Wiktionary:Names of organizations

Inclusion of names of organizations is an unresolved problem. It is governed by WT:NSE, which leaves the decision to editors, subjecting names of organizations to the arbitrary will of whoever turns up in the RFD discussion. The practice as shown in past RFD discussions and their outcomes has been inconsistent.

Encyclopedic content
Some argue names of organizations are generally encyclopedic content, unsuitable for a dictionary. Some disagree.

It was pointed out that definitions should be brief and unencyclopedic. This is in keeping with, "Care should be taken so that entries do not become encyclopedic in nature; if this happens, such content should be moved to Wikipedia, but the dictionary entry itself should be kept."

See also.

Candidate criteria
Some candidate criteria for including organization names, most of which are not universally accepted:
 * Name form
 * Initialism or acronym (rather uncontroversial)
 * A clipping rather than a full name
 * Single-word name
 * Single-word name that is not a capitalized non-name word
 * Single-word name distinct from another included name such as a surname
 * Class of information
 * Has an interesting etymology
 * Has an interesting pronunciation
 * Has translations different from the native-language name
 * Has non-compositional translations, different from a word-for-word translation of the capitalized descriptive phrase
 * Class of entity
 * A semi-state
 * A geographic region
 * An important organization
 * An international organization
 * Other
 * Meets the requirements of WT:BRAND
 * Included in other dictionaries

Translations
Some argue name translations are valid lexicographical content, making names of organizations worth including in a dictionary. Some disagree.

Machine translation of multi-word proper names is a hard problem, especially between English and CJK languages.

Problems

 * Careless editors are likely to copy translations from Wikipedia or Wikidata, populating Wiktionary with unattested protologisms. However, the same problem pertains to translations for non-name entries. Indeed, translation tables generally contain many redlinked entries, for which there is neither attestation of use nor tracing to reliable sources.
 * Additional entries will consume the attention of the dictionary editors who want to make sure Wiktionary contains only verified content.
 * Including proper names merely on the basis of translation or rendering in a different script could easily add a million of non-traditional entries, dominating the non-name content with what from a traditional standpoint is borderline lexicography. Wikidata:NBA is an example that has rendering into different scripts, suggesting even relatively less important organizations would be so supported.

Wikidata
Wikidata entries feature translations in many languages. Wikidata is extremely generous with including entities; it even includes descriptive phrases as topics. However, Wikidata has no attesting quotations. For translations, it does not have tracing to references either. Wikidata has many protologisms copied from Wikipedias and no sound mechanism for getting rid of them.

However, Wikidata can in fact trace "name" of an entity in various languages to sources via multiple URLs, so some form of substantiation and tracing is available. These would not be attesting quotations, but that would be one step toward eliminating protologisms from Wikidata. On the other hand, Wikidata has no requirement to avoid unattested names of entities: an unattested term in a language seems to be considered better than no term, to allow the language to select the entity.

Etymologies
Ku Klux Klan is an organization with an interesting etymology. It is included in Merriam–Webster, AHD, Collins and Cambridge.

Regarding etymologies as significant for inclusion seems unlikely to lead to inclusion of huge numbers of names of organizations.

Other dictionaries
Monolingual dictionaries AKA "lemmings" generally exclude names of organizations. They include some, though. One of the best included names is United Nations. Another one is European Union, arguably a semi-federation or a geographic name.

OED includes almost none. Merriam-Webster is more inclusive. As per Talk:Democratic Party, Oxford Learner's Dictionaries, AHD, Collins and Macmillan are even more inclusive. Collins is notable as including even National Aeronautics and Space Administration and so are Dictionary.com and TheFreeDictionary, non-traditional dictionaries. The monolingual dictionaries do not have the translation inclusion rationale.

See also WT:OED and WT:MWO for coverage of names of organizations.

Wiktionary is not paper
WT:NOTPAPER was pointed out. Traditional dictionaries suffer from paper limitation. They cannot afford to serve as a comprehensive name dictionary in one work with a non-name dictionary.

See also.

Precedent
Names deleted include:
 * Parties: Talk:Democratic Party, Talk:Republican Party, Talk:Japan Socialist Party.
 * Armed forces and police: Talk:Canadian Armed Forces, Talk:Canadian Forces, Talk:Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Talk:South African Defence Force, Talk:South African National Defence Force, Talk:Soviet Armed Forces, Talk:United States Air Force, Talk:United States Army, Talk:United States Marine Corps, Talk:US Marine Corps, Talk:US Marines.
 * Banks: Talk:Banca d'Italia, Talk:Bank of Canada, Talk:Bank of China, Talk:Bank of England
 * Sports: Talk:Canadian Football League, Talk:Major League Baseball, Talk:National Basketball Association
 * Other: Talk:Akademio de Esperanto, Talk:American Dialect Society, Talk:Canadian Security Intelligence Service, Talk:Central Intelligence Agency, Talk:Federal Reserve System, Talk:National Police Agency, Talk:North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Talk:Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Vietnam, Talk:Real Academia Española.

