Editing Battle (section)

== Naming ==
[[File:Battle of Gibraltar 1607.jpg|thumb|left|[[Battle of Gibraltar (1607)|Battle of Gibraltar of 1607]], [[Hendrick Cornelisz Vroom]]]]

Battles are usually named after some feature of the battlefield [[geography]], such as a town, forest or river, commonly prefixed "Battle of...". Occasionally battles are named after the date on which they took place, such as [[The Glorious First of June]]. In the [[Middle Ages]] it was considered important to settle on a suitable name for a battle which could be used by the [[chronicler]]s. After [[Henry V of England]] defeated a French army on October 25, 1415, he met with the senior French [[herald]] and they agreed to name the battle after the nearby [[castle]] and so it was called the [[Battle of Agincourt]]. In other cases, the sides adopted different names for the same battle, such as the [[Battle of Gallipoli]] which is known in Turkey as the [[Battle of Çanakkale]]. During the American Civil War, the Union tended to name the battles after the nearest watercourse, such as the Battle of Wilsons Creek and the Battle of Stones River, whereas the Confederates favoured the nearby towns, as in the Battles of Chancellorsville and Murfreesboro. Occasionally both names for the same battle entered the popular culture, such as the [[First Battle of Bull Run]] and the [[Second Battle of Bull Run]], which are also referred to as the First and Second Battles of Manassas.

Sometimes in desert warfare, there is no nearby town name to use; map coordinates gave the name to the [[Battle of 73 Easting]] in the [[Gulf War|First Gulf War]]. Some place names have become [[synonymous]] with battles, such as the [[Battle of Passchendaele|Passchendaele]], [[Attack on Pearl Harbor|Pearl Harbor]], [[Battle of the Alamo|the Alamo]], [[Battle of Thermopylae|Thermopylae]] and [[Battle of Waterloo|Waterloo]]. [[Military operation]]s, many of which result in battle, are given [[codename]]s, which are not necessarily meaningful or indicative of the type or the location of the battle. [[Operation Market Garden]] and [[Operation Rolling Thunder]] are examples of battles known by their military codenames. When a battleground is the site of more than one battle in the same conflict, the instances are distinguished by [[ordinal number]], such as the First and Second Battles of Bull Run. An extreme case are the twelve [[Battles of the Isonzo]]—[[First Battle of the Isonzo|First]] to [[Twelfth Battle of the Isonzo|Twelfth]]—between Italy and [[Austria-Hungary]] during the First World War.

Some battles are named for the convenience of [[military historian]]s so that periods of combat can be neatly distinguished from one another. Following the First World War, the British Battles Nomenclature Committee was formed to decide on standard names for all battles and subsidiary actions. To the soldiers who did the fighting, the distinction was usually academic; a soldier fighting at [[Beaumont Hamel]] on November 13, 1916, was probably unaware he was taking part in what the committee named the [[Battle of the Ancre]]. Many combats are too small to be battles; terms such as "action", "affair", "skirmish", "firefight", "raid", or "offensive patrol" are used to describe small military encounters. These combats often take place within the time and space of a battle and while they may have an objective, they are not necessarily "decisive". Sometimes the soldiers are unable to immediately gauge the significance of the combat; in the aftermath of the [[Battle of Waterloo]], some British officers were in doubt as to whether the day's events merited the title of "battle" or would be called an "action".{{citation needed|date=February 2012}}