Naming conventions for Australian units
The purpose of this page is to record and explain our current practices for naming units and pages. It's not a set of rules that you have to learn. If you want to create a page that doesn't exist, just create it. Don't worry about whether it has the right name. We can easily move it later.
See Australian units in World War I for more examples.
Contents
Australian Imperial Force
Page names
Divisions and corps
Page names are the same as full names. unit_name1 etc isn't usually used.
Pages already exist:
- Australian and New Zealand Army Corps
- I ANZAC Corps
- II ANZAC Corps
- Australian Corps
- New Zealand and Australian Division
- 1st Australian Division
- 2nd Australian Division
- 3rd Australian Division
- 4th Australian Division
- 5th Australian Division
- 6th Australian Division
- Australian Mounted Division
- ANZAC Mounted Division
Units
Most AIF units, other than the exceptions described further below, use the page name suffix ", Australian Imperial Force (AIF)".
For example:
- 1st Infantry Brigade, Australian Imperial Force (AIF)
- 1st Battalion, Australian Imperial Force (AIF)
- 1st Light Horse Brigade, Australian Imperial Force (AIF)
- 1st Light Horse Regiment, Australian Imperial Force (AIF)
- 1st Machine Gun Battalion, Australian Imperial Force (AIF)
- 1st Machine Gun Company, Australian Imperial Force (AIF)
- 1st Field Ambulance, Australian Imperial Force (AIF)
- 1st Light Horse Field Ambulance, Australian Imperial Force (AIF)
- No 1 Casualty Clearing Station, Australian Imperial Force (AIF)
- 1st Field Artillery Brigade, Australian Imperial Force (AIF)
- 2nd Siege Battery, Australian Imperial Force (AIF)
- X2A Medium Trench Mortar Battery, Australian Imperial Force (AIF)
- 1st Light Trench Mortar Battery, Australian Imperial Force (AIF)
- 1st Field Company, Australian Imperial Force (AIF)
These forms sometimes differ from more commonly used names but are needed to disambiguate AIF units from Militia units with similar names. For example, the AIF had a unit commonly known as "1st Australian Field Artillery Brigade", while the Militia had a unit known as "1st Brigade, Australian Field Artillery" or just "1st Field Artillery Brigade".
Exceptions
The names of some units are closely related to the names of divisions or corps. Their page names should be like this:
- 1st Australian Divisional Ammunition Column
- Australian Corps Heavy Trench Mortar Battery
- I ANZAC Corps Signals Company
- 1st Australian Divisional Signals Company
Hospitals are usually in the form:
Australian Flying Corps squadrons:
Full names
These should be entered in unit_name1 etc. in the main infobox.
Light Horse regiments
Full names are shown in the British Monthly Army List.
Infantry battalions
Full names are shown in the British Monthly Army List. These usually include a geographic name in brackets.
Units are represented at force and battalion level. These pages already exist. Page names are similar to AIF units:
- Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force
- 1st Battalion, Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force
- 2nd Battalion, Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force
- 3rd Battalion (Tropical Force), Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force
- 4th Battalion (Tropical Force), Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force
- Naval Brigade, Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force
Permanent Force
Page names are the same as full names, based on the July 1914 Quarterly Army List:
unit_name1 doesn't need to be used.
Citizen Military Force (aka Militia)
Page names are mostly in the form:
- 2nd Infantry Regiment, Australian Militia
- 2nd Infantry Brigade, Australian Militia
- 2nd Light Horse Regiment, Australian Militia
- 2nd Light Horse Brigade, Australian Militia
- 2nd Field Company, Australian Militia
- 32nd Fortress Company, Australian Militia
- 23rd Signal Company, Australian Militia
- 6th Signal Troop, Australian Militia
- 1st Field Artillery Brigade, Australian Militia
- 1st Field Artillery Battery, Australian Militia
- 1st Garrison Artillery, Australian Militia
- 1st Field Ambulance, Australian Militia
- 24th Light Horse Field Ambulance, Australian Militia
The suffix ", Australian Militia" is used to disambiguate from similarly named AIF units.
Some types of unit take the name of their parent corps instead:
Full names, as shown in the July 1914 Quarterly Army List, go in unit_name1 in {{infobox military unit}}.