). Those article titles should instead be chosen to reduce the possibility for confusion and title duplication as much as possible. In places with a mix of call signs and station names, such as most of Central or South America, the station name should normally be used, except when the call sign is well-known.

See also #Television (industry and programming) below.

[edit] North America

The official call sign can usually be determined by checking with the FCC's Common Database System (fcc.gov), Industry Canada's Spectrum Direct (sd.ic.gc.ca), or COFETEL's PDF station listings (cofetel.gob.mx). Be aware that many periodicals and even stations themselves do not always use correct call signs. Also be aware that not all call signs are four letters; in Mexico they often have five or six, and in all three countries they may have as few as three.

If the official call sign has a suffix (-CA, -DC, -FM, -LD, -LP, and -TV are the only suffixes currently in use in the United States; only -FM and -TV elsewhere), a redirect or disambiguation should be added for the call sign without the suffix. For stations which do not have a suffix, if disambiguation is necessary (because the official call sign conflicts with an airport code or acronym), place the type of service in parentheses; for example, "KSFO (AM)" or "KDFW (TV)". Note that American and Mexican stations generally have a suffix only if they share their call sign with another station on a different broadcast band, but with the exception of CBC-owned television stations with a call sign in the format CB-(-)T, Canadian stations always have a suffix whether the call sign is shared or not. See North American call sign for more information on assignment practices.

Alternate brand names such as "Fox 25", "The Edge", "Q107" or "Jack FM" are very rarely unique, and "Jack FM Toronto" or "Q107 Memphis" are not appropriate article titles. A brand name may, however, be created as a redirect or a disambiguation page where appropriate.

Where a single broadcast outlet operates several transmitters with different call signs, create the article at the call sign which is considered the primary station, and make the other call signs redirects to that call sign. Where a station has changed call signs, please put the station's entire history in its current call sign, as the old call signs may subsequently be reassigned to new stations.

[edit] Categories

See: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (categories).

[edit] Chemistry

See: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (chemistry) also section below #Isotopes and Nuclides

[edit] Chinese

See: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Chinese)

[edit] Comics

See: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (comics)

[edit] Companies

Convention: The legal status of the company (in English: Corp., plc, Inc. or LLC; similar statuses in other languages that can come either after or before the company name), is not normally included, i.e. Microsoft or Wal-Mart. When disambiguation is needed, legal status, main company interest or "(company)" can be used to disambiguate: for example, Nike, Inc., Elfa AB, Halifax (bank) or Converse (company). When the legal status is used, it is abbreviated in the article title. In the article itself, the title sentence of the article should include the abbreviated legal status. For example: Generic Corp. Ltd. is largest provider of widgets in the world.

Please note, "company", "international" "group" "industries" or similar suffixes are not legal statuses and should be included as specified by the originating business. For example: JPMorgan Chase & Co., but The Coca-Cola Company.

Legal status may be included when disambiguation is not needed for companies that have commonly used acronyms such as Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC).

Rationale and specifics: see: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (companies)

See also: Wikipedia:Manual of Style (trademarks)

[edit] Elections

Convention: Use the format "Demonym type election, date", for example "Canadian federal election, 1867". For future elections of uncertain date one can use the Next Irish general election format; for special elections or elections of subnational parliaments, use the Scottish Parliament election, 2007 and Nepalese Constituent Assembly election, 2007 format.

[edit] Events and incidents

This set of conventions covers current and historical events such as military conflicts and terrorist incidents.

See: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (events)

[edit] Film titles

Convention: Films often share the same name as other films, books or terms. When disambiguating a film from something else use "(film)" in the title when only one film had that name and (YEAR film) in the title when there are two or more films by that name (example: Titanic (1997 film)).

Rationale and specifics: see: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (films)

[edit] Government departments, ministers etc.

