Overview of the WWP’s encoding of names, including personal names, place names, organizational names, and the names of objects
The WWP encodes all proper names of people, places, and things, regardless of their rendition. This entry provides an overview of our usage; see the more specific records for details. We encode the various types of name as follows:
Human names: persName, with an attribute that points to the WWP personography. See entry 089.
Place names: placeName. See entry 090.
Proper nouns referring to non-human creatures, collectivities, events, and things: name. See 091.
Organization and institution names: orgName. See 166.
See also 094 for help distinguishing between different phrase-level elements, including various types of names.
We consider “names” to be limited to proper nouns: terms which refer to a specific unique individual, thing, or group, and which intend to designate that individual uniquely. Terms which refer to a person’s role or title, without a proper noun, are not names. Thus “the President” is not a name, but “President Lincoln” is a name; “the Earl” is not a name, but “John, Earl of Norfolk” is a name (with a placeName within it).
References to personified qualities (such as Love, Virtue, Temptation) should usually not be treated as names. However, when a character in a play or a novel is given a name such as “Despair” (as in Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress), Despair gets a name. The decision whether to treat a given case as a name should take into account whether it refers to a character with a persistent existence within the work rather than simply being a passing poetic reference.