Do all ward names need to be unique?

I had heard several years ago that the name of any unit in the church had to be unique. For example, if you're in the Pine Tree Third Ward, no other ward in the church can be named the Pine Tree Third Ward.

This situation surfaced in our stake several years ago when they created a new ward. Instead of creating the Pine Tree Fourth Ward, , we ended up with a Pine Tree Fifth Ward instead. We were told that was because there was another unit in the church elsewhere called the Pine Tree Fourth ward and all ward names had to be unique.

I ask because when I was looking in CDOL, I found another ward with the same name as my current ward. I thought that wasn't permitted and that's why you get creative unit names like "East Vally Sun Rising Over the Purple Mountains Stake" in areas with many church members, like Utah. You can probably sense a slight amount of exaggeration in my example of a creative unit name

No, not all unit names need to be unique, but of course you would want to make sure wards in nearby stakes don't have the same name. Maybe there was a policy at some point, but I haven't heard of it.

sbradshaw wrote:No, not all unit names need to be unique, but of course you would want to make sure wards in nearby stakes don't have the same name. Maybe there was a policy at some point, but I haven't heard of it.

That might make sense. The ward with the same name as my current ward is geographically several hundred miles away.

Apparently not. I just looked and found no less than 4 Springfield Wards (three of them are in the North America Northeast Area - so much for avoiding confusion).

I also found a pair of Springfield 1st Wards. (I also found a Partridge, but no Pear Tree.)

Perhaps a policy like that may have pre-dated the computer and the unit numbering system? It would be confusing to have have four Springfield first wards in the same Springfield.

The instructions for naming wards and stakes are in Handbook 1.

A stake or district name should be unique and there are specific instructions for how to name a stake. Short summary: (City) + (State or Country) + (Some Unique Identifier, if needed) Stake. When you have lots of stakes in a city, you end up with 41 character, 12 syllable stake names like mine.

The name of a ward or branch should be unique within a community, but does not have to be unique throughout the entire Church.