Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (military units)

message: * Additional material for this section is TBA
*: A very important decision is whether we should be lumpers or splitters — do we cover the unit's entire history in a single article, or provide a separate article for each "version" of a unit. I've been using several "splitter" sites as references for the WWII/German stubs I've been creating (http://www.axishistory.com/index.php?id=31, http://www.feldgrau.com/, http://www.lexikon-der-wehrmacht.de/inhaltsverzeichnis1.htm), and I find it very annoying — especially when you have to read three one-sentence articles to get an overview of a unit's history, or when parts are missing or not linked. However, when I tried going the "lumper" route on the aforementioned stubs, a whole different batch of headaches show up. (Not least, the question of what qualifies as "the same unit" in some cases.) At any rate, let's try to get a concensus on when to lump and when to split, and then we'll need to propose some conventions for implementation (e.g., maybe a format for an "alias list" at the top of lumped articles, or for a group of "alias links" for split articles). — B.Bryant 23:55, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Units that were redesignated, upgraded, reorganized, or reconstituted 

message: Can we collapse this section? Will there be any differences at the different levels, other than the form of numerals used? — B.Bryant 23:57, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I think a note should be made that Soviet army groups/armies are referred to as Fronts. Oberiko 01:46, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, good point. I think the various sections (however we end up organizing the page) will need to have sub-sections called "national peculiarities" for stuff that doesn't fit with more general international usage. As for the Soviets, as I understand it an "army" was bigger than a western corps but smaller than a western army, a "front" was between western army and army group, and a "strategic direction" controlled several fronts. — B.Bryant 21:05, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Army groups 

message: * If named, put the name at the end:
*: ...to Army Karpaty...
*: I'm pretty sure I'm going to think of a good counterexample as soon as I take a break from this.... Maybe if we throw in a bunch of examples we can induce a rule from them. — B.Bryant 23:55, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Armies 

message: * If named, – TBA
*: See discussion for armies, above. — B.Bryant 23:55, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Corps 

message: * Soviet World War II era tank and mechanized corps are numbered with ordinalized Arabic numerals rather than Roman numerals:
*: ...then the Soviet 2nd Guards Mechanized Corps advanced...
*: I believe this is standard English usage, based on the fact that these formations were divisions in all but name. I'm not sure the same applies to their cavalry corps, and infantry divisions were usually controlled by army HQs without any intervening corps. — B.Bryant 23:55, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Exceptions 

message: TBA
See my discussion above under "Divisions and Brigades." Duckecho 12:59, 12 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Regiments 

message: TBA
The standard US Army usage is that Battalions and Squadrons are given numbers within their Regiments.  Example:  "1st Battalion, 384th Infantry Regiment".  This is sometimes written in literature as "the 1st of the 384th", and frequently abbreviated (particularly for US Marine Units) as 1/384.  So "the First of the Third" or "1/3" means "First battalion, #rd Marine Regiment.
For separate battalions and other units that are not part of a higher-level unit, they are given numbers, usually 3 digits, similar in style to Companies.
147.240.236.9 22:43, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: That's pretty close, as most units in the Army don't have regimental headquarters. Regiments for the most part in the U.S. Army are ceremonial and lineage-related, and not even administrative. Technically, administration of those regimentally-aligned units without RHQs falls to a higher unit command outside the regiment. Outside the ACR/SCR world and the Ranger Regiment, there's not much that qualifies as having a slash. The Marine Corps does have Regiment-level tactical commands, though.Caisson 06 (talk) 20:26, 13 September 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Battalions / squadrons 

message: TBA
The standard US Army usage is 1st, 2nd, 3rd, Headquarters, etc.  Examples:  "1st Platoon, A Company"; or "Headquarters Platoon, 4th Infantry Regiment".
: Actually, it would be "1st Platoon, Company A" in official correspondence, if the writer knows what he is doing.Caisson 06 (talk) 12:14, 24 September 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Platoons 

message: Standard U.S. Army usage is a letter or phonetic designation ("A Section, 1st Platoon" or "Bravo Section, 4th Platoon), or a descriptive term ("Mortar Section, B Troop").Mike f 18:08, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Correction: "Mortar Section, Troop B" or "Section A, 1st Platoon." Shouldn't be using phonetic in official written correspondence.Caisson 06 (talk) 12:16, 24 September 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sections 

message: TBA
The standard US Army usage is:  1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc.  As in "1st Squad, 2nd Platoon, Alpha Company".
147.240.236.9 22:30, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, "1st Squad, 2d Platoon (no "n" in U.S. military ordinal number abbreviations (1st, 2d, 3d, 4th, etc.), Company A" for official written correspondence.Caisson 06 (talk) 12:18, 24 September 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Squads 

