View source for Help:Aliases/general principles/en

=== Criteria for inclusion and exclusion===
[[File:Earth - alias.png|thumb|upright=1.5|Screenshot of aliases highlighted on item page]]
The label on a Wikidata entry is the most common name that the entity would be known by to readers. All of the other common names that an entry might go by, including alternative names; acronyms and abbreviations; and alternative translations and transliterations, should be recorded as aliases. Use the criteria below to determine appropriate aliases for items and, when unsure, ask on the [[Wikidata:Project_chat|Project Chat]].

You should '''always include''':
* Full names for people commonly known by a nickname or by a fraction of their full name (for example, many association football players are known almost exclusively by an abbreviation of their full name)
* Scientific ([[:en:Binomial nomenclature|binomial nomenclature]]) names for species, unless the species has no common name (in which case the scientific name would be the label)
* Alternative spelling for foreign words when there are multiple translation/transliteration systems in use for the specific language (for example, both [[w:Pinyin|Pinyin]] and [[w:Wade–Giles|Wade-Giles]] are used to translate Chinese characters into English letters).
* ASCII versions of items where the label contains non-ASCII characters (for example, the item [[Q130615|H₂O: Just Add Water]] also includes "H2O: Just Add Water" as a label), for English. Note that accent marks and chemistry formulas that use subscript are all done with non-ASCII symbols.
* Library forms of titles for works whose title begins with a definite or indefinite article. (for example, the title of Dostoyevsky's novel {{Q|210784}} is often translated in English as "The Idiot", so "Idiot" should also be included as an English alias. In Dutch, it is translated "De idioot", so "Idioot" should also be included as a Dutch alias.)

You '''should include''':
* Surnames or nicknames of famous individuals, who are often referenced by those names (for example, {{Q|692}} is often called "Shakespeare" or "The Bard").
* Abbreviated forms of author names which are used on their published works (for example, the works of {{Q|62113}} were all published under the name "K. O. Müller").
* Abbreviated forms of scientific ([[:en:Binomial nomenclature|binomial nomenclature]]) names for species, where those abbreviations commonly appear in titles of scholarly articles (for example, {{Q|91703}} is most often abbreviated as "C. elegans", and {{Q|719725}} is typically abbreviated as "S. cerevisiae") These abbreviations should be placed under Latin, in addition to any other language.

You should '''not include''':
* Alternative capitalization (the term search engine doesn't use capitalization, so it won't matter)
* Common spelling mistakes (later on ''fuzzy searching'' will be available, which will handle spelling mistakes)
* Alternative word order for people names (first name followed by last name vs. last name, comma, first name) 
* Section headers that may be part of the Wikimedia page for the item in question
* People, objects, events, or locations that are not individually [[Special:MyLanguage/Wikidata:Notability|notable]], but are redirects to an article or page on a Wikimedia site (for example, band members that redirect to the band's page or products that redirect to the company that produces them)

'''Examples:'''<br />
Label: [[Q17500|Xavi]]<br />
Description: association football player from Spain<br />
Alias(es): Xavier Hernández i Creus<br />
The association football player Xavi's full name is Xavier Hernández i Creus, but he is popularly known only as Xavi. On Wikidata, Xavi is the label while the full name is an alias.

Label: [[Q242358|American lion]]<br />
Description: extinct species of lion<br />
Alias(es): North American lion, Naegele’s giant jaguar, American cave lion, Panthera leo atrox, P. atrox<br />
The first three aliases are alternative common names for the American lion. The fourth alias is the scientific name for the species, and the fifth alias is a common abbreviation of the scientific name.