Wikipedia:Page name

Page names are used to title pages, to navigate to pages, to search for pages, and for things like transclusion and substitution. Page names also conveniently serves as link names in , if enclosed in double square brackets, like [[Page name]]. If a page is moved, the page name will also move.

A title is a "page name" and, always as well, a "fullpagename". Both terms are equally synonymous with title. Because a namespace is just a way of categorizing the functional purpose (or type) of a set of pages, it could be argued that the pagename is the title proper, and in the most important case it is: for articles, a "page name" is a "pagename". This is made true by having the default namespace (when no namespace is given) be article space (or mainspace), so that for an article fullpagename is just pagename.

The analogy to common, everyday computing is the following. 1) the search box is the command line interface of a terminal. 2) Article namespace is always the current working directory. 3) Each namespace is one directory below. This way an article title is always a simple basename, and a namespace:pagename is a dirname/basename. The two exceptions are that 1) Special pages are not in the database (or "on the disk"), so their title does not follow the scheme: show no namespace like all other titles do, and 2) wrapping a pagename in double curly braces switches to the Template namespace (or directory) as the default.

Navigating from the search box requires a fullpagename, for example the Potato article is potato, and the Potato template is Template:Potato.

The article namespaces needs no name normally, but for advancing users, the name of article space is : (a colon), found in these common uses:

A fullpagename is a namespace:pagename: a namespace name followed by a colon, then a pagename.

For more helpful examples:

Terminology is an organization's way to communicate quickly. The terms "fullpagename" and "pagename" in italics specify the variable type, for example:

For more examples of these lowercased terms in template documentation see the searches and .

The terminology for referencing a subpage (and its parent page) is suggested by the 's {{SUBPAGENAME}} (and {{BASEPAGENAME}}). These can be a clear and concise way to talk about subpages. See where are used on pages.

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