See: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (government departments and ministers)

[edit] Historical names and titles

See: #People

[edit] Initials

The convention dealing with initials is part of Wikipedia:Naming conventions (people)

[edit] Ireland and Irish names

[edit] Isotopes and nuclides

Convention: Isotopes when written out are common nouns, and should begin with the uncapitalized element name, followed by a hyphen (not an em dash or en dash) and then the mass number. Examples are carbon-14 and uranium-235. The uncapitalized name of elements when written out (but not in symbol form) follows IUPAC convention for chemical elements, and is not changed when the isotope is written out. See IUPAC Provisional Recommendations for the Nomenclature of Inorganic Chemistry (2004) (online draft of an updated version of the "Red Book")

[edit] Japanese

See: Wikipedia:Manual of Style (Japan-related articles)

[edit] Korean

See: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Korean)

[edit] Languages, both natural and programming

Convention: Languages which share their names with some other thing should be suffixed with "language". If the language's name is unique, there is no need for any suffix. For example, English language, but Esperanto.

Language families and groups of languages are pluralized. Thus, Niger-Congo languages rather than 'Niger-Congo language', and Sino-Tibetan languages rather than 'Sino-Tibetan language'.

Programming languages should be disambiguated with the suffix "(programming language)" if the name is not unique enough. For example, VBScript, but Python (programming language).

Rationale and specifics: See: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (languages)

[edit] Latter Day Saint movement

See: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Latter Day Saints)

[edit] Legislation in the United Kingdom

Acts should be titled with the short name form and then the year, without any comma between them (i.e., [[Foo Bar Act 1234]]). There should be a redirect from [[Foo Bar Act]] if the Act is uniquely named.

If several Acts have the same short name, [[Foo Bar Act]] should either redirect to the most commonly-used Act of the series if one exists (e.g., the Data Protection Acts), or if not either serve as a disambiguation page (e.g., Representation of the People Acts) or redirect to [[Foo Bar Acts]] (plural) which would serve as an article about the series of Acts.

If two Acts are passed with the same name and year in two parliaments as different enactments of the same piece of legislation, then have just one article (e.g. the Act of Union 1707); but if the two Acts are different pieces of legislation, use parenthetical disambiguation based on jurisdiction or entity (e.g. [[European Communities Act 1972 (UK)]] and [[European Communities Act 1972 (Ireland)]]).

[edit] Lists

Convention: Put a list of Xs as list of Xs, rather than Xs, famous Xs, listing of important Xs, list of noted Xs, list of all Xs, etc.

Rationale and specifics: see: Wikipedia:Lists (stand-alone lists)#Naming conventions

[edit] Long lists

In the event that a list becomes so long as to necessitate a split, follow the guidance at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (long lists), where the preferred style given is for List of foos: A, and for ranges: List of foos: W-X-Y-Z

[edit] Literary works

See above: #Books - literary works

[edit] Manuscript names

See: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (manuscript names).

[edit] Mormonism

See: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Latter Day Saints)

[edit] Mongolian

See: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Mongolian)

[edit] Music

[edit] Pieces of music

Convention: Name the article in its most common form, adding the composer's surname in parentheses after it if more than one piece has that title. For example, War Requiem, Violin Concerto (Berg), Symphony No. 6 (Mahler).

See: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (pieces of music)

[edit] Album and song titles and band names

Convention: In band names and titles of songs or albums, the standard rule in the English language is to capitalize words that are the first or the last word in the title and those that are not coordinating conjunctions (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so), prepositions (in, to, over), articles (an, a, the), or the word to when used to form an infinitive. Note that short verbs (Is, Are, and Do) and pronouns (Me, It, and His) are capitalized. Do not replicate stylized typography in logos and album art, though a redirect may be appropriate (for example, KoЯn redirects to Korn).

When necessary, disambiguation should be done using (band), (album), or (song) (such as Anthrax (band) or Insomniac (album)); use further disambiguation only when needed (for example X (U.S. band), X (Australian band)). Unless multiple albums of the same name exist (such as Down to Earth), they do not need to be disambiguated any further. For example, Down to Earth (Ozzy Osbourne album) is fine, but Insomniac (Green Day album) is unnecessary. Disambiguate albums and songs by artist and not by year unless the artist releases multiple albums with the same name. When a track is not strictly a song (in other words a composition without lyrics, or an instrumental that is not a cover of a song), disambiguation should be done using (composition) or (instrumental).

