Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English)

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Main page: Wikipedia:Naming conventions

Use the most commonly used English version of the name of the subject as the title of the article, as you would find it in verifiable reliable sources (for example other encyclopedias and reference works). This makes it easy to find, and easy to compare information with other sources. Often this will be the local version, as with Madrid. Sometimes the usual English version will differ somewhat from from the local form (Aragon, Venice, Normandy; Franz Josef Strauss, Victor Emmanuel III, Christopher Columbus); rarely, as with Germany or Mount Everest, it will be completely different.

Names not originally in a Latin alphabet, as with Greek, Chinese or Russian, must be transliterated into characters generally intelligible to literate speakers of English. Do not use a systematically transliterated name if there is a common English form of the name; thus, use Tchaikovsky or Chiang Kai-shek even though those are unsystematic.

The native name should generally be included in the first line of the article, with a transliteration if the English name isn't one; redirects from non-English names are encouraged. Where there is an English exonym for the subject, it should be mentioned, even if it is not the most common English name; exonyms should always be at least considered for the title of the article

Include alternatives

The body of each article, preferably in its first paragraph, should list all common names by which its subject is known. When the native name is written in a non-Latin alphabet this representation should be included along with Latin alphabet transliteration. For example, the Beijing article should mention that the city is also known as Peking, and that both names derive from the Chinese name 北京. It is also useful to have multiple redirects to the main article, for example Sverige is a redirect to Sweden. If there is a significant number of alternative names or forms it may be helpful to keep only the most common two or three in the first paragraph and a list of them in a separate section or footnote to avoid cluttering the lead; see Freyr for an example of this.

National varieties of English

See also: Wikipedia:Manual of Style § National varieties of English

All national varieties of English spelling are acceptable, both for titles and content. American spellings need not be respelled to British standards nor vice-versa; for example, both color and colour are acceptable and both spellings are found in article titles (for example color gel and colour state). However an article title on a topic that has strong ties to a particular English-speaking nation should use the appropriate variety of English for that nation.

Divided usage

Sometimes, English usage is divided. For example, US newspapers generally referred to the Olympics in Torino, following official handouts. However, newspapers in other parts of the English speaking world still use Turin. Use what would be the least surprising to a user finding the article. Whichever is chosen, one should place a redirect at the other title and mention both forms in the lead.

Wikipedia is not a crystal ball. It is not our business to predict what term will be in use; but to observe what is and has been in use, and will therefore be familiar to our readers. If Torino ousts Turin, we should follow; but we should not leap to any conclusion until it does.

No established usage

When there is no established usage of the term, more consideration should be given to the correctness of transliteration, rather than frequency of usage. In particular, google tests should be used with caution: when the result of testing usage by counting Google hits is 183:103, this can hardly be called decisive. Search results should also be evaluated with more weighting given to verifiable reliable sources than to less reliable sources (such as comments in forums, mailing lists and the like). Do consult reliable works of general reference in English.

Modified letters

By and large, Wikipedia uses œ and æ to represent the Anglo-Saxon ligature, but not in Latin or Greek-derived words; for those, use e or ae/oe, depending on modern usage and the national variety of English used in the article.

There is disagreement on whether the availability of a letter in common fonts should affect its use on Wikipedia - for example whether the letter í (i with acute) should have a different status from the letter ī (i with macron) because the former is more widely available.

Beware of over-dramatising these issues: as an example Wikipedia:Manual of Style (Ireland-related articles) may be mentioned, which, as a side-effect, regulated use of diacritics regarding Ireland-related articles – peacefully – before, during and after the poll mentioned above, e.g. Inishmore, not Inis Mór; Tomás Cardinal Ó Fiaich, not Tomas Cardinal O'Fiaich (see the mentioned MoS page for details).

See also

• Wikipedia:Naming conventions (geographic names). More on use of alternate names, and of contemporary names and transliterations. Some advice may be applicable to non-geographic names.
• Wikipedia:Naming conventions (names and titles) – specific rules for Western royalty and nobility.
• Wikipedia:Romanization – an overview of the conventions for transliterating various languages into the Latin alphabet.