The DC Database contains tens of thousands of articles and images. In order to keep the site organized we use a uniform set of rules when naming articles. These conventions cover the vast majority of situations, although exceptions may arise. The conventions are not optional as several, often unseen, aspects of the site's inner workings depend heavily on consistency.

Articles

Characters

• Character Entries. Character entries should be listed by the real name and earth-designation of the character if possible.
  • If real name is given:
    • Real Name consists of: "First name" "Used name" (if not the same as first name) "Surname" "Jr" (if applicable). While generally the names should not be shortened in any way, this can be assessed on a page-by-page basis if a full name is too obscure or significantly different from the short name. Stephen Trevor, Henry Heywood, Jr., Thaddeus Sivana, Sr., Theodore Kord, etc However, Barry Allen and Hal Jordan are used over Bartholomew Allen and Harold Jordan.
    • Surnames must be the birthname, unless specifically legally changed. The birthname is not necessarily the surname of the father.
    • For real people, the name will be whatever Wikipedia uses.
    • No degrees or titles (unless the full name is unknown or is too generic).
  • If the real name is not given:
    • Any titles in the codename will be written completely. Doctor, Mister.
    • Most well known codename is better than the latest, and the real name is better than the alias, even if it should be more complete.
  • Earth-designation is given: The Earth-designation is listed after the real name in parenthesis. While DC itself is inconsistent with this, we use the standard:
    • Written out: every world, pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths, gets the number written out if it's lower than 51. Earth-One, Earth-Five, Earth-Nineteen, but Earth-64, not Earth-Sixty-Four.
    • Hyphen, number: the 52 Multiverse. Earth-2, Earth-22, Earth-37.
    • No hyphen, number: the New 52 Multiverse. Earth 2, Earth 23.
    • No hyphen, minus number: the Dark Multiverse
  • Earth-designation is not given:
    • Universe receives either the popular name used for it, or the title of the comic book series or issue or episode that universe first appeared in.
  • There are also double barreled disambiguators: alternate Earths/timelines belonging to another continuity. These could both be officially named, or not, so both rules above could apply. Arrowverse: Earth-2, but also Arrowverse: Doomworld. In this multiverse, Arrowverse is still the main continuity, even though in-universe it's Earth-1 and later Earth-Prime. Double designations are also common for many of the Dark Multiverse stories, which didn't get a reality of origin per se, just that they're from the Dark Multiverse. Triple barreled realities should be avoided. They're fringe cases, and in most cases, alternative solutions can be reached.
  • As long as a character has a specific universe of origin, that Earth-designation is given to him/her/it. If not, generally stick to the main universe - New Earth, Prime Earth - while noting their extradimensional origin in the article text. In rare cases, the reality can be listed as (Reality Undetermined).

• There are several high profile pages which have a different style, consisting of the main alias and the (short) real name between brackets (Batman (Bruce Wayne), Flash (Barry Allen), etc.). These are the regular Prime Earth pages, and should be linked to as such (Bruce Wayne (Prime Earth) and Barry Allen (Prime Earth). This anomaly is to improve the pages' SEO. It should not be applied to any newly created (Prime Earth) pages, nor should any existing pages be tagged for a move.

Comics

Page Names

• Naming Comic Articles. All comics should be named according to the following format where possible:
  "x Vol y z", where x is the comic title, y is the volume number and z is the issue number. (eg. Superman Vol 1 3)
  • Please Note: There are no # (hash/pound/number sign) or . (period) symbols in the title.

Annuals

• Annual issues should be named according to the following format where possible:
  "x Annual Vol y z", where x is the comic title, y is the volume number and z is the issue number.
  • The Title field name should match the name of the series, the Volume field should be the same as the series with which the Annual is associated, and the Issue number should contain the number of the Annual (eg. Annual 3)

Images

 Main article: Help:Image Template Hub

Page Names

Comic Images

Comic title_Vol_volume number_issue number.jpg (Please use .jpg format, in lowercase. It is our preferred file format).

Example: Detective Comics Vol 1 233.jpg

Volume number is required, even if it is volume 1, and volume 2 does not yet exist.

Example: Detective_Comics_Vol_1_233_Textless.jpg

Textless covers should be named as in the example above, simply by appending Textless to the end; the same goes for variants and sollicits.

Character / Team Images

Primary subject_incremental number.jpg (Please use .jpg format, in lowercase. It is our preferred file format).

Example: Bruce_Wayne_New_Earth_0001.jpg, Bruce_Wayne_New_Earth_0002.gif, etc

The incremental number must be 4 digits long to ensure there will be sufficient numbers for future use.

Miscellaneous

• Avoid Abbreviations. The title of a file for Superman: The Man of Steel #30, should not be 'SMOS30.jpg', but rather more fully written out like 'Superman The Man of Steel Vol 1 30.jpg'. This helps our search feature more easily locate these images later. It also avoids possibility of conflicting names. The first example is ambiguous and could be interpreted as either Superman: The Man of Steel #30 or Superman: The Man of Steel Vol 1 #30

• Do Not Use the Full Pagename. Using the full pagename in the image name - thus, placing parentheses around the universe designation - should be avoided. This is because, should the page be moved in the future, the find and replace function of the bots will pick up the image as an instance of the page name. This will lead to the image link being renamed into something non-existent, breaking the gallery.