Names kept via RFD include:
 * Talk:Greenpeace and Talk:Ku Klux Klan
 * Talk:Red Cross and Talk:Red Crescent
 * Talk:Democratic Party (before it was deleted later), Talk:Transhumanist Party (before it was deleted later), Talk:UK Independence Party and parties listed at Talk:Progressive Conservative Party.
 * Talk:European Central Bank, Talk:European Commission, Talk:European Company, Talk:European Cooperative Society, Talk:European Council, Talk:European Free Trade Association, Talk:European Stability Mechanism
 * Talk:Grand Orient Freemasonry
 * Talk:Royal Marines and Talk:Royal Navy

Initialisms and acronyms
Including organization names that are initialisms and acronyms seems uncontroversial, except perhaps such names of companies. Such names can be found in Category:en:Organizations, Category:en:Associations, Category:English initialisms and Category:English acronyms.

Comparison to place names
There are dictionaries of place names. It does not seem easy to find a dictionary of organizations. Place names are often single words and inhabitant names or relational adjectives are often derived from them: New Yorker is derived from New York and Londýňan and londýnský is derived from Londýn.

Opposition in a 2021 place name vote showed the adopted policy to be very generous, including Granite Peak, Granite Bay, Granite Lake, and Granite Basin Lake.

Political parties
Some political parties were deleted as failing WT:COMPANY: Democratic Party and Republican Party. However, WordNet does not recognize parties as companies, nor do parties seem to match a dictionary definition of a company. These two parties previously survived RFD. Another deleted party is Japan Socialist Party. Transhumanist Party survived a RFD and so did parties listed at Talk:Progressive Conservative Party.

Currently included political parties are listed as bluelinks in Thesaurus:political party.

Some names of parties are defined generically, as including multiple parties. Such is the case of Socialist Party.

Political parties were singled out for keeping in a vote about organizations, but this was a reason to oppose the vote for some.

Multiple names of political parties are included in Moby Thesaurus II.

Page views
Page views give us hints for what people are looking for. Some comparisons: The above is not conclusive but does suggest what viewers find worthwhile.
 * International Monetary Fund is viewed as often or more as IMF|IMF
 * European Central Bank is view much less than ECB, but not as of lately|ECB
 * Federal Bureau of Investigation is viewed much less often than FBI|FBI
 * Federal Bureau of Investigation is viewed more often than nonadrenergic and noncholestatic (22x than this one)|nonadrenergic|noncholestatic

The Nonlexical and the Encyclopedic
Philip B. Gove's The Nonlexical and the Encyclopedic was quoted in support of omission:
 * (x) Names of organizations, social, fraternal, religious, academic, etc., will be omitted (Phi Beta Kappa, Boy Scouts of America, Ku Klux Klan, Carnegie Foundation, Federal Farm Loan Board, Royal Academy)

However, the same list of omissions omits most name material that Wiktionary does include:
 * (a) The Gazetteer section will be omitted
 * (k) Prenames (given Christian proper names) will be omitted (Jonathan, Louisa)
 * (o) Names of characters in mythology will be omitted (Diana, Odin, Isis, Eumenides)
 * (p) Names of persons in the Bible will be omitted (Barabbas, Deborah)
 * (q) Names of saints will be omitted (Anthony, George, Cecilia)
 * (r) Names of cities, states, counties, etc. will be omitted (Boston, Florida, Yorkshire)
 * (s) Names of buildings, streets, urban districts, etc. will be omitted (Whitehall, Fleet Street, Latin Quarter)
 * (t) Names of battles, wars, treaties, etc. will be omitted (Blenheim, Boer War, Kellogg Pact)
 * (z) Names of stars and constellations, etc. will be omitted (Sirius, Ursa Minor, Andromeda)
 * (bb) Names of rivers and currents will be omitted (Nile, Father of Waters, Japan Current, Gulf Stream)
 * (cc) Mottoes, proverbs, famous sayings will be omitted (ich dien, ad astra per aspera, the proolof the pudding is in the eating, silence gives consent, all is grist that comes to his mill, when Greek meets Greek)
 * etc.
 * (bb) Names of rivers and currents will be omitted (Nile, Father of Waters, Japan Current, Gulf Stream)
 * (cc) Mottoes, proverbs, famous sayings will be omitted (ich dien, ad astra per aspera, the proolof the pudding is in the eating, silence gives consent, all is grist that comes to his mill, when Greek meets Greek)
 * etc.
 * etc.

The work is available online as pdf.

The above reinforces the notion that organization names are as encyclopedic or non-encyclopedic as other names, including geographic names and astronomical names.

The work makes it clear paper limitations were what drove the exclusions from Webster's Third New International Dictionary: "When it became practically indisputable that the physical bulk of the Second Edition with its 3393 pages and its thickness of five inches could not expand enough to take in 50,000 new words and 50,000 new senses of old words, a number of relevant editorial decisions had to be made."

The work makes it clear pronunciation of names is subject of coverage in a dictionary: An Explanatory and Pronouncing Dictionary of the Noted Names of Fiction; Including Also Familiar Pseudonyms, Surnames Bestowed on Eminent Men, and Analogous Popular Appellations Often Referred to in Literature and Conversation.

Multi-word snapshot
What is controversial are multi-word names, not initialisms and acronyms. What follows is a snapshot of included names, as of 15 Oct 2022. There is not necessarily consensus to include these.