[edit] Operas

See: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (operas)

[edit] Numbers and dates

Articles about numbers and related meanings are at N (number) without commas, for example 1729 (number), not Seventeen hundred twenty-nine nor One thousand seven hundred and twenty-nine nor Number 1729 nor 1,729. The name 1729 itself is for the year 1729 AD. So use the name Form 1040, not 1040 (the year Macbeth became King of Scotland), and Intel 80386, not 386 (the year the Northern Wei Dynasty began to rule China).

Rationale and specifics: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (numbers and dates)

Covered in that guideline:

  • page names for articles on dates, on time periods, on numbers;
  • the use of Arabic numerals as well as Roman numerals in page names;
  • page names for articles on various topics containing a number and/or time indicator in the title.

[edit] Old Norse

Rationale and specifics: See: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Norse mythology)

When one particular Anglicized form for a name is overwhelmingly most common and well known to the average English speaking person, it is used for the article title, e.g. Odin, Thor. When no particular Anglicized form can be said to be in common use in everyday English and English speaking scholars use the standardized Old Norse spelling, use the standardized Old Norse spelling except replace the o-ogonek character (ǫ) with the character 'ö'. We should endeavour to supply every variant of Anglicized spelling somewhere within the article, in the first paragraph when that is practical.

[edit] Organizations

Convention: For articles on organizations the general rule applies. That means: Name your pages with the English translation and place the original native name on the first line of the article unless the native form is more commonly used in English media than the English form. Examples of the last are names of organizations in India, Ireland, Israel, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines, Quebec, Sri Lanka (English is or was an official language in most of these countries, which led to the general use of the native name), etc..

See also: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (political parties)

Rationale and specifics: See: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English)

[edit] People

Wikipedia:Naming conventions (people) starts from the idea that names in the format <First name> <Last name> are usually the least problematic as page name for an article on a single person.

The guideline concentrates on these cases where this format is not the most obvious, for example, how to deal with middle names, with Iberian naming customs, with names of people from countries where the surname comes first, with disambiguation (when several people share the same name), etc.

The people NC guideline has absorbed some content previously in Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names) (e.g. abbreviations in names of people), or separate topics on this page, that were not mentioned in specific guidelines until now (e.g. Spanish family names).

[edit] Monarchs and nobility

For most Western royalty and nobility, see: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (names and titles)

[edit] Ancient Romans

See: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (ancient Romans)

[edit] Western clergy

See: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Western clergy)

[edit] Places

See: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (places) and Wikipedia:Naming conventions (geographic names)

[edit] City names

Convention: In general, there are no special naming conventions for cities, unless multiple cities with the same name exist.

Discussion, rationale, and specifics: See: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (city names)

[edit] Country-specific topics

Convention: In general, country-specific articles and categories should be named using the form: "(item) of (country)". See: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (country-specific topics).

[edit] Specific countries

For conventions on the naming of places in other countries, see also:

[edit] Russian names

Some Russian names have a conventional English spelling. For others, use Wikipedia's modified BGN/PCGN romanization, documented at Wikipedia:Romanization of Russian.

[edit] School names

Schools can share the same name. When disambiguating a school because an article already exists, the most general locale of the school should be used in parentheses to all articles, and a disambiguation page should be created.

For other recommendations and current discussions see: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (schools).

[edit] Ship names

Convention: Articles about ships that have standard prefixes should include them in the article title; for example, HMS Ark Royal, USS Enterprise. Note that although in text the name but not the prefix is italicized, this is not indicated in the article name, so pipe links are used, for example for the above [[HMS Ark Royal|HMS ''Ark Royal'']], [[USS Enterprise|USS ''Enterprise'']]. Articles about ships that do not have standard prefixes should be titled as (Nationality) (type) (Name); for example, Russian aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov ([[Russian aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov|Russian aircraft carrier ''Admiral Kuznetsov'']].

