Wikipedia:Article titles

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This page describes Wikipedia's policy on choosing article titles. It is supplemented and explained by guidelines linked to this policy (see the box to the right), which should be interpreted in conjunction with other policies, particularly the three core content policies: Verifiability, No original research and Neutral point of view.

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

Deciding an article title

Most generally, article titles are based on what reliable English-language sources call the subject of the article. There will often be several possible alternative titles for any given article; the choice between them is made by consensus. The principal criteria used by editors when deciding on a title for an article include:

• Recognizability – an ideal title will confirm, to readers who are familiar with (though not necessarily expert in) the topic, that the article is indeed about that topic. One important aspect of this is the use of common English names as used in reliable sources on the subject.
• Naturalness – titles are expected to use names and 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). As part of this, a good title should convey what English, in an encyclopedic register, actually calls the subject (this does not mean Wikipedia must follow other encyclopedias' titles).
• Precision – titles are expected to use names and terms that are precise, but only as precise as is necessary to identify the topic of the article unambiguously. Also, for technical reasons, no two Wikipedia articles can have the same title. For information on how ambiguity is avoided in titles, see the Precision and disambiguation section below and the disambiguation guideline.
• Conciseness – shorter titles are often preferred to longer ones.
• Consistency – titles which follow the same pattern as those of similar articles are often preferred. Many of these patterns are documented in the naming guidelines listed in the box above, and ideally indicate titles that are in accordance with the above criteria.

Most articles will have a simple and obvious title that is better than any other in terms of most or all of these ideal criteria. If so, use it, as a straightforward choice. However, it may be necessary to trade off two or more of the criteria against one another. Consensus on entitling 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, with the above principles in mind. The choice of article titles should put the interests of readers before those of editors, and those of a general audience before 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.

Common names

Articles are normally titled using the name which is most commonly used to refer to the subject of the article in English-language reliable sources. This includes usage in the sources used as references for the article.

Article titles should be neither vulgar nor pedantic. Common usage in reliable sources is preferred to technically correct but rarer forms, whether the official name, the scientific name, the birth name, the original name or the trademarked name.

The following are examples of common names that Wikipedia uses as article titles instead of a more elaborate, formal, or scientific alternative,

• Bill Clinton (not "William Jefferson Clinton")
• Snoop Dogg (not "Cordozar Calvin Broadus")
• Hulk Hogan (not "Terry Gene Bollea")
• Venus de Milo (not "Aphrodite of Melos")
• Caffeine (not 1,3,7-trimethyl-1H-purine-2,6(3H,7H)-dione)
• Guinea pig (not Cavia porcellus)
• Nazi Party (not Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

In determining which of several alternative names is more common, it is useful to observe the usage of major international organizations, major English-language media outlets, quality encyclopedias, geographic name servers, major scientific bodies and scientific journals, and a search engine may help to collect this data. When using a search engine, restrict the results to pages written in English, and exclude the word "Wikipedia". Search engine results are subject to certain biases and technical limitations; for detailed advice in the use of search engines and the interpretation of their results, see Wikipedia:Search engine test.

When there is no single obvious common name for the topic, as used by a significant majority of reliable English language sources, editors should reach a consensus as to which title is best by considering the other criteria identified above.

Wikipedia is not a crystal ball. We do not know what terms will be used in the future, but only what is and has been in use, and will therefore be familiar to our readers. However, common sense can be applied – if an organization changes its name, it is reasonable to consider the usage since the change.

The ideal title for an article will also satisfy the other criteria outlined above; ambiguous or inaccurate names for the article subject, as determined by reliable sources, are often avoided even though they may be more common. For example, tsunami is preferred over the arguably more common, but less accurate tidal wave.

Neutrality and article titles

See also: Wikipedia:Neutral point of view § Article naming

Conflicts often arise over whether an article title complies with Wikipedia's Neutral Point of View policy. Resolving such debates depends on whether the article title is a common name (taken from reliable sources) or a descriptive title (created by Wikipedia editors).

Non-neutral but common names

When a subject or topic has a single common name (as evidenced through usage in a significant proportion of English-language reliable sources), Wikipedia should follow the sources and use that name as our article title (subject to the other naming criteria). Sometimes that common name will include non-neutral words that Wikipedia normally avoids (Examples include Boston Massacre and Teapot Dome scandal). In such cases, the commonality of the name overrides our desire to avoid passing judgment (see below). This is acceptable because the non-neutrality and judgment is that of the sources, and not that of Wikipedia editors. True neutrality means we do not impose our opinions over that of the sources, even when our opinion is that the name used by the sources is judgmental.

Descriptive titles and non-judgmentalism

Where articles have descriptive titles, choose titles that do not seem to pass judgment, implicitly or explicitly, on the subject. For example, 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 that have not yet been proven in a court of law.

Foreign names and anglicization

Further information: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English)

The choice between anglicized and local spellings should follow English-language usage, e.g., Besançon, Søren Kierkegaard and Göttingen, but Nuremberg, delicatessen and Florence.

If there are too few English-language sources to constitute an established usage, follow the conventions of the language appropriate to the subject (German for German politicians, Portuguese for Brazilian towns, and so on). For ideas on how to deal with situations where there are several competing foreign terms, see "Multiple local names" and "Use modern names" in the geographical naming guideline.

Names not originally in a Latin alphabet, such as Greek, Chinese or Russian names, must be transliterated. Established systematic transliterations, such as Hanyu Pinyin, are preferred. However if there is a common English-language form of the name, then use it, even if it is unsystematic (as with Tchaikovsky and Chiang Kai-shek). For a list of transliteration conventions by language, see Wikipedia:Romanization.

Wikipedia generally uses the character æ to represent the Anglo-Saxon ligature. For Latin or Greek-derived words, use e or ae/oe, depending on modern usage and the national variety of English used in the article.

