Naming conventions

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This naming convention guideline applies to sports and games, including organized team and individual sports, traditional or folk sporting activities, non-sport table and board games, and other physical activities with a sporting or game-like nature, such as dance competition, non-sport record-breaking, team trivia competition, etc. It is expected that particular games/sports may have their own naming conventions with more specific guidelines, sometimes with exceptions (enumerated here, with rationales) to the more general guidance offered by this guideline. To the extent that its guidance can apply to role-playing and video games, they are also within its scope, although the naming conventions on books and other publications are often more applicable (if conventions are in conflict, treat such article subjects as publications).

General

The guidance at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names) and Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English) together require that we use the most common English-language name if one exists and if it is used more frequently in English-language media than a subject's non-English name(s). If a common English-language name does not exist, use the most common non-English name (transliterated, if necessary, according to per-language guidelines as detailed at Wikipedia:Romanization).

In some cases the exact application of these principles can be complex; the more specific sections below offer guidance through such issues.

Individuals

Wikipedia:Naming conventions (people) advises to use the most common English-language name, if one exists, or the subject's legal/preferred name.

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See also the "Disambiguation" section, below.

Teams and clubs

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Unless otherwise noted: The term "team" as used herein includes a ball club, doubles pair, driver-and-crew racing team, or any other assemblage of co-operative sportspeople or game-players commonly identified as a unit.

Because in many sports, teams are intellectual property with names and logos that are trademarks, they should be treated like corporations and other organizations to the extent possible per Wikipedia:Naming conventions (companies) without conflicting with other naming conventions (common names, use English). Because the Wikipedia article about a team is about that entity as a collection of sports people and their notability as such, more than an article about the entity as a business (if that facet is covered by the article at all), corporate designations such as "Inc.", "Ltd", "GMbH", etc., should not be included in the article title or lead, though may be appropriate in sections discussing the team's business operations or ownership, subject to the guideline Wikipedia:Manual of Style (trademarks).

Generally prefer article names in this order:

English-language name as given by official team materials (such as English-language pages at the team web site), if any and if consistent
English-language name as given by the sport's governing body, if any
English-language name as given by majority of major English-language media (one method of determining this for modern teams is using the number of hits at Google News)
Legal/official non-English name

In cases where two teams have an easily-confused name, some form of disambiguation must be used.

Known alternatives and nicknames should be redirected to the actual article, and mentioned there if notable. This is especially the case when an official and consistent English-language spelling is not the one used by most English-language media.

An exception to the above preferences can be a case in which the team in a sport that generally does not use monikers is known almost exclusively by such a moniker. The only known example to date are the New Zealand national rugby union team who are known as the All Blacks, a registered trademark. In this unusual case, the former redirects to the latter (though the redirect is also categorized with other teams so that readers not familiar with the moniker are more easily able to find the team article).

Where a team name is conventionally referred to with an abbreviated prefix or suffix, include it in the article name, and include the expansion of that acronym in the article lead. E.g. St Helens Town FC as the article name, and St Helens Town Football Club (St Helens Town FC) in the lead, in some form.

Games

Game names are not proper nouns

compounding: baseball, base-ball, base ball

Game names that incorporate a number use a spelled-out number, regardless of the size of the number. In almost all cases, some sources will not do this, and readers should be able to both find the article at the numeral spelling, and find this spelling in boldface as an alternate name in the article's lead. Redirects should also exist from all compounding variants, including variants that drop or add a word, regardless which is the actual article: Ten pin bowling, Tenpin bowling, Ten-pins, Ten pins and Tenpins all redirect to Ten-pin bowling.

Disambiguation

This section explains the application of existing disambiguation guidelines with regard to sports articles, especially player articles, with an eye to particular sports-specific issues that may arise.

Per Wikipedia:Disambiguation, names should not be over-disambiguated. E.g., use Jan Ortega (baseball player), not Jan Ortega (MLB baseball player) unless there is another notable Jan Ortega in some other kind of baseball. The general rule is to use the shortest disambiguation that is still helpful to the reader and follows the disambiguation naming conventions, such as Pat McEwan (pool player), not Pat McEwan (pocket billiards player). If in doubt, follow the lead of other articles of the same type and/or ask at the WikiProject relating to the sport in question.

