Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names)

Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names)

Convention: Use the most common name of a person or thing that does not conflict with the names of other people or things.

When choosing a name for a page ask yourself: What word would the average user of the Wikipedia put into the search engine?

Wikipedia is not a place to advocate a title change in order to reflect recent scholarship. The articles themselves reflect recent scholarship but the titles should represent common usage.

Remember that a link is the title of the page it links to.

Titles should be as simple as possible without being too general.

For example, the page about jazz should simply be called "Jazz", not "Jazz music", because "jazz" refers in almost any context to a genre of music, and the simpler title makes linking easier. Adding the word "music" is redundant.

On the other hand, Country music should be on a page called Country music because the word "country" has other referents besides the musical genre. If we ignore potential ambiguity, the ideal of simplicity can be at odds with the ideal of precision.

Rationale

Names of articles should be the most commonly used name for the following reasons:

• We want to maximize the likelihood of being listed in external search engines, thereby attracting more people to Wikipedia. For example, the pagename is Jimmy Carter and not "James Earl Carter, Jr."; the string "Jimmy Carter" in the page title make it easier to find: search engines will often give greater weight to the contents of the title than to the body of the page. Since "Jimmy Carter" is the most common form of the name, it will be searched on more often, and having that exact string in our page title will often mean our page shows up higher in other search engines.
• We want to maximize the incidence that people who make a link guessing the article name, guess correctly; people guessing a different name may think there is no article yet, which may cause duplication.
• Using a full formal name requires people to know that name, and to type more.

Redirects help, but give a slightly ugly "redirected from" announcement at the top of the page. On the other hand, if someone reads or hears "King Billy", and wonders who might be meant by that, the "redirected from King Billy" on top of the page works slightly comforting when this king turns up under his most common name: the "redirect" message indicates the system hasn't been playing tricks, and that this was the intended king.

Examples

Examples of common names that Wikipedia uses instead of the more formal or scientifically correct version include:

• Al Gore
• Bill Clinton (not [[William Jefferson Clinton]])
• George W. Bush
• Julius Caesar
• Mark Twain
• Occam's Razor (not [[Ockam's Razor]])
• Venus de Milo (not: [[Aphrodite of Melos]])

Don't overdo it

In cases where the common name of a subject is misleading (For example: "tidal wave" would be a misleading title since these phenomena have nothing to do with tides), then it is sometimes reasonable to fall back on a well-accepted alternative (tsunami, for example). See also: wikipedia:naming conventions (precision)

Also, some terms are in common usage but are commonly regarded as offensive to large groups of people (Eskimo and Mormon Church, for example). In those cases use widely known alternatives (Inuit and Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints). When in doubt, check a mainstream reference work.

This does not mean that we should avoid using widely known pseudonyms like Mark Twain, Marilyn Monroe, Billy the Kid, or widely known common names of animals and other things. But it does mean that we need to temper common usage when the commonly used term is unreasonably misleading or commonly regarded as offensive to one or more groups of people.

Subpages (policy regarding changed MediaWiki software)

A page with a slash (/) in its title is treated like any other page and there are no longer any special subpage features in the main (encyclopedia) namespace. So the use of subpage notation when naming pages is discouraged.

If contributors still want to use the former "slashed" subpage feature, they have the burden of showing that a subpage is necessary, otherwise articles using a subpage will be moved to a main page.

Example: use "James T. Kirk" or "James T. Kirk (Star Trek)", not "Star Trek/James T. Kirk", for an article on the fictional character Captain Kirk.

Unnecessary subpages existing prior to this convention are in the process of being moved to their own main page. For discussions leading to the use of this convention see the Talk page.

Exceptions

Many wikipedia naming conventions guidelines contain implicit or explicit exceptions to the "common names" principle. Some of these exceptions are due to technical limitations, for example "C Plus Plus" while "C++" is technically not possible as a page name.

Other guidelines try to give recommendations for enhanced precision or cleaner disambiguation, which might lead to article names that are rather "the most obvious" than strictly spoken "the most used", for example Laurent-Désiré Kabila and not Laurent-Desire Kabila (which is more used on the internet).

Several guidelines try to systematise certain types of article titles, for example article titles using abbreviations:

• Acronyms: NASA and not N.A.S.A. or N. A. S. A.
• Abbreviating names of people: H. G. Wells and not H.G. Wells or HG Wells

Many guidelines systematise titles of articles grouped by topic, for example M/S Herald of Free Enterprise and not Herald of Free Enterprise, according to wikipedia:naming conventions (ships).

The guideline presently championing this, as well in breath of topic as extent of exceptions to the "common names" principle is wikipedia:naming conventions (names and titles). But an alternative has been proposed, allowing to keep closer to the "common names" idea, without losing "precision": wikipedia:naming conventions (people).

See also

Apart from the main wikipedia:Naming conventions page and the Wikipedia naming conventions category there are also:

• Naming conventions - the encyclopedia article about naming conventions;
• Category:naming conventions - the non-guideline category of articles about naming conventions;
• Wikipedia:Google test - Search engine testing might in some cases assist in discerning which of two alternative versions of a name is most common.