Wikipedia:Article titles

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This naming conventions page sets out Wikipedia's policy on how to name articles. It is supplemented by guidelines that advise on how to apply the principles set out here and on managing conflicts between them. Most detailed naming advice appears in guidelines relating to articles in specific topic areas – a list of these can be found in the box to the right.

For information on the procedure for renaming an article, see Help:Moving a page and Wikipedia:Requested moves.

Deciding an article name

Article titles should name or describe the subject of the article and make Wikipedia easy to use. Article titles do this if they are:

• Recognizable – Use names and terms most commonly used, and so most likely to be recognized, for the topic of the article.
• Easy to find – Use terms that readers are most likely to look for in order to find the article (and to which editors will most naturally link from other articles).
• Precise – Be precise, but only as precise as is necessary to identify the topic of the article unambiguously.
• Concise – Keep it brief. (Even when disambiguation is necessary, keep that part brief.) A good article title is to the point. This makes finding and recognising the article easier (and makes life easier for editors linking to it).
• Consistent – Similar articles are often given similar titles. This may be true of a series of articles sharing a common topic or articles describing different topics but from a common field.

In addition, article titles are constrained by unavoidable technical restrictions, including the necessity that titles be

• Unique for every article.

Most articles will have a simple and obvious name that satisfies most or all of these criteria. If so, use it. However, it may be necessary to trade off two or more of the criteria against one another; in such situations, article names are determined by consensus. Consensus on naming articles in specific fields, or with respect to particular problems, is stated and explained on the guideline pages referenced. When no consensus exists, it is established through discussion, always with the above principles in mind. The choice of article names should put the interests of readers before those of editors, and those of a general audience over those of specialists.

Redirects should be created to articles that may reasonably be searched for or linked to under two or more names (such as different spellings or former names). Conversely, a name that could refer to several different articles may require disambiguation.

Use common names

Further information: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names)

Articles are normally titled using the most common English-language name of a person or thing that is the subject of the article. If the article's subject has no evident name, a concise, recognizable and neutral description is used instead. In determining what this name is, we follow the usage of reliable sources. As part of this, the name chosen for an article, while in common use, should be neither vulgar nor pedantic: readers will not expect such names to be the title of an article in an encyclopedia such as Wikipedia.

Occasionally, specific subject domains may follow a standardised precedent that is not strictly the common name. This practice is often controversial, and should not be adopted unless it produces clear benefits outweighing the use of uncommon names; when it is, the article titles adopted should follow a neutral and common convention specific to that subject domain, and they otherwise adhere to the general principles in naming articles on Wikipedia. The decision to adopt such a convention may be influenced by factors such as:

• Most of the articles on the subject do have ambiguous common names, so that the convention extends a standardized disambiguation to articles which do not need disambiguation
• Many articles deal with subjects with several common names,
• There is no obvious method to determine which names are the most common or otherwise suitable common names are ambiguous.

Be precise when necessary

Further information: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (precision) and Wikipedia:Disambiguation

Articles are named as precisely as is necessary to indicate their scope accurately, while avoiding over-precision. Readers should not have to read into the article to find which of several meanings of the title is the actual subject, but there is no virtue in excess. Wikipedia also has disambiguation pages to help readers find the meaning they want. When (as with Paris), the unmodified term has an overwhelmingly predominant meaning, we use the simple term for that article; see WP:PRIMARYUSAGE.

All articles must, by the design of Wikipedia, have a unique name. If there are several articles with the same name, it may be that one concerns the primary topic for that name; if so, that one keeps the common name, and the others must be disambiguated. It may be that using an alternative common name for a topic is the simplest way to disambiguate; if not, add a disambiguator in parentheses. The articles should be linked, to help readers get where they want to go, either to each other or to a disambiguation page, normally called topic or topic (disambiguation).

Controversial names

Further information: 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 choice of title is not influenced by disputes about whether a name is "right" in a moral sense. Note also that the use of one name as an article title does not preclude the use of alternative names in appropriate contexts in the text of articles.

Nor does the use of one name for one article require that all related articles use the same name. The advantages of consistency and of common usage should be considered; there is often some reason, such as anachronism, for inconsistencies in common usage. For example, Wikipedia has articles on both Volgograd and the Battle of Stalingrad.

Editing for the sole purpose of changing one controversial name to another is strongly discouraged. If an article name has been stable for a long time, and there is no good reason to change it, it should not be changed. If it has never been stable for a long time, and no consensus can be reached on what the name should be, default to the name used by the first major contributor after the article ceased to be a stub.

Any potentially controversial proposal to change a name should be discussed and advertised at WP:RM before any change is made. However, debating controversial names is often unproductive, and there are many other ways to help improve Wikipedia.

Where articles have descriptive names, they are neutrally worded. A specific example is that the term allegation should be avoided in a title unless the article concerns charges in a legal case or accusations of illegality under civil, criminal or international law which have not yet been proven in a court of law.

Disambiguation

See the sections of the disambiguation guideline dealing with naming the disambiguation page and naming the specific topic articles.

Use English words

Further information: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English)

Articles are named in English unless the foreign form of a name has greater recognition by English-speaking readers. The choice between anglicized and local spellings should follow English usage (e.g., Besançon, Søren Kierkegaard and Göttingen, but Nuremberg, delicatessen and Florence). Other significant forms of the name should be given in the first line of the article. Sometimes the usual English version will be the same as the local form, as in Madrid; sometimes it will differ somewhat, as in Franz Josef Strauss; and rarely, as with Mount Everest, it will be completely different.

