Board Thread:The Panopticon/@comment-7302713-20130510215247/@comment-7302713-20130512174621

Yes, but Smith is very clearly John Smith. While he's called Mr. Smith more often, he's called John a fair amount. And his full name is given multiple times.

I'm not advocating altering names for consistency. His name is quite clearly John Smith. Besides, if we were to go with most commonly used name, then we'd refer to him as "Mr. Smith" not simply Smith. This habit creeps into the wiki not because the show actually refers to characters by their last name, Jackson, Smith, etc., but because of real world writing styles. We use last names in the biographies of real world people not because they are commonly called by their last name, but because that's the way biographies are written. And in some cases we seem to be applying this to in-universe biographies.

If Rose Tyler's was a real person, we'd have written her biography in a different style. We'd never say "When Rose was in her late teens", we'd instead say "When Tyler was in her late teens". It's the style. Matt Smith's biography says "Smith grew up in Northampton", not "Matt grew up in Northampton". This isn't because he's primarily called Smith, it's because this is the style used in writing a biography.

We need to decide what style we want to use for in-universe biographies. We haven't really decided on one. We use first names most of the time, but we sometimes use last names. And most of the time there's no real reason. Jackson Lake isn't most commonly called Lake. He's most commonly called "Doctor" or "The Doctor", then Jackson, then Lake. And John Smith (Tenth Doctor) is most commonly called Mr. Smith, then John. The only way in which we refer to characters mimics the name they are most frequently called is when we use first names and only names. The last name format found in biographies is not a format that is used much outside of formal writing, and there aren't really instances of it in Doctor Who. The exception might be soldiers, who are referred to by their last names this way in the real world as well, but we generally don't get full names for most soldiers, so they fall under the one name rule.

The question remains, are we going to use the real-world style of biographical writing for in-universe biographies, or are we going to stick with first names because of how very prevalent they are?