Wikipedia:Naming conventions (ice hockey)
![]() | This guideline documents an English Wikipedia naming convention. Editors should generally follow it, though exceptions may apply. Substantive edits to this page should reflect consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on the talk page. |
Article titles[edit]
- All player and hockey personnel pages should have diacritics applied (where required, according to the languages of the player in question).
- All North American hockey pages should have names without diacritics, except where their use is likewise customary (specifically, in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League and the Ligue Nord-Américaine de Hockey).
- All non-North American hockey pages should have diacritics applied (where required).
Disambiguation[edit]
All articles should attempt to use the most common form in English-language sources, but due to shared names, this is not always possible.
Biographies[edit]
In the event that a player, coach, or other bio subject shares the same name as another notable person:
- If one ice hockey person is markedly more notable than any other people with this name, that person should have that name as their article title, e.g. Patrick Roy. See WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. In such a case, use a hatnote template at the top of the article, usually
{{Other people}}
, which will automatically generate a note like "For other people named Patrick Roy, see Patrick Roy (disambiguation)."
Otherwise, when it is necessary to have a disambiguated article title, use one of the following options, in this order of preference:
- Use "(ice hockey)" following the player's name, as in James Sanford (ice hockey).
- Use a hypocorism or nickname in place of the real given name, but only if it is commonly known to readers and is used frequently in sources. Examples: Dave Lumley, Sue Merz, Bob Dobek; Tiger Williams, Punch Broadbent, Babe Pratt. Do not use a title in a form like Norman "Red" Dutton, though both it and Norman Dutton (ice hockey) should exist as redirects to the real article, Red Dutton.
- Add the player's year of birth. For instance, Greg Adams (ice hockey, born 1963) and Greg Adams (ice hockey, born 1960).
- If two or more share a name and birth year, it is sometimes possible to disambiguate by the playing position (or other role, e.g. coach) for which the person is most notable. For instance, Sean Collins (ice hockey defenceman), Sean Collins (ice hockey forward, born 1983) and Sean Collins (ice hockey, born 1988). However, ice hockey people are not often disambiguated by position due to the nature of the game, in which players often play more than one position even on the same team.
- Use of middle names or initials for sports figures is the least common disambiguation approach, because these long names are usually not used often by sources and are not familiar to readers. Basically, this is only going to come up without controversy when the subject usually goes/went by a pair of initials or by their full name all the time (i.e., when it is the person's WP:COMMONNAME); examples: L. S. Dutkowski, J. J. Daigneault, Tammy Lee Shewchuk, Victor Hubert Tait, Tor Helge Eikeland
Teams[edit]
In the event that a team article shares the same name as another team in a different league or sport:
- The most notable team from the most notable league gets preference when vying for the shorter article title. See WP:PRIMARYTOPIC for when to do this and when to mutually disambiguate all the articles.
- When disambiguating, use the initials of the league following the team name. For example, Pittsburgh Pirates and Pittsburgh Pirates (NHL), and Colorado Rockies and Colorado Rockies (NHL). In both of these cases, the baseball teams are more notable than the hockey teams, and are the primary topics for their names. However, the hockey team Toronto Maple Leafs will be remain the primary topic for that name if a North American Soccer League team is created with the same name; our article on the latter would be at Toronto Maple Leafs (NASL).