Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (government and legislation)

Namning an old ministry, old name or last name?

Is this the right forum to write in? I'm not sure, but I'll give it a try. I'm wondering what the custom is for naming an article about a defunct ministry that has had different names. The Ministry for Rural Affairs was known as the Ministry of Agriculture for over 100 years (1900-2011) and as the Ministry for Rural Affairs for four years (2011-2014). Should I move it to "Ministry of Agriculture" or leave it as "Ministry for Rural Affairs" since that was the most recently used name? Saftgurka (talk) 14:30, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

@Saftgurka: This seems as reasonable a page for this question as any, though it could also be posed as a WP:RM request at the article's talk page, if you wanted to make a case to move it. In a situation like this, where there will be few English-language sources that treat the subject at all (i.e. no way to be certain of a WP:COMMONNAME) it probably doesn't matter as long as Ministry of Agriculture (Sweden) also redirects there, and there is an entry at Ministry of Agriculture that gets readers to the right article (both of these conditions are presently true). I think I would prefer the modern name to the abandoned one, since the name did change and there's no overriding reaason to prefer the anachronistic name. There is no principle at WP:CRITERIA to prefer a name that is older or that was used for a longer time-span. The two names are going to have about equal [un-]recognizability in the anglosphere, but the newer one has the benefit of additional precision in needing no disambiguation string tacked onto it, which also makes it more concise. The consistency criterion isn't really applicable since this isn't part of a series of similarly named articles (unless one considers articles on Swedish ministries as such, in which case I would bet the newer name is consistent with using the current not historical names of the other ministries).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:55, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. Then I leave it with the name it has now. Saftgurka (talk) 20:40, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

Referenda

Discussion on Talk:1933_German_referendum has revolved around the claim that the standard title for referenda on WP is: [date] [country adjective] [topic] referendum. Sometimes this is natural (e.g. 1946 Faroese independence referendum), but it can result in phrases like 2004 Cypriot Annan Plan referendums which seem unnecessarily difficult to parse (the natural reading of the latter is that it describes referenda on something to do with Cypriot Annan). Moreover the rule seems to be requiring us to invent names for historical events in order to fit this tight structure, which seems OR-ish.

Is there any reason why alternative structures, which are often much more natural, like 2004 Cypriot referendums on the Annan Plan, 2004 Cypriot referendums (Annan Plan), or simply 2004 Cypriot referendums are forbidden?

Actually, are alternative structures forbidden? I note that they are used frequently for Australian referenda Category:Constitutional_referendums_in_Australia Furius (talk) 19:53, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

I don't think readers would be confused by the Cypriot title as "Cypriot" is a common term. I think the Australian referendum titles are a hangover from before the naming convention was changed a few years ago, and somehow never got changed. 2004 Cypriot referendums is not against the naming convention, but I do not think is an improvement as it avoids mentioning the subject of the referendum.

Why do you think this is requiring us to "invent names"? Number 57 21:00, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

The problem isn't that people won't understand what "Cypriot" means, it is that it is unclear which noun the adjective modifies ("Annan", "plan" or "referendum"?), whereas "2004 Cypriot referendums on the Annan Plan" has no such ambiguity. Furius (talk) 20:39, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

The convention is manifestly leading us to invent names, since in the discussion at Talk:1933 German referendum you have proposed four article names which have never before been used to refer to these referenda. These proposed names are inventions. Furius (talk) 13:37, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

Article titles are not just names – they are also descriptions of the subject, which is the case for referendum article titles (and are therefore not "inventions"). Number 57 14:29, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia:NATURAL "do not use obscure or made-up names." Furius (talk) 00:55, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

That would be applicable where article titles are names, but that isn't the case for election and referendum articles, which (as mentioned above) are descriptions. Number 57 20:49, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

Concur with User:Furius. I have always thought the current convention for placing the year first for referendums makes zero sense. The traditional convention in legal citation for legislation is that the date comes at the end. --Coolcaesar (talk) 06:41, 18 January 2025 (UTC)

Is there a conventional legal citation for a referendum? I guess you'd usually refer to the enabling legislation rather than the referendum itself, so perhaps not... But if there is, what does it look like? Furius (talk) 10:44, 18 January 2025 (UTC)

U.S. executive order titles

Currently, all articles on U.S. executive orders have titles that only reference their serial number, such as Executive Order 14155 (except for very recent ones that have not yet been assigned a number). I believe this is not consistent with WP:CRITERIA, especially recognizability and naturalness, or WP:COMMONNAME.

I'd like to propose that we add to these naming conventions that these articles should use either the full title (like Withdrawing the United States from the World Health Organization) or a descriptive title (like 2025 executive order on WHO withdawal or something similar), unless the numbered form is shown to be the common name. There are some cases where a descriptive title is more in line with WP:CRITERIA, since some titles can be very long, while others are so short as to be generic or ambiguous. Antony–22 (^talk⁄_contribs) 06:44, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

• No Change Needed• Modifying that many article titles will create lots of redirects, arguments will arise over how to shorten the executive order names, and some pages will need rewording to make grammatically sense of the new tiles inside various articles where they are linked. WP:NDESC

The article titles as they currently are makes it easy to see what executive order came next, as they are numbered sequentially. WP:CONSISTENT

There are also executive orders that have the same name, almost the same name, or similar names. This could cause the creation of dozens of disambiguation pages, and confusion over who actually wrote them when trying to research a topic and could cause people to confuse one executive order with another.

Some executive order names are not a neutral point of view, as some are titled in a way that reads more like propaganda for whatever administration is in power at the time then a method of actually determining what the executive order actually does. WP:Propaganda WP:IGNORE WP:NPOV

Executive orders themselves do not reference other executive orders by name, they reference others using the "Executive Order (XXXXXX)" style. Darkskynet (talk) 14:36, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

• Use full titles alongside numbers: Full titles are much more easily recognizable and commonly used. I'm in favor of a naming scheme with both the titles and the order numbers, like "Executive Order #: Title" or "Title (Executive Order #)". Addressing Dark's points:

•Knowing that "Executive order 1723113" came after "Executive order 1723112" is not helpful in the slightest. The subsequent and prior orders will be mentioned in the text by default, in any case.

•The POV of a name is completely irrelevant; it's objective fact that the orders are named as they are, and, again, adding EO numbers to the article titles alongside the full titles will clear up any confusion that the titles might be fabricated by Wikipedia. Kaotao (talk) 01:53, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

• I think I'm OK with the status quo of no formal rule, but usually placing the articles at Executive Order ###. The formal names of the executive orders do tend to be long and also (at least recently) biased, which are downsides to choosing those as the article titles. The Executive Order ### format has the advantage of giving each one a short, unique, sequential, and neutral title. –Novem Linguae (talk) 02:02, 30 January 2025 (UTC)
• Comment. If the full title is POV, a descriptive title can be used instead. If there are two EOs with the same title, a disambuguation like "(year executive order)" can be used. Antony–22 (^talk⁄_contribs) 03:23, 30 January 2025 (UTC)