Avoid parenthetical (round-bracketed) disambiguations when possible, by using natural language. Sticks used in ice hockey are disambiguated from the general article Hockey stick at Ice hockey stick, not Hockey stick (ice hockey) or Stick (ice hockey). Because some new readers may assume that all cases are disambiguated with parentheticals after encountering a few pages disambiguated that way, create a redirect to the real article from a potential article name that would fit that pattern.

Per Wikipedia:Naming conventions (people), prefer disambiguations that describe the person not the field when using parentheticals (Jan Ortega (baseball player) not Jan Ortega (baseball)), unless the article subject has notably played multiple roles (Jan Ortega (baseball) not Jan Ortega (baseball player and coach)). The individual versions should also redirect to the real article location (both Jan Ortega (baseball player) and Jan Ortega (baseball coach) in this example). This standard is broadly implemented across all of Wikipedia for all article types, but is disputed by some sports editors, mostly focusing on baseball, ice hockey and rugby (league and union).

Prefer one-word disambiguations over player ones when they are the most common usage within the sport. For example, (footballer) is preferred over (football player) in football (soccer) and several other forms of football, but not in American football or Canadian football. On the other hand, (billiards player), (baseball player) and (card player) are preferred over uncommon and neologistic terms such as "billiardist"/"cueist", "baseballer" and "cardist". (although cardist has another, more specific meaning in cardistry, and is an appropriate disambiguator for its practitioners).

For sportspeople of multiple sports, use as the disambiguator the game or game type that the person is most notable for, or if this cannot be reliably determined, use sportsperson. In all cases, redirect from other reasonable names to the actual one. For example, one might redirect Jan Ortega (softball player) to Jan Ortega (baseball player) if the subject's career notability began as a national softball champion. If the subject is notable for a non-sporting or non-player activity as well, also redirect this to the article: Jan Ortega (broadcaster).

Sports articles should be disambiguated by game type, by game, or by ruleset or governing body (often abbreviated), in that order.

Game type: Subject (cards), Firstname Lastname (billiards player)
Game: Firstname Lastname (rugby union), Subject (pool)
Ruleset or governing body: Firstname Lastname (CFL football player), Subject (MLB baseball) – only needed if game is not a sufficient disambiguator.

Game type should only be used if more than one specific game is applicable to the article and its subject. For example, a card player notable for both baccarat and poker might be at Sam Chien (card player), while one notable only for poker would be at Sam Chien (poker player).

Avoid disambiguation by geography, team name or position played for individuals in sports where players frequently move between teams, teams relocate, or players change positions. Geography is best used to distinguish between two players of the same game where cities, regions or nations are not normally being represented by players, and the location refers simply to the player's origin, e.g. Carlos Montoya (Puerto Rican chess player). Geography is also helpful for distinguishing between different rulesets or game variants, e.g. Subject (American snooker) or Subject (Canadian football). Avoid geography in the case of ambiguity between game name and player origin, e.g. Canadian football, English billiards, American snooker, etc., with "player" appended.

Per Wikipedia:Naming conventions (people) avoid disambiguations that rely on birth, as in (Scotland-born footballer) or (footballer born 1954), as readers are more likely to be seeking such information than already to possess it, making it useless for disambiguation purposes.

Do not add achievements or titles to disambiguations, as in Billi Fonteau (world champion skier) or Billi Fonteau (MBE skiier).

For articles such as season summaries and rules articles, titles in the form Sport subject, Subject of teamname, Subject in sport, etc., are usually more appropriate than any sort of parenthetical disambiguator.

See Wikipedia:Naming conventions (people)#Difficult to disambiguate: some examples for how to disambiguate complex cases, including the real-world instance of two ice hockey defencemen born in 1963, both named Steve Smith.

Style guide

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This style guideline applies to sports and games, including organized team and individual sports, traditional or folk sporting activities, non-sport table and board games, and other physical activities with a sporting or game-like nature, such as dance competition, non-sport record-breaking, team trivia competition, etc. It is expected that particular games/sports may have their own style guidelines with more specific recommendations, sometimes with exceptions (enumerated here, with rationales) to the more general advice offered by this guideline. To the extent that its guidance can apply to role-playing and video games, they are also within its scope, although the style guidelines on books and other publications are often more applicable (if guidelines are in conflict, treat such article subjects as publications).

