Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names)

This page documents an English Wikipedia naming conventions.

Editors should generally follow it, though exceptions may apply. Substantive edits to this page should reflect consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on this guideline's talk page.

Convention: Use the most common name of a person or thing that does not conflict with the names of other people or things. The principal exception is in the case of naming royalty and people with titles. For details of the naming conventions in those cases, see the Wikipedia:Naming conventions (names and titles) page.

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 a more elaborate, more formal or more scientifically precise version include:

Bill Clinton (not William Jefferson Clinton)
George W. Bush (not George Walker Bush)
Tony Blair (not Anthony Charles Lynton Blair)
Julius Caesar (not Imperator Gaius Iulius Caesar Divus)
Occam's Razor (not Ockham's Razor)
Venus de Milo (not Aphrodite of Melos)
Dog (not Canis lupus familiaris)
Guinea pig (not Cavia)
Sea cucumber (not Holothuroidea)

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.

Sometimes, the technically-correct title for the article may be more useful if it is the only authoritative term, but more than one synonymous common or colloquial terms exist.

There are also more trivial cases where Wikipedians have decided that other considerations than common usage are more important. For examples the somewhat technical title fixed-wing aircraft is used rather than airplane or aeroplane largely to avoid troubling those who strongly prefer either British or American spelling.

Subpages

Policy regarding changed MediaWiki software

An article with a slash (/) in its title is treated like any other page, as there are no longer any special subpage features in the main (encyclopedia) namespace. Accordingly, the use of subpage notation when naming articles is discouraged.

If contributors still want to use the former "slashed" subpage naming, they have the burden of showing that a subpage-like name is necessary, otherwise articles using such names will be moved to a page in line with normal article titles.

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, conventionally-named page. For discussions leading to the use of this convention see the Talk page.

Slashes may be used freely when present in original titles, or usual terminology. Examples: Face/Off, Input/output.

Subsidiary articles

The present convention for articles providing more detail on a given topic is using the {{Main|<subpage>}} and {{Details|<subpage>}} templates, in accordance with Wikipedia:Summary style; such templates are placed under a section header, each instance of these templates providing a link to a subpage.

Occasionally these subsidiary pages — if containing content that is only relevant as an elaboration of a shorter paragraph on the main page — can have more complex page names, that is, if only intended to be accessed by clicking from the main article. Example: Isaac Newton has as one of its pages on sub-topics: Isaac Newton's early life and achievements.

However, if a "common name" for such subsidiary page is possible, that is always preferred.

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, cleaner disambiguation and/or solution of naming conflicts, which might lead to article names that are rather "the most obvious" than strictly spoken "the most used".

Some of these exceptions are contained in the Manual of Style, for example the National varieties of English section in that guideline leads to fixed-wing aircraft being used instead of aeroplane or airplane, in order not to give precedence to either British or American spelling.

When the native name of an entity contains characters with diacritics some Wikipedians prefer to use those diacritics in the relevant article title, even in cases where they are more often omitted in English texts. Others prefer to apply the most common principle throughout. For more details see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English).

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).

For articles on people some minor practical exceptions are contained in Wikipedia:Naming conventions (people) - these are however hardly sufficient to cover the complexities for naming royals and other nobility: hence Wikipedia:Naming conventions (names and titles), and several other nobility-related Naming Conventions guidelines, contain many detailed exceptions.