Help:Label

File:Wikidata label field.png

Wikidata screenshot - label field highlighted

The label is the most common name that the File:Help:Editing (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) would be known by. It does not need to be unique, in that multiple items can have the same label, however no two items may have both the same label and the same File:Help:Description (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs).

There is no requirement that an item's label be the same as the page name on its corresponding Wikimedia site. In fact there are several cases, discussed below, in which it is actually desirable for the Wikidata label to be different from the Wikimedia page title. The examples below are general examples. While they try to give guidance for the majority of cases, they are not bright-line rules. If a compelling reason can be given, any of these guidelines can be bypassed.

It was recognized very early on in the conception of this project that people with strong points of view might try and shift Wikidata labels, descriptions, and even data points to fit their own point of view. Wikidata is not a forum for pushing points of view, and should try to reflect information both accurately and neutrally. Edit warring over labels is not acceptable.

Note that an item will have multiple labels in different languages. Labels in different languages may be unrelated to each other (one language uses a person's birth name as a label and another uses their pen name). Including aliases means an item can have multiple labels in the same language. If there is something important about a particular name then that name should be in a statement as well as in the label, even if this looks like the same information is being given in two different ways - we have a lot of different properties for names of items.

Label must be no more than 250 characters long.

Labels in English

Capitalization

Labels begin with a lowercase letter except for when uppercase is normally required or expected. Essentially, you should pretend that the label is appearing in the middle of a normal sentence, and then follow normal language rules. Most terms would not be capitalized if they appeared in the middle of a sentence, however proper nouns such as the names of specific people, specific places, specific buildings, specific books, etc., should be capitalized. In the rare case that something intentionally breaks capitalization rules, the capitalization on Wikidata should reflect this, and not try and correct it.

Examples:

Wikipedia article: Rabbit
Wikidata label: rabbit
A rabbit is not a proper noun, so the first letter is lower case.

Wikipedia article: The Velveteen Rabbit
Wikidata label: The Velveteen Rabbit
The Velveteen Rabbit is the name of a book, so the letters that are capitalized in the title of the book are capitalized in the Wikidata label.

Wikipedia article: Xkcd
Wikidata label: xkcd
xkcd is a webcomic that intentionally doesn't capitalize the first letter, despite being a proper noun. Wikidata reflects this by also not capitalizing the first letter.

Fonts and characters

Wikidata does not support italics, subscript or superscript in labels, descriptions and aliases via HTML/markdown or wikitext formatting. At this time the development team has indicated that they have no intention of adding that feature. Instead unicode characters can be used. If unicode characters are used in the label, an alias should also be created using standard characters.

Examples:

Wikipedia article: H2O: Just Add Water
Wikidata label: H₂O: Just Add Water
Wikidata aliases: H₂O, H20, H2O: Just Add Water, H2O (TV series)

Wikipedia article: The Velveteen Rabbit
Wikidata label: The Velveteen Rabbit
Wikidata description: children's novel

Wikidata label: Evidence suggesting that Homo neanderthalensis contributed the H2 MAPT haplotype to Homo sapiens
Wikidata description: scientific article

Items without pages on Wikimedia sites

Even if an item does not have a page on English Wikipedia, or any other English Wikimedia site, there are instances when that item should still have an English label and description on Wikidata. When creating a label for an item with no English Wikipedia page, the following five step procedure should be adopted:

1. If the item has a name that it is commonly referred to in English, or a translation or transliteration that is commonly used already, then that should be used.
2. If the item is a proper noun that has an article on a Wikipedia from another language using a Latin-derived alphabet, then that should be used.
3. If the item is a proper noun that does not have an article on a Wikipedia from another language using a Latin-derived alphabet, use the most widely accepted transliteration method to convert the title into English characters. You should always transliterate using the language that the item was first named in. Therefore if you have an article on a town in South Korea and there are Wikipedia articles in Korean, Chinese, and Japanese, you should transliterate from Korean. Google Translate automatically does transliteration for many common languages; the transliteration appears in grey text directly below the blue box that you input text into. Do not use this method for items that are not proper nouns.
4. If the item is not a proper noun and you feel confident in your level of familiarity with an item's native language, you can attempt to do the translation or transliteration yourself.
5. If the item is not a proper noun and you do not feel confident in your level of familiarity with an item's native language, leave it for someone else.

Examples:

Wikipedia article: None
Wikidata label: Robin Swinkels
Robin Swinkels doesn't have an article in English Wikipedia, however he does have one in Polish and Dutch, which use the same alphabet as English. Since his name is a proper noun, it won't change from one Latin-derived alphabet to another, so we can use it as is.

Reviews

The default label for some review articles consists of a data dump of bibliographic information about the work. These should be shortened to "Review of <title of work>".

Examples

Default label: Digital Baroque: New Media Art and Cinematic Folds, by Timothy Murray. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008. 320 pp. $25 (paper). ISBN 978-0816634026
Wikidata label: Review of Digital Baroque: New Media Art and Cinematic Folds

Default label: Robert A. Beauregard, When America Became Suburban. University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis, 2006. ix + 271pp. 14 figures. 3 appendices. $57.00 hbk; $18.95 pbk
Wikidata label: Review of When America Became Suburban

Labels in other languages

Every language within Stockhub can have its own guidelines. When in doubt refer to the version of this page in the respective language.

Given capacity constraints on Wikidata Query Service, English titles of scholarly articles should not be copied to other languages. Sample: Q356702 has the English label "Cantor's first uncountability proof". This should not be copied to any other language.

See also

• (Q16737095)
• Special:EntitiesWithoutLabel

For related Help pages, see:

• File:Help:Items (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs), which explains what items are and what rules they follow
• File:Help:Aliases (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs), which explains what aliases are and what rules they follow
• File:Help:Description (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs), which explains what descriptions are and what rules they follow
• File:Help:Multilingual (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) for information on setting language preferences
• File:Wikidata:WikiProject Disambiguation pages/guidelines (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

For additional information and guidance, see: