This is a documentation subpage for Template:Person categories. It may contain usage information, categories and other content that is not part of the original template page.

This template should always be substituted – use {{subst:Person categories}}.

{{Person categories}} or its shortcut {{L}} (from the original name "Lifetime") is for automatically generating all category tags related to birth and death years, including living people and missing or unknown values. The general DEFAULTSORT can be embedded as well. It should not be used to replace existing DEFAULTSORT and/or category tags.

{{subst:L|year of birth|year of death|sort key}}

will generate:

{{DEFAULTSORT:sort key}}

[[Category:BIRTH births]]

[[Category:DEATH deaths]]

Other cases are handled with options, see below. As with the original, the embedded magic word DEFAULTSORT also applies to all categories on the page, no matter whether the lifetime template is before or after them.

Since the {{DEFAULTSORT:}} should occur before the categories, the L template should generally be placed before the first Category tag, for example:

{{subst:L|year of birth|year of death|sort key}}

[[Category:ABC]]

:

[[Category:XYZ]]

For each option, the default value is displayed in bold and automatically assumed if the field is left blank.

Please note that MISSING results in Categories that are not displayed on the page.

1 (birth)

• MISSING : when year seems possible to be found.

  Category:Year of birth missing or Category:Year of birth missing (living people)

• year of birth : such as "1899" or known approximations such as "1890s" or "19th-century" (note the hyphen).

  Category:1899 births or Category:1890s births or Category:19th-century births

2 (death)

• LIVING : living or assumed living people.

  Category:Living people

• MISSING : believed dead and year seems possible to be found.

  Category:Year of death missing

• year of death : such as "1986" or known approximations such as "1980s" or "20th-century" (note the hyphen).

  Category:1986 deaths or Category:1980s deaths or Category:20th-century deaths

3 (sortkey)

• {{PAGENAME}} : should almost never be left blank (especially with Asian names, it is hard to see the difference between a missing sortkey and a sortkey identical to the article name due to a family-first name).
• Asian name, Honorific prefix (qualifier suffix) : for assertion of sortkey assessment.

  "Mao, Zedong" - "Kim, Il-sung" - "Matsuo Bashō|Matsuo, Basho" - "Nu, U" - "Wang, Li (politician)"

• Family name, Given name, Honorific-prefix (qualifier suffix) : for proper sorting.

  "Newton, Isaac, Sir" - "Karlsson, Ove (sports journalist)"

• For further details, see Wikipedia:Categorization of people#Ordering names in a category.

Most values are case-insensitive ("LIVING" or "LiVinG" work the same), except when it matters (such as century names).

For a living person

{{subst:L|1899||Surname, Name}}

or

{{subst:L|1899|LIVING|Surname, Name}}

will give:

{{DEFAULTSORT:Surname, Name}}

[[Category:1899 births]]

[[Category:Living people]]

For a missing birth and living person

{{subst:L|||Surname, Name}}

or

{{subst:L|MISSING|LIVING|Surname, Name}}

will give:

{{DEFAULTSORT:Surname, Name}}

[[Category:Year of birth missing (living people)]]

[[Category:Living people]]

For a dead person

{{subst:L|1899|1986|Surname, Name}}

will give:

{{DEFAULTSORT:Surname, Name}}

[[Category:1899 births]]

[[Category:1986 deaths]]

• Help:Category#Default sort key, about categories and DEFAULTSORT
• Help:Magic words#Parser functions, about DEFAULTSORT technically