message: The length of my throw-down list for WWII Germany suggests that we will have to move these to separate pages once we cover more than a couple of nations/eras. — B.Bryant 23:08, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  Flag. There were a lot of different Ost units, having the designation merely meant they were Eastern troops. --Elisson 19:56, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Type designations 

message: * Flieger → TBA
*: I've always seen 7th Flieger as "7th Flieger", but I don't know whether its common enough to escape the Use English forms precept. "7th Air Division" sounds OK to me, in a pinch. — B.Bryant 23:55, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  Flag. There were a lot of different Ost units, having the designation merely meant they were Eastern troops. --Elisson 19:56, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Germany 

message: Early Soviet Union had "bronetankovye voiska". I would suggest the translation "armored and tank" in the case if this term was used in the actual names of mil formations (I am not sure about the latter, but I see this term is often used in Russian texts as a translation for "armoured" and German "Panzer"). Mikkalai 19:46, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Soviet Union 

message: Hello everyone. I've been working on military history of Poland for quite some time and never realized that there is a discussion going on here. Recently someone at Talk:3d Infantry Regiment pointed me here and I thought it would be nice to include Poland in the list. The scheme used by the Polish Army is fairly simple and easy to handle in English, but it certainly needs some explanation. For consistency, I've been using the following names so far:
* Divisions, Brigades and Regiments - as per normal wiki convention: [Country] [Number] [Type] [Unit]. 
** Infantry divisions - 28. Dywizja Piechoty - Polish 28th Infantry Division
** disambiguate only in the case of Polish Legions and Home Army, cf.: 
*** 1. Dywizja Piechoty Legionów - Polish 1st Legions Infantry Division (different from Polish 1st Infantry Division)
*** 27. Dywizja Piechoty Armii Krajowej Polish 27th Home Army Infantry Division
** Rifle divisions - as per Russian convention on Strelkovaya diviziya: 5. Dywizja Strzelców Polskich - Polish 5th Rifle Division
** Grenadiers divisions - as per French convention on Division des Grenadiers: 1. Dywizja Grenadierów - Polish 1st Grenadiers Division
** Armoured divisions - 1. Dywizja Pancerna - Polish 1st Armoured Division (use English spelling for consistency with that unit whose name in English was also official during WWII)
* Do not add the traditional or honorary names in the title, mentioning them in the lead is enough. Thus 36. pułk piechoty Legii Akademickiej should be described in Polish 36th Infantry Regiment, and not Polish 36th Infantry Regiment of the Academic Legion. Same with Polish 1st Legions Infantry Division (and not Polish 1st Legions Infantry Division of Marshal of Poland Józef Piłsudski), Pierwszy Pułk Strzelców Konnych Jazdy Augustowskiej at Polish 1st Mounted Rifles Regiment and not Polish 1st Augustów Cavalry Mounted Rifles Regiment and so on.
* Specific types:
** piechota - infantry
** pancerny - armoured
** strzelcy - rifles
** strzelcy konni - mounted rifles
** kawaleria - cavalry
** jazda - cavalry
** ułani - uhlans
Any other ideas? Halibutt 20:25, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Poland 

message: The Canadian formations used a unique naming format, and I notice several editors have gotten this wrong. I'm trying to correct them as I go, namely
*First Canadian Army is correct, not Canadian First Army. The British and US seem to have used the "Foo First Army" format but Canada did it "First Fooish Army".
*Likewise divisions; the official history and period documents all use "1st Canadian Infantry Division" rather than "Canadian 1st Infantry Division" despite what the British or Americans did.Michael Dorosh 20:19, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The British, US,  and many others do not generally call their armies "Foo First Army", they tend to call it "First Army", the reason for putting in the units under "Foo First Army" is a convention (this one) used in Wikipedia for disambiguation. If they all use the same format then when referring to an army one is not familiar with one can make a good guess as to the army name, e.g. Romanian First Army. "Why not use a redirect?" I hear you saying, the major problem is categories (as it always is). Using "Canadian First Army" places it under C for Canada not F for First. --Philip Baird Shearer 08:23, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Change it with a wiki pipe - Canadian 1st Army - I don't see a problem. (edit - Kirill beat me to it, below)Michael Dorosh 19:52, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

text: The category sort key can be set manually, though, so that's hardly a convincing reason. Kirill Lokshin 11:58, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Canadian naming conventions