Tolkien Gateway:Disambiguation

Disambiguation is the process of resolving ambiguity — meaning the conflict that occurs when a term is closely associated with two or more different topics.

See also: Category:Disambiguation

Multiple names

Throughout J.R.R. Tolkien's world, names have been used more than once.

• Some names of older tales have been reused for "external" reasons - names like Galdor and Legolas.
• Some have been used "internally" - the Númenóreans and Gondorians and even the Hobbits naming their offspring after heroes of the First Age: Húrin Thalion had four Gondorian noblemen named after him.
• Some chapters are named after people or events, that play an important role in it. Examples include Strider (chapter), Treebeard (chapter) and Minas Tirith (chapter).
• Some characters' names have been reused in adaptations - especially Peter Jackson's - though they do not represent the character in the book. Morwen (film character) is one, and one could argue her son Éothain (film character) is another.

Disambiguation

Because of this reuse of names, it is important to disambiguate these multiple article titles. There are several ways of doing this.

Numbers

Some of the characters have numbers, especially royalty. The two Arathorns are thus named Arathorn I and Arathorn II.

Titles

Titles differ from epithets in that they usually start with "of". E.g. Húrin of Emyn Arnen.

Descriptions in parantheses

These descriptions in parantheses (brackets) can be patronyms (Calimehtar (son of Calmacil)) or descriptions (either Beregond (Steward of Gondor) or Fastred (rider of Rohan))

Use within the text

It may look tiresome to type the following:

[[Aragorn]] promised [[Boromir (son of Denethor II)|Boromir]] he would go with him to [[Minas Tirith (Gondor)|Minas Tirith]]

Typing the following instead would be much simpler:

[[Aragorn]] promised [[Boromir]] he would go with him to [[Minas Tirith]]

But it is important that proper disambiguation happens. The purpose of Tolkien Gateway is to service the reader over the editor. Though readers can, in general, deduce which of the offered options is the one they were sent to, correct linking is one of the Standards for Featured Articles at least. For all articles that need to be disambiguated, see: Category:Disambiguation.

Disambiguation page

Disambiguation pages should be made when there are three articles with the name, or that have the name in them. In the case of two articles, the most popular of the two gets the main aritcle as a redirect, with a notification (see below) at the top. This could also be applied to disambiguation pages: if one of the three is the most popular (such as Minas Tirith), it redirects to the main article. If not, the "naked" term is redirected to a an article of the same name, with "(disambiguation)" added behind the name.

Layout

• The first line of the template should be the same as other articles: the page name bolded, with a arbitrary sentence saying something like "Subject can refer to the following characters" or whatever is appropriate.
• The list of disambiguated articles. The list should be split up, when necessary, between Legendarium-related links and Real-world links (see for example Minas Tirith (disambiguation) and Tom (disambiguation)).
• At he end of the article, add {{disambig}}
• Further categorization is not necessary.

Templates

• If a page has two entries, use {{disambig-two}} at the top of the first page
• In the case of three or more articles, use {{disambig-more}} at the top of the page that is redirected from the naked term - unless that is the redirect page. Note that all these templates have parameters.