Style/Aliases
Status: This is an official style guideline. |
Localised names
The locale should be used to capture the official name as normally used in a particular language and/or country.
An entity can only have one localised name for each locale. If there is more than one, use the most recent name for the entity. If multiple names are used in an interchangeable manner, use the most common one. Other names can still be added as aliases without a locale.
The locale should not be more specific than it needs to be, so the country should only be included when necessary, e.g. If an entity's name is the same in all English speaking countries, "English" with no country is sufficient. If the name is normally the same, but is different (usually for legal reasons) in certain countries, then the country should only be used to identify where the name is different from the usual name for that language.
- Examples
- Пётр Ильич Чайковский is known as "Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky" in English.
- The Beatles are known as "ザ・ビートルズ" in Japanese.
- Yazoo are normally known as "Yazoo" in English, but are known as "Yaz" in English in the United States.
Sort name
The sort name should be in the appropriate form for the alias locale, since different languages sort names differently (for example, for Japanese names, use the kana sortname).
- "Пётр Ильич Чайковский" has the sort name "Чайковский, Пётр Ильич"
- "日本武道館" has the sort name "にっぽんぶどうかん"
For artists, aliases should follow the normal artist sort name guidelines.
In most cases, sort names for non-artist aliases should be the same the same as the entity name, with the following exceptions:
Articles (e.g. "the", "a" and equivalents in other languages) at the beginning of the name should be moved to the end, separated by ", " (comma and space).
- e.g. The sort name for The Electric Record Company is "Electric Record Company, The"
Stylised characters (e.g. the use of symbols like "$" to represent "s") should be changed to the letters they represent (but diacritics on should not be removed).
- e.g. The sort name for Sm:)e Communications is "Smile Communications"