Help:Page name

This is an information page. It is not an encyclopedic article, nor one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines; rather, its purpose is to explain certain aspects of Wikipedia's norms, customs, technicalities, or practices. It may reflect differing levels of consensus and vetting.

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Page name is a term for the title of any page on Wikipedia. A page is named for the convenience of linking to it by its title. It is shown on the title line, near the top, in large bold letters.

On Wikipedia, a database stores all the pages, and so a page is also named for the convenience of a database query to get that page. In the case of encyclopedic articles, the page name is simply the topic of the article. For other pages, such as those used for administration, the page name will include a topic and a namespace. Talk pages are also stored in the database, and their page names will add the word "talk" to the corresponding page names of their subjects.

A page name on Wikimedia projects differs from most web pages, in that the title can always be interpreted from the URL (except for most pages of Wikidata). A web page URL is more similar to a file name, which can be given any chosen title within the rules. Page name is also different from file name because whereas "file name" and "filename" mean the same thing, "page name" and "pagename" do not always mean the same thing. But pagename is very similar in meaning to "web page title" in that both terms reference the title of a subject, which is a variable for a given author.