Wikipedia:File names

This guideline documents an English Wikipedia naming convention. It is a generally accepted standard that editors should attempt to follow, though it is best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply. Any substantive edit to this page should reflect consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on the talk page.

Shortcuts WP:FILENAMES WP:FNC

This page in a nutshell: Use descriptive file names. Don't upload files with generic, non-specific file names.

Wikipedia file names should be clear and descriptive, without being excessively long. While the image name doesn't matter much to the reader (they can reach the description page by simply clicking on the image), it matters for editors. It is helpful to other contributors and for maintenance of the encyclopedia if images have descriptive or at least readable file names. For example, "File:Skyline Frankfurt am Main.jpg" is more helpful than "File:Wiki.jpg".

To avoid accidental overwriting of images or other media, very generic filenames should not be used when uploading. For example, a picture of an album cover should not be given the name "File:Cover.jpg", as sooner or later someone else will try to do the same thing and overwrite the old image. The new image will then appear wherever the old one was used—in this case, an album article would then show the wrong album cover.

Examples of good file names:

"City of London skyline from London City Hall - Oct 2008.jpg"

"KDE Kicker config screenshot.png"

"1863 Meeting of Settlers and Maoris at Hawke's Bay, New Zealand.jpg"

"Polyhedron with no vertex visible from center.png"

Examples of bad names: "Image01.png" "Joe.jpg" "DSC00001.JPG" "30996951316264l.jpg"

Image names may be disallowed either by page protection or by blacklisting the title. There are also a few technical restrictions on what characters can be contained in a title.

Generic file names

[mali mi di yibu sheena n-niŋ]

Some file names are protected to prevent an image being uploaded with that name because they are too generic. For example, File:Image.jpg, File:Image.png, File:Image.gif and File:Image.svg.

The template {{protected generic image name}} was previously used to indicate this issue on the files involved.

Wikipedia:File names describes how files should be named. In general, Wikipedia aims to provide stable file names as these may be being used by tools outside of Wikipedia. Currently there are nine widely undisputed uses for rename requests:

After moving the file, please replace all uses of the old file link with the new one.

If a file name on English Wikipedia conflicts with a file name at Commons, please check the File usage on other wikis before deciding which should be renamed. Renaming a file at Commons might affect a lot of projects instead of just one.

If the file was moved per WP:FNC#9, after all of the links have been updated, please place {{Db-redircom}} on the leftover redirect (file movers), or delete the leftover redirect using the summary generated by {{Db-redircom}} (administrators). Please see speedy deletion criterion R4 for more information.

Additional naming conventions and exceptions from the above list might be discussed for specific projects.

• {{Rename media}}
• Wikipedia:Images
• Help:Files
• c:Commons:File types
• Category:Wikipedia image placeholders for image namespace