Genealogy:Page names

From Genealogy

In theory, you can name an article anything you want. In practice, it's a good idea to conform to certain conventions about these titles. The following are suggestions to help minimize confusion. You are not obligated to follow them, but it's a good idea for a number of reasons.

The main reason for conforming to these conventions is because it helps folks find articles. Having a standard set of conventions for titles makes it easier to find an existing article about a person or place that interests you. And if you've written an article, you DO want others to find it. Otherwise, they will probably think there isn't one, write one of their own, and reinvent the wheel, giving you both bother when you try to merge the articles.

Here are some things that you are urged to do.

[edit] People articles

The standard format for articles that deal with a single individual is:

Name (YOB-YOD)

Guidelines:

There should be no spaces on either side of the hyphen.
Name is, if possible, both first name and surname.
- Surname must be as at birth (e.g. maiden name), not married name.
- Middle name is optional, and it is reccommend to use only one middle name, if any.
- If first name or surname is unknown, use "Unknown" instead of leaving it blank or using a question mark. (e.g. John Unknown (1833-1902) or Unknown Smith (1833-1902) )
- If contributors agree, roman numerals may be included between the name and opening parenthesis; ideally, these should match how the individual was (or is) actually identified.
- Official (or semi-official) additions to a name should precede the dates. For example: John Pollok of Balgray (c1690-aft1720), NOT John Pollok (c1690-aft1720) of Balgray.
- The name must be properly capitalized.
YOB & YOD are years of birth and death, respectively. For example: (bef1795-c1856).
- Use "?" if year of birth or death is unknown; don't use "unk" or "unknown".
- Use "c" (circa) if year of birth or death is approximate; don't use "c." or "abt" or "about".
- Use "bef" if year of birth or death is before the indicated year.
- Use "aft" if year of birth or death is after the indicated year.
- Not not include spaces between "bef," "aft," "c," and "?," except for separating BC years. (e.g. Gaius Julius Caesar (100 BC-44 BC) )
- For living individuals (or individuals who are presumed to be living), use only birth year in parentheses (with no hyphen).

[edit] Unresolved issues

The following guidelines are still in debate:

If the person has a Wikipedia article, then use Wikipedia's page name exactly (unless there is a compelling reason to do otherwise).
How to express day and/or month information, if it's needed for disambiguation.
Nicknames and/or bynames:
- Can be included after the closing parenthesis (so as to minimise confusion of alphanumeric order), in the form "aka Nickname".
- For example: John Walker (c1735-c1818) aka "Indian Killer", not "John 'Indian Killer' Walker".
- Or should they be left out all together?
What happens when only a single year is known for an individual? Use fl?

Please offer any new ideas or opinions at Forum:Standardising page names for individuals (preferably after reading the last half of it).

[edit] Multipurpose names, such as "Adam"

[edit] "Rule" - PERSON has the simplest page name

Let the person have the simple page name. Following one of the Wikipedia principles, calling something by its common name, we give the individuals precedence. So we leave Adam the progenitor as "he" is, not even adding the standard "dates" that would make him "Adam (?-?)".

Those of us who are adding names of biblical figures are creating "single-name" pages like that. Where a possible duplication is known in advance, such a person can be given a distinguishing page name from the start, styled, eg, "Anah (son of Seir)". One day you may find there are two people called Anah (son of Seir); so you can change one or both of them for a different distinction, eg "(first king of X)"; it's easy enough to change page names. If one of them is much better known, he or she can keep the original name as long as the page starts with a link to the other one. If neither was much better known, it is preferable to have an ordinary disambiguation page linking to both under distinctive names.

Rarely, a single-person name, such as Salmon, is used much more commonly in a very different context. These are rare enough to be discussed at the help desk when they arise.

[edit] Articles about personal names, not individuals

We may eventually (when we need to) create (linked from the Adam page by a disambiguation note) a partly explanatory page called "Adam (given name)". It will be the same sort of page as "Adam (surname)".

In the long term we might want a category for people whose only name was Adam: logically, to match our other conventions, it might be category:Adam (given name). We will cross that river somehow if we come to it. Changing a page name is not difficult.

(If there were only a single famous person named "Khan", we would thereby need to change our current "Khan" page to "Khan (given name)". Maybe we should do it anyway to minimise confusion. Do it as a redirect so that users can still just type Khan for a link. Then if that single famous "Khan" person ever materialises and needs his or her own page we can just rewrite the redirect page so that it covers him or her but has a "disambig" "hatnote" just as for Adam (and we gradually rewrite the links that said "Khan" meaning the family or the name). )

[edit] Places

If any possible confusion with other places or a surname, add a distinction such as county, state, or country. Use Wikipedia's pagename if in doubt (but note that it favours places for the single word, such as Wellington, whereas we favour names). See below.

[edit] First names that are also place names

Here we differ from the policy on multipurpose names: some places (such as Virginia) are overwhelmingly more commonly discussed than the personal name and are therefore given the simple page names (matching Wikipedia's usage).

Georgia has the added complication of being a well-known U.S. state as well as a not too unknown country east of the Black Sea (very prominent just before the 2008 Olympics); we follow Wikipedia's distinctions there too:

Georgia (U.S. state)
Georgia (country) (which was from 1919–1921 the Democratic Republic of Georgia).

An exception to the following of Wikipedia is Victoria (Australia), where we have decided that its 5 million inhabitants far outweigh any other Victoria (much as those of Virginia give their state the simple name) - see Wikipedia:Victoria and discussion at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Victoria_%28Australia%29#Requested_move.

[edit] Census

Year first, then "census of". Example 1790 census of the United States. When it gets more detailed, please do a search to see if the state or other area already appears somewhere so that there is a form to imitate. "1890 census of the United States/Ohio/Greene County" may be the best form. The category structure should help folks find it, whatever its actual name is. Each county should have a category (and ultimately a subpage or other page); see Forum:County subpages - categorising and Genealogy:County navigation templates for brief mention.

When we get a few more dozen we can start devising more rules if it seems important.

See Forum:Census pages and continue discussion there if anyone has any new ideas or questions.

[edit] References

Can be simple, such as Scharf, 1888. Use of the comma and single date distinguishes references and sources from person pages. (Add a colon and a number to indicate a specific page, as in Scharf, 1888:114, to indicate that the information contained in Scharf, 1888, was found on page 114.) See discussion of possible problems on Category talk:References.