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Wikipedia:Naming conventions (schools)

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School article titles should use the name by which the school is normally known, subject to the general principles of WP:TITLE and WP:COMMONNAME. Similar institutions and buildings are more naturally localized to a city rather than a much larger jurisdiction like a state.

Where geographic disambiguation is necessary, the qualifier should provide enough information to distinguish the school from schools of the same name, but should not contain unnecessary geographic information.

Thus should follow a principle of progressive disambiguation: begin with the simplest reasonable geographic identifier and add further information only when it is needed to distinguish said article.

Choosing a name

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Articles on schools preferably don't start with a definite article. See When definite and indefinite articles should be avoided.

Should it be necessary to start the name of a school article with a definite article, the definite article should be removed when placing the article in a category. This can be accomplished with the magic word {{DEFAULTSORT}} so for "The School (location)" article, one should add "<nowiki>{{DEFAULTSORT:School (location) The}}" above the category list at the bottom of the page.

In addition to following the naming conventions, it is also important to follow the linking conventions. Following consistent conventions in both naming and linking makes it more likely that links will lead to the right place. A redirect page should be created for articles that may reasonably be found under two or more names (such as different spellings or former names).

If an article has been named inappropriately, it can be renamed by moving the article to a more appropriate title. See Help:Moving a page and Wikipedia:Requested moves for more on renaming pages. Editors are often passionate about the naming of their particular schools, and it is generally wise to discuss a proposed name change on the talk page first. Also be sure to use Template talk:RM notice at WP:WPSCH.

Country by country examples

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Australia

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School (Town or City)

Canada

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School (Municipality, Province)

United Kingdom and Ireland

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For example, for UK schools tend to use comma-separated disambiguation - e.g. Kingsmead School, Enfield, not Kingsmead School (Enfield). American schools use parentheses. Comma-separated disambiguation is preferable because:

  • (a) it is more natural,
  • (b) the disambiguation is almost always done by geography and WP:NCDAB states "Ambiguous geographic names are often disambiguated by adding the name of a higher-level administrative division"

If a school was to call themselves "The MOST amaze-ing (Skool in Engaland)" - it's a registered company with an agreed website name, and the misspelling of Engalund was agreed by the school - to use a specific hyphen. Use what is best under WP:COMMONNAME and WP:OFFICIALNAME applies. Such as Southwest High School (San Diego, California) was moved from "Southwest Senior High School" to "Southwest High School" because Southwest High School already existed as a disambiguation page, while "Senior" was no longer used in the school's name. See Old revision of Southwest High School (San Diego, California) or Durham High School for Girls closed as no consensus. Participants were unconvinced that Durham High School is the WP:COMMONNAME.

United States

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United States school article titles should use the full official name of the school as provided by the school itself, unless the most common name for the school is significantly more well known than the official name. For schools in the United States, the following hierarchy is proposed:

  • If the school name is sufficiently unique, no geographic qualifier should be used.
  • If two or more schools with the same name exist in different states, state should normally be used as the geographic qualifier. - MOS:US
  • If two or more schools with the same name exist within the same state, city or municipality should normally be added to distinguish them.

If there are two Example High Schools in the given state, use the city:

  • Example High School (city1, Delaware)
  • Example High School (city2, Delaware)

Where the state is already unambiguous from the context, use a shorter city-based title: See WP:CONCISE

  • Example High School (Delaware)
  • Example High School (Pennsylvania)

Examples of WP:CONCISE and WP:NCDAB: Eastlake High School (California), Pine View School add more:

State versus city

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Use state as the initial U.S. disambiguator because states provide a consistent national framework and generally distinguish schools located in different states.

However, city-based disambiguation should remain acceptable where the city itself provides sufficient and useful identification. For example, John Frank Smith High School (Rhode Island) and John Frank Smith High School (Alabama) would be used where there is one school of that name in each state. If there were two schools with that name in Alabama, they would be distinguished as John Frank Smith High School (Huntsville, Alabama) and John Frank Smith High School (Montgomery, Alabama).

The disambiguation aspect should be as brief and simple as possible, and the first way to separate them is by the state. The only time "(city, state)" would be used is when there is more than one school with the same name in a specific state. City-only disambiguation can be used for schools in cities that don't require a state in their title, like Cleveland. Georgia. Though, it "Georgia" doesn't automatically mean the U.S. state; see above for United Kingdom and Ireland.

City-only titles

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A city-only qualifier may be used when the city is sufficiently distinctive and provides a clear means of identifying the school.

For example:

  • Example High School (Cleveland)
  • Example High School (Detroit)
  • Example High School (Chicago)

This is particularly reasonable where the city is itself the established and recognizable geographic identifier for the subject.

Redirects

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Having created a new school article you should also create redirect pages for all possible alternative spellings and names. For example, Pate's Grammar School has a redirect from Pates Grammar School

If there are two articles with similar but unique names, they should be linked together by means of Wikipedia:Hatnotes, which are short notes placed at the top of the page before the start of the primary topic. For example, Dartford Grammar School and Dartford Grammar School for Girls both have very similar names, and hatnotes have been used to aid navigation. In this instance, a redirect page is not required.

If two or more school articles have the same name, a disambiguation page should be created. Redirect pages should be created for all possible spellings of the name, all of which should point to the disambiguation page. For example, the St Paul's School disambiguation page has redirects from Saint Paul's School, Saint Pauls School, St. Paul's School, St Paul's School, St. Pauls School and St Pauls School. None of the redirect pages should point directly to an individual school.

If location parameters have been used for disambiguation purposes, the appropriate redirect pages should be created without the added location parameters.

If a school article has been moved from another title that included some sort of location parameter to [[School Name (new parameter)]] to fit these guidelines, there is no need to delete the redirects, unless there is a risk of confusion.

History and scope

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This guideline stems from discussion at Talk:Marist School (Georgia)#Requested move 14 September 2026 and was moved to WikiProject Schools/Article advice § Title.

DeSales High School (Louisville, Kentucky) → DeSales High School (Kentucky)
St. Francis de Sales High School (Detroit, Michigan) → St. Francis de Sales High School (Michigan)
DeSales High School (Geneva, New York) → DeSales High School (New York)
St. Francis DeSales High School (Columbus, Ohio) → St. Francis DeSales High School (Columbus)
St. Francis de Sales School (Toledo, Ohio) → St. Francis de Sales School (Toledo)
Desales Catholic High School (Walla Walla, Washington) → Desales Catholic High School (Washington) NOT MOVED

Tthe Police Station and Dew Drop Inn RMs were also multi-article RMs.

Copyied from Talk:Marist_School_(Georgia)#c-Issac_I_Navarro-20260930201500-Issac_I_Navarro-20260923200000

See also Wikipedia talk:Notability (schools)/Archive 3#Sidetrack: School article names in November 2005; a straw poll advertised on Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions and Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Style issues determined that parentheses are appropriate to disambiguate schools with the same name. The content was split from Wikipedia:Schools into the current page in February 2006. In April 2006 the latter page was marked as obsolete.

In July of 2006, this proposal was marked as historical. Since that time, new discussions have worked out some of the finer points of the issues with naming schools. See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Schools/Archive 3#School disambiguation subproject desperately needed and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Schools#naming conventions for schools for examples.

The prior versions of this proposal has been archived.

See also

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