Teams

Unless otherwise noted: The term "team" as used herein includes a ball club, doubles pair, driver-and-crew racing team, or any other assemblage of co-operative sportspeople or game-players commonly identified as a unit.

Names

Where an article is clearly about a particular sport it is not necessary to use a prefix or suffix (e.g. "FC", "RLFC", "CCC" or "FK", etc.) throughout the article prose. It should be used in a non-team article at first occurrence of the team name, since to most readers "Barcelona", for example, is a place not a team. It should also be used in the title and the lead of team names as explained in the naming conventions, and should be used in the prose of such articles where user confusion might result. For example, FC Barcelona is the article name and bold-faced lead title, but throughout the body "Barcelona" is generally sufficient. There are cases where this will not be true:

Ambiguity between the team and its home: In a football context, Pedro Vasquez moved to Barcelona in 2008 could mean "joined the team", "relocated to the city" or both; reword to be specific.
Cross-sport references: "St Helens Town FC share Knowsley Road Stadium with St Helens RLFC", regardless which of the three articles it appears in.

For sports in which teams have names that are not entirely geographic (they are most common in North America), use the full name, including both the geographic element and the moniker, the first time it appears in an article or major section: Detroit Red Wings, not Detroit or Red Wings. Subsequent occurrences can be shortened either way, unless there are multiple teams from the same location or multiple, differently-located teams with the same name, and the context does not make it 100% certain which team is intended.

An exception can be a case in which the team in a sport that generally does not use monikers is known more or less exclusively by such a moniker. The only known example to date are the New Zealand national rugby union team who are known as the All Blacks, a registered trademark. However, in multi-nation rugby data such as World Cup results sections, scores are given in the form "New Zealand 27–17 South Africa.

Teams that have outright nicknames (e.g. "the 'Niners" for the San Francisco '49ers or "the Crimson Tide" for the sports teams of the University of Alabama) should have these nicknames identified in bold in the lead, just like any other alternative name, but the nickname otherwise should not be used in article prose, per Wikipedia:Guide to writing better articles#Tone, as an encyclopedia is a formal work, not a journalistic or fannish one.

Plurality

As with musical groups, teams are generally referred to in the plural, as their achievements and notability as a unit do not subsume the identities of the individuals on the team. An exception is discussion of a team as a business entity or as property (e.g. text concerning transfer of ownership).

Events

And sponsors

And venues

In the unusual case that the long-hosting venue of a sports event becomes synonymous with the event itself in sports writing, the actual full name of the event should be used at first occurrence (and the locale mentioned along with it, if not included in the event name), if it is desired to use the venue name alone later in an article as a reference to the event. Examples:

"...her performance at the Championships, Wimbledon ... back at Wimbledon..."
"...annual World Snooker Championships at the Crucible Theatre ... his third year at the Crucible..."

New and stub articles especially should be checked on this point for jargonistic omission of clarity and links.

Numbers

By long-standing sports statistics and journalism tradition, significant numbers in sports and gaming are given as numerals, not in written-out form. This includes scores, averages, ranking positions, and many other cases. It does not include general use of numbers in prose.

7 points
13–2 victory
no. 1 or number 1 (not #1 or # 1; the "#" symbols has too many other meanings)
a top-16 player
.337 average
second foul
five-player team

As in non-sporting prose, numbers above ten are generally not spelled out (15-second penalty, etc.).

Game names that include a number are always spelled out, notwithstanding the above. Scores are separated with "to" or an en-dash (–), not a hyphen or other "dash" character. Seasons are separated with a forward-slash (/). Non-season year ranges are separated by "to" or an en-dash. Averages are not preceded by a leading zero. See subsections below for more details and rationales.

Games

Game names that incorporate a number use a spelled-out number, regardless of the size of the number. This often helps the reader not become confused between the game, statistics and scores, numbered equipment, etc. This distinction is especially crucial in pool, where both games and balls are often named with numbers. It also frequently, in the case of game names beginning with numbers, permits vastly easier editing as well as reading, since sentences do not have to be reworded awkwardly to avoid beginning them with a numeral, which would be ungrammatical.

If the name is compound, it must be hyphenated: five-pins, nine-ball, twenty-one. The name should not be fully compounded (like baseball) nor spaced (like ice hockey), even if such usages can be attested in some sources.