In deciding whether and how to translate a foreign name into English, follow English-language usage. If there is no established English-language treatment for a name, translate it if this can be done without loss of accuracy and with greater understanding for the English-speaking reader.

National varieties of English

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

All national varieties of English spelling are acceptable in article titles; Wikipedia does not prefer any national variety over any other. 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 (for example Australian Defence Force). American spellings should not be respelled to British standards, and vice versa; for example, both color and colour are acceptable and both spellings are found in article titles (such as color gel and colour state). But when local usage is itself divided, we do not necessarily follow the majority or plurality of local English usage against the consensus of the rest of the English-speaking world: Ganges, not Ganga. Occasionally a less common term is selected as an article title because it is appropriate to all national varieties; for example, Fixed-wing aircraft.

Standard English and 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 the 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.

Precision and disambiguation

Articles' titles usually merely indicate the name of the topic. When additional precision is necessary to distinguish an article from other uses of the topic name, over-precision should be avoided. Be precise but only as precise as is needed. For example, it would be inappropriate to title an article "United States Apollo program (1961–1975)" over Apollo program or "Queen (London, England rock band)" over Queen (band). Remember that concise titles are generally preferred.

However, because pages cannot share the same title, it is not always possible to use the exact title that may be desired for an article, as that title may have another meaning. As a general rule:

• If the topic of the article is the primary topic (or only topic) for a desired title, then the article can take that title without modification.
• Otherwise that title cannot be used for the article without disambiguation. This is often done by adding a disambiguating tag in parentheses (or sometimes after a comma); however in certain cases it may be done by choosing a different form of the title in order to achieve uniqueness. If there is a natural mode of disambiguation in standard English, as with Cato the Elder and Cato the Younger, use that instead.

The disambiguation guideline also contains advice on how to title disambiguation pages when they need to be created.

Sometimes titles of separate articles have different forms, but with only minor differences.

Examples:

• Diacritics: canon vs. cañon
• Capitalization: WASP vs. Wasp; Red Meat vs. Red meat

In such cases, remember that a reader who enters one term might in fact be looking for the other, so use appropriate disambiguation techniques (such as hatnotes or disambiguation pages) to ensure that readers can find all possible target articles.

Explicit conventions

Wikipedia has many naming conventions relating to specific subject domains (as listed in the box at the top of this page). Sometimes these recommend the use of titles that are not strictly the common name (as in the case of the conventions for flora and medicine). This practice of using specialized names is often controversial, and should not be adopted unless it produces clear benefits outweighing the use of common names; when it is, the article titles adopted should follow a neutral and common convention specific to that subject domain, and otherwise adhere to the general principles for titling articles on Wikipedia.

Considering title changes

In discussing the appropriate title of an article, remember that the choice of title is not dependent on whether a name is "right" in a moral or political sense. Nor does the use of a name in the title of one article require that all related articles use the same name in their titles; 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 title to another is strongly discouraged. If an article title 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, or unstable for a long time, and no consensus can be reached on what the title should be, default to the title used by the first major contributor after the article ceased to be a stub.

Any potentially controversial proposal to change a title should be advertised at Wikipedia:Requested moves, and consensus reached before any change is made. Debating controversial titles is often unproductive, and there are many other ways to help improve Wikipedia.

While titles for articles are subject to consensus, do not invent names as a means of compromising between opposing points of view. Wikipedia describes current usage but cannot prescribe a particular usage or invent new names.

Treatment of alternative names

By the design of Wikipedia's software, an article can only have one title. When this title is a name, significant alternative names for the topic should be mentioned in the article, usually in the first sentence or paragraph (see Lead section). These may include alternative spellings, longer or shorter forms, historical names, significant names in other languages, etc. There is also no reason why alternative names cannot be used in article text, in contexts where they are more appropriate than the name used as the title of the article. For example, the city now called Gdańsk is referred to as Danzig in historical contexts to which that name is more suited (e.g. when it was part of Germany or a Free City).

All significant alternative titles, names or forms of names that apply to a specific article should be made to redirect to that article. If they are ambiguous, it should be ensured that the article can at least be reached from a disambiguation page for the alternative term. Note that the exact capitalization of the article's title does not affect Wikipedia search, so it is not necessary to create redirects from alternative capitalizations unless these are likely to be used in links; see Naming conventions (capitalization).

Piped links are often used in article text to allow a subject with a lengthy article title to be referred to using a more concise term where this does not produce ambiguity.

Article title format

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; when this is done, the title will be simple to link to in other articles: Northwestern University offers more graduate work than a typical liberal arts college. 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 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 will 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 titles 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/Transportation" or "Azerbaijan (transportation)" – use Transportation in Azerbaijan. (This does not always apply in non-article namespaces: see Help:Subpage.)

Special characters

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 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.

Italics and other formatting

Use italics when italics would be used in running text. Taxonomic names, titles of books, movies, and other creative works, and so on are italicized both in ordinary text and in article titles.

Italic formatting cannot be part of the actual (stored) title of a page; a title or part of it is made to appear in italics with the use of the DISPLAYTITLE magic word or the {{Italic title}} template. For details, see Italics and formatting on the technical restrictions page.

Other types of formatting (bold type etc.) can technically be achieved in the same way, but should not be used in Wikipedia article titles.

Titles containing "and"

Sometimes two or more closely related or complementary concepts are most sensibly covered by a single article. Where possible, use a title covering all cases: for example, Endianness covers the concepts "big-endian" and "little-endian". Where no reasonable overarching title is available, construct an article title using "and", as in Acronym and initialism; Pioneer 6, 7, 8, and 9; Promotion and relegation; and Balkline and straight rail. (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 titles 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
• Wikipedia:Naming conventions (geographic names)