diff --git a/mercurial/namespaces.py b/mercurial/namespaces.py
--- a/mercurial/namespaces.py
+++ b/mercurial/namespaces.py
@@ -84,3 +84,7 @@ class namespaces(object):
                     return cl.node(maxrev)
                 return n[0]
         raise KeyError(_('no such name: %s') % name)
+
+    def templatename(self, namespace):
+        """method that returns the template name of a namespace"""
+        return self._names[namespace]['templatename']