Naming conventions for Indian 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.
Page names for Indian units have the suffix ", Indian" unless the word "Indian" already appears in the name. This applies to the Indian Army and to Indian Imperial Service Troops. "Indian" is also used for category names.
We don't yet know of a canonical source for the full names of Indian units. Hart's Annual Army List might be used if we can't find anything more official.
Contents
Divisions
Page names are in the form:
Some Indian divisions were originally known only by names and were later given numbers. These names are not used in page names but should be shown in {{infobox military unit}}. For example, 7th Indian Division was originally called "Meerut Division". Once it was numbered, its full name was "7th (Meerut) Indian Division". All division pages already have their names entered in the infobox as far as we know.
Infantry brigades
Page names are in the form:
Like divisions, some brigades were originally known only by names and were later given numbers. These names are not used in page names but should be shown in {{infobox military unit}}. Brigade pages don't yet have these names and we don't have a complete list of what they were.
Infantry regiments and battalions
Some Indian regiments had only one battalion but some had more than one. We don't currently represent regiment level with unit pages as we don't know enough about Indian administrative hierarchies. A single-battalion regiment has one page and is classfied as an infantry battalion. A multi-battalion regiment has one page for each battalion and no administrative parent.
Regiment names used in page names are based on Wikipedia but sometimes arbitrarily shortened.
Page names for single-battalion regiments are in the form:
Page names for battalions of multi-battalion regiments are in the form:
Note that we don't yet have a complete list of Indian units, so some regiments could be wrongly classed as single-battalion when more than one battalion existed.
Infantry regiments and battalions that have pages are listed in the table at Indian units in World War I#Indian Infantry Battalions. These are probably all the ones that served in a theatre of war and have war diaries, but any that don't have war diaries will be missing.
Until we find a canonical source for full names, we don't know what to put in unit_name1 in {{infobox military unit}} so this can be left as it is for now.
Many sources give battalion names in the form "1/97th Deccan Infantry". We don't use this in page names because explicitly using the word "Battalion" makes the meaning clearer. It may or may not be the correct form for full names: we don't know yet. There should probably be redirects using this form, but we haven't got them yet.
Cavalry regiments
Page names for cavalry regiments of the Indian Army usually contain only:
- the regiment's ordinal number
- the type of regiment, usually one of:
- Lancers
- Horse
- Cavalry
- Light Cavalry
- the suffix ", Indian"
All other words are omitted from the page name. The only exceptions are:
- Governor General's Body Guard, Indian
- Governor General's Body Guard (Madras), Indian
- Governor General's Body Guard (Bombay), Indian
- Aden Troop, Indian
- Guides Cavalry, Indian
Full names are provisionally taken from Hart's Annual Army List but this might change if we find a more official source.
Examples:
| Page name | Full name |
|---|---|
| 1st Lancers, Indian | 1st Duke of York's Own Lancers (Skinner's Horse) |
| 5th Cavalry, Indian | 5th Cavalry |
| 20th Horse, Indian | 20th Deccan Horse |
| 33rd Light Cavalry, Indian | 33rd Queen's Own Light Cavalry |
Pages for Imperial Service cavalry regiments will use the regiment name because they didn't have numbers. Names are taken from Wikipedia because we don't yet have a better source. Full names are assumed to be the same as page names but without the suffix until we find a better source.
- Alwar Lancers, Indian
- Gwalior Lancers, Indian
- Hyderabad Lancers, Indian
- Jodhpur Lancers, Indian
- Patiala Lancers, Indian
- Mysore Lancers, Indian
- Mysore Horse, Indian
Cavalry Brigades
Page names for cavalry brigades of the Indian Army use numbers, not names, because not all brigades had names, and some names are ambiguous. The sequence starts with 1st Indian Cavalry Brigade and ends with 14th Indian Cavalry Brigade.
Full names will probably use the number with the name in brackets, for example, "1st (Risalpur) Indian Cavalry Brigade". We don't yet have a canonical source for full names of brigades.
Imperial Service Cavalry Brigade, Indian was numbered 15th but the number is not used in the page name.
There were other cavalry brigades formed in Palestine in 1918 numbered 10th to 14th. These numbers were in the British sequence, following on from 9th Cavalry Brigade, UK but the brigades were on the Indian Army establishment and mostly composed of Indian regiments. Pages for these brigades are named in the form 10th Cavalry Brigade, Indian, which is not the same thing as 10th Indian Cavalry Brigade.