National varieties of English

Further information: Wikipedia:Manual of Style, National varieties of English

All national varieties of English spelling are acceptable in article names; Wikipedia does not prefer any national variety over any other. American spellings should not be respelled to British standards, and vice versa, unless there is some other advantage to the encyclopedia; for example, both color and colour are acceptable and both spellings are found in article titles (such as 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 variety of English appropriate for that nation.

Prefer standard English over trademarks

Further information: Wikipedia:Manual of Style (trademarks)

Article titles follow standard English text formatting in the case of trademarks, unless the trademarked spelling is demonstrably most common usage in sources independent of the owner of the trademark. Items in full or partial uppercase (such as Invader ZIM) should have standard capitalization (Invader Zim); however, if the name is ambiguous, and one meaning is usually capitalized, this is one possible method of disambiguation.

Exceptions include article titles with the first letter lowercase and the second letter uppercase, such as iPod and eBay. For these, see the technical restrictions guideline.

Article title format

For further information, see the naming guidelines on capitalization, plurals, abbreviations, and definite and indefinite articles.

• Use lower case, except for proper names: The initial letter of a title is almost always capitalized; subsequent words in a title are not, unless they are part of a proper name, and so would be capitalized in running text: Liberal arts college but Northwestern University. For initial lower case letters, as in eBay, see the technical restrictions page. See also the special rules on capitalization in bird naming.
• Use the singular form: Article titles are generally in singular in form, e.g. Horse not Horses. Exceptions include nouns that are always in a plural form in English (e.g. scissors or trousers) and the names of classes of objects (e.g. Arabic numerals or Bantu languages).
• Avoid abbreviations: Abbreviations and acronyms are generally avoided unless the subject is almost exclusively known by its abbreviation (e.g. NATO and Laser). The abbreviation UK, for United Kingdom, is acceptable for use in disambiguation.
• Avoid definite and indefinite articles: Do not place definite or indefinite articles (the, a and an) at the beginning of titles unless they are part of a proper name (e.g. The Old Man and the Sea) or otherwise change the meaning (e.g. The Crown).
• Use nouns: Titles should be nouns or noun phrases. Adjective and verb forms (e.g. democratic, integrate) should redirect to articles titled with the corresponding noun (Democracy, Integration), although sometimes they will be disambiguation pages, as at Organic. Sometimes the noun corresponding to a verb will be the gerund (-ing form), as in Swimming.
• Do not enclose titles in quotes: Article names which are quotes (or song titles, etc.) are not enclosed in quotation marks (e.g. To be, or not to be is the article while "To be, or not to be" is a redirect to that article).
• Do not use titles suggesting that one article forms part of another. Even if an article is considered subsidiary to another (as where summary style is used), it should be named independently. For example, an article on transportation in Azerbaijan should not be given a name like "Azerbaijan/Transport" or "Azerbaijan (transport)" – use Transport in Azerbaijan. (This does not always apply in non-article namespaces: see Help:Subpage.)

Special characters and formatting

Further information: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (technical restrictions)

There are technical restrictions on the use of certain characters in page titles. The characters #, <, >, [, ], |, {, and } cannot be used at all and there are certain restrictions on titles containing colons, periods and some other characters. Technically all other Unicode characters can be used in page titles. However the following should be noted:

• Provide redirects to non-keyboard characters: If use of diacritics (accent marks) is in accordance with the English-language name, or other characters not present on standard keyboards are used, such as dashes, provide a redirect from the equivalent title using standard English-language keyboard characters.
• Avoid accent-/quote-like characters: Accent-like and/or quote-like characters (e.g. ʻ, ʾ, ʿ, ᾿, ῾, ‘, “, ’, ”, ^c, combining diacritical marks combined with a "space" character) should be avoided in page names. A common exception is the curly apostrophe ' (e.g. Anthony d'Offay), which should, however, be used sparingly (e.g. Shia instead of Shi'a).
• Do not use non-language characters: Non-language characters such as "♥", as sometimes found in advertisements or logos, should never be used in titles.
• Consider browser support: If there is a reasonable alternative, avoid symbols which are so rare that many browsers will not render them. For example, the article on Weierstrass p carries that title rather than the symbol itself, which many readers would see as just a square box.
• Do not apply formatting: Formatting, such as italics or bolding, is technically achievable in page titles, but is used only in special cases. An example of such an exception is to produce italics for taxonomic names of genera and species. (See italics and formatting restrictions.)

Titles containing "and"

Sometimes two or more closely related or complementary concepts are most sensibly covered by a single article. Where possible, use a single name covering all cases: for example, Endianness covers the concepts "big-endian" and "little-endian". Where no reasonable overarching name is available, construct an article title using "and", as in Acronym and initialism; Pioneer 6, 7, 8, and 9; Promotion and relegation. (The individual terms – such as Acronym – should redirect to the combined page, or be linked there via a disambiguation page or hatnote if they have other meanings.)

If there is no obvious ordering, place the more commonly encountered concept first, or if that is not applicable, use alphabetical order. Alternative names using reverse ordering (such as Initialism and acronym) should be redirects.

Avoid use of "and" in ways that appear biased. For example, use Islamic terrorism, not "Islam and terrorism".

Proposed naming conventions and guidelines

Main page: Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines

Proposals for new naming conventions and guidelines should be advertised on this page's talk page, at requests for comment, the Village Pump and any related pages. If a strong consensus has formed, the proposal is adopted and should be listed on this page.

New naming conventions for specific categories of articles often arise from WikiProjects. For a list of current and former proposals, see Proposed naming conventions and guidelines.

See also

• Wikipedia:Name mush by culture (essay)
• Wikipedia:Non-unique personal name