Equipment

Numbered game equipment is always given with a numeral: 5 iron, 8 ball. Do not hyphenate – even in the case of an adjective phrase (a 5 iron shot, an 8 ball shot), as this may still lead to confusing ambiguities for readers unfamiliar with the game in question. Sentences must be written to avoid beginning with numerals. If a sentence is too difficult (for a particular editor) to recast, give both the numeral and the spelled out number: Five (5) iron shots are...

Rankings and positions

There is presently no Wikipedia consensus as to whether "no." is appropriate in encyclopedic text. Many sports editors favor it, because it is traditional within sports statistics and journalism, while many editors who do not work on sports articles deplore it. There is a general, if tentative, consensus against use of "#", however, as it may be seen as sloppy/lazy, jargonistic or confusing (the character has other meanings).

Blocks of rankings (the top 16, the final 4, the last 32, etc.) in some sports journalism are capitalized (upper-cased) as if they were proper nouns, but this is not done in Wikipedia, as it is a jargonistic usage (at best; many would consider it blatantly sub-standard). They are hyphenated as compound adjective phrases (her top-16 position in the world rankings) but not as noun phrases (in the world's top 16) nor as parts of non-compound adjective phrases (among the top 16 players in the city) that are simply descriptive; i.e. when the phrase refers to a defined "unit" that is commonly recognized within the sport, and is being used adjectivally, then hyphenate it.

Seasons

Contiguous seasons are separated by the word "to" or a forward-slash character (/), not a dash of any kind or a backslash (\)even if sports-journalism sources for a sport sometimes use dashes: the 2007 to 2008 season, the 2007/2008 championship. At first occurrence this should not be abbreviated, but may be shortened as in 2007/08, with a leading zero and without an apostrophe, on later usage (even for different years), as context already establishes the meaning. Do not shorten, e.g. to 1999/00, when crossing a century boundary. Do not shorten when using "to". Dashes are avoided because a Wikipedia biography on a sportsperson or team is likely to refer to ranges of dates (1996–97, etc.) in the history of the subject, and these are too easily confused with seasons, which are often used within the same article.

Scores

Scores are separated by an en-dash not a hyphen, em-dash, minus, or other "dash" character, per Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Dashes and Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers): 4 to 2 or 4–2. It is preferred that the HTML character entity – be used rather than the Unicode character – because it is impossible for many editors to tell whether the correct dash character is being used when editing an article otherwise – many fonts render them identically or near-identically.

By default, scores are given in win–loss order. This order should be reversed any time it would conflict with the prose, e.g. use "Samson lost 2–4 to Kumaji", because the logic of the text demands it, and in most games there is no such thing as a "4–2 loss", which will simply confuse the reader. For this reason, it is best to avoid constructions like "Samson lost, handing Kumaji a 2–4 victory"; reword for clarity, as the score order is confusing in the context of a victory, but would also be confusing in the context of the name order if reversed.

Winnings and salaries

Per Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers) the first occurrence of a currency in an article (or all uses, in a multi-nation article) should specify what that currency is specifically and link to the article on it. E.g., "CA$45,000" or "CAN$45,000" at first occurrence, "$23,340" in a later case if the context makes it clear that the same currency is intended. This is especially crucial in a sport in which figures are most often given in a specific currency, but the article subject is from some other country, especially one with a different currency but the same currency symbol; the reader will have no idea what currency is intended without being told explicitly. The format "$45,000 CDN" is used in some sources, but should be avoided in Wikipedia, since it cannot be linked without being potentially confusing. The format "45,000 CAD", with no currency symbol should also be avoided, since few readers who are not in the financial industry will even recognize it as currency. Do not mix styles: USD, CAD, GBP, etc., which include the initial of the currency name, are not used with currency symbols. Some editors prefer two-letter and some prefer three-letter country codes; be consistent within the article. Two-letter may be more recognizable to more editors, since most of them coincide with country code top-level domain names. Use of non-standard acronyms, e.g. "CDN$", should be avoided, even if common in certain sectors, because many readers will not understand them.

A comma is used every three non-fractional digits, and decimals are indicated with a period (full stop) character, not a comma, including for currencies in countries with other conventions: UK₤23,348,203.12.

Winnings and salaries are usually rounded to the nearest unit, or even further, since tiny amounts are generally meaningless to the reader in a world with fluctuating exchange rates. Fractions rounded to ".00" are omitted: ₤23,348,200.

Wikipedia:Naming conventions#Sports

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