Style/Aliases

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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

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).

  • Johann Sebastian Bach has the Russian alias "Иоганