Help:Relation name

Guidelines for properties that are relations (between two wiki pages).

Special:properties lists all properties. Some properties have been categorized as Category:relation, visit that category page to see them.

Types of names, with what seems preferable first, followed by alternatives:

• parent of
  • is parent of
  • is a parent of
  • has child
• has author
  • written by
• located in
  • is located in
  • located
  • is located
• was located
  • was located in
• famous for
  • is famous for
• lives in
• plays / played
• played by
• has year
  • was in year
  • was made in year
• was year of

Potentially ambiguous names:

• father - is father of, or has father; example: Property:Author on this site means "has author", but that is not obvious
• year

For names like "father" and "year" one could use the convention of attributes, that "has" is meant. Having a separate convention for each of such names would be confusing, and cumbersome to remember.

Symmetric relations (no need to distinguish "is" from "has"):

• sibling
  • sibling of
  • is sibling of
  • has sibling
• borders
  • is bordered by
• near
  • is near
• inverse
  • inverse of
  • is inverse of
  • has inverse
• name
  • name of
  • is name of
  • has name

For the benefit of getting convenient headers in query results one may sometimes choose relation names which by themselves are ambiguous, e.g.

• "The Weather Man" meaning "plays/played in The Weather Man the character"

Duplicate annotations S R O have no effect and do not count, on the other hand, if an object has the same relation with multiple objects (S R O and S R P), each counts.

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