Tardis:Honourifics

Naming conventions Character names → Serials → Characters with one name → Magazine issues → Astronomical objects → Years → Eras → Dates → Human → Parts of a series without clear individual titles → Humanoid → Speedy renames → Lists of appearances → Universe → Integers → Assuming species → In-universe counterparts of minors → Colour spectrum policy → Honourifics

Shortcut:

T:HONOURIFICS
T:HONOUR
T:HONOR

Don't include Mr, Mrs, Dr, or any other honourific in a page title — unless it's genuinely a part of a character's name. And don't put periods after the abbreviations, please — we use British rules here.

Honourifics are titles that come before a name, such as Mr, Mrs, Dr, Professor, religious ranks, or military ranks. These should generally not be included in article titles, unless they provide the only reasonable means of disambiguation.

For example, a character such as Winfold Hobbes may have been listed in the credits as "Professor Hobbes". Therefore, per our rules on crew listings, that's how his name should appear on the Midnight page. However, his full name, without the title "Professor", is used to title his article.

Things named for people with honourifics, such as saints, should include the honourific, as with St Jude's Hospital or St John's Monastery.

No periods

Our spelling policy requires British spellings. This has an impact on honourifics, in that the British do not use a period after any honourific that begins and ends with the same letters as the full word. Thus, because doctor begins with a d and ends with an r — and because saint begins with an s and ends with a t — the usual British rendering of the honourifics are Dr and St, sans periods. Thus, this is the spelling pattern we will attempt to enforce on this wiki, even though Dr. Who is commonly seen in the Doctor Who end credits of the 1960s and 1970s. Only for characters whose proper name includes a title will we stray from those rules: Peter Cushing's character is Dr. Who, not "Dr Who", and Doc Holliday is "Doc Holliday", not "Dr Holliday"!

Finally, if a character is widely known by a title, such as Sergeant Benton, then a redirect can be created under that name, pointing to the proper article title — in this case, John Benton. This however should only be done sparingly, and only with major characters.

When honourifics are allowed

There are a few cases where honourifics make sense. One example is when we don't have anything but an honourific to work with, as with Sergeant (The Highlanders). In this case, we just add the name of the story to the honorific and move on.

Another more unusual case is that of Grandma Connolly from The Idiot's Lantern. Normally, we would call her Connolly (The Idiot's Lantern) — but there are other Connollys in The Idiot's Lantern. Thus, it's clearer to just use her honourific to title the article.

Finally, in some cases, a character's name simply doesn't make sense without what appears, at first glance, to be a honourific — because the honourific is genuinely part of their moniker. Captain Britain is not a man named "Britain" who holds the rank of "Captain"; "Captain Britain" is, as the Curator would put it, "all one title". A notorious example in this regard is of course the Doctor's alternative moniker of "Dr Who": characters known as "Dr Who" or variants thereof should certainly never be referred to as "[[Doctor]] [[Who (dab term)]]".

Exactly one character, Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart, shall have a redirect on his honourific. Although there are indeed other Brigadiers in the DWU, only he shall be the Brigadier.