Disambiguation is the fancy term for "giving an article a unique name". It is the act of adding a disambiguation term to the title of an article, so as to ensure that two similarly named things can have unique pages in our database.
This page defines disambiguation, then explains how it is handled on this wiki.
Editors who have primarily worked on other wikis should not assume that they understand disambiguation on this wiki. And if you're new to wiki editing, you'd do well to read this document thoroughly, as well.
In a nutshell, our disambiguation policy is that pages that have the same name get a dab term. For examples articles such as Chucky Choo use disambiguation to distinguish Chucky Choo (character), the character and Chucky Choo (episode), the episode.
The name itself[]
Although the term is ubiquitous in wiki editing communities, don't feel stupid if you've never heard it before. It's actually a comparatively new term, which arose at the beginning of the computer age, and has only become truly popularised in the English language because of projects like Wikipedia. In a loose sense, it's almost "Wikipedia slang".
But, for a colloquial term associated with a particular community, it's really long — and awfully pretentious. That's why you'll often find it shortened to dab, which results other forms like dab-ed, dabed,dabing, dab-ing, un-dab and undab. These shortened forms are often seen in edit summaries, where letter count is at a premium.
Why are there little names in parentheses after a title?[]
When you start an article, the first choice you must make is how to name it. In this decision, you must choose whether to give it a dab term or not. A dab term is the bit in parentheses which follows the main name. For instance, in the title Chucky Choo (episode), the dab term is "(episode)".
But why does the episode Chucky Choo get a dab term, at all? Why isn't it simply Chucky Choo? The reason is that wiki technology requires different concepts to have unique names. The page on the character Chucky Choo must have a different name to the episode, Chucky Choo (episode). Think of it as a technical limitation of this medium.