Rationale and specifics: See: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (ships)

[edit] Sports teams

See Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/Naming convention for sports teams

(1) In cases where there is no ambiguity whatsoever as to the official spelling of a club's name in English, the official name should be used.

(2) In cases where there is some ambiguity as to the official spelling of a club's name in English, the name most commonly used by the English-language media should be used (as determined using the number of hits at Google News).

  • Tests for "no ambiguity": the club's official web site has an English-language section; and that name has been adopted at least by a significant section of the English-language media; and it is recognizable; and it is not easily confused with other clubs' names.
  • Tests for "ambiguity": the club's official web site does not have an English-language section; or it is not broadly recognizable; or it is easily confused with other clubs' names.

Where an article is clearly about a particular sport you do not need to put a prefix or suffix like 'RLFC', 'CCC' or 'FK' throughout the article text, merely in the title. For example, FC Barcelona is the category name but throughout the body Barcelona is sufficient. However, for cross-sport references it may be appropriate, ie "St Helens share Knowsley Road stadium with St Helens FC". Do not extend this to nicknames as they may confuse unfamiliar users.

For North American teams, use both place and nicknames; ie Detroit Red Wings rather than Detroit or Red Wings, as non-Americans may not know who the Bears or the Falcons are and it aids cross-referencing. Furthermore, where there are more than one team from a city - Giants and Jets, for example - this specificity is essential.

[edit] All Blacks

The New Zealand national rugby union team are almost always referred to as the All Blacks in New Zealand and the article is thus titled as a result; this is a special case. (However, in formal rugby articles like the World Cup results sections, give scores like "New Zealand 28 - 17 South Africa" not "All Blacks 28 - 17 South Africa".)

[edit] Stub templates and categories

See details in Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Naming guidelines.

In general, stub templates use nouns in lower case letters except where proper names are involved. Abbreviations are allowed but only when completely unambiguous (or one of a small set of commonly used abbreviations such as geo, bio, hist for geography, biography and history), and are otherwise discouraged. Hyphens, rather than spaces, are used, though words may be run together if they form part of a compound noun. Thus, for example, {{France-bio-stub}} for French people, but {{FrenchPolynesia-geo-stub}} for the geography of French Polynesia.

Stub categories are also only capitalised for proper nouns, and use noun forms. Thus there is a [[Category:Biology stubs]], rather than [[Category:Biological stubs]] or [[Category:Biology Stubs]].

Current exceptions to these rules are in the process of being converted to conform with these conventions.

[edit] Television (industry and programming)

See: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (television) also #Broadcasting above

[edit] Time (dates, periods, etc.)

See above: #Numbers and dates

[edit] Ukrainian names

With the general naming conventions above in mind, it is still sometimes necessary to render Ukrainian names, normally written in Cyrillic, into the Latin alphabet (to romanize them).

See Romanization of Ukrainian for details of transliteration systems.

  • Most personal names have a conventional English spelling, rendered phonetically. This is usually very close to transcription by the BGN/PCGN system, which is quite intuitive for English speakers to pronounce. Some Ukrainian names have conventional spellings that come from other languages, like Polish, transcription from Russian, transcription into German, etc.
  • For geographic names in Ukraine, the Ukrainian National system is used. For historic reasons, many names are also presented in Russian, Polish, etc.
  • Linguistics topics often use "scholarly", or "scientific transliteration" within the text.

[edit] Proposed guidelines and guidelines under construction

[edit] Conventions currently archived

These conventions have so far failed to find consensus; however, please feel free to revive discussion on a particular subject, either by using the Talk page or start a discussion at the Village pump.

[edit] Ethno-cultural labels in biographies

See: Wikipedia:Naming conventions/Ethno-cultural labels in biographies

[edit] Provinces

Convention: inactive, see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (provinces)

[edit] More issues

There are many other specific issues still being discussed on the talk page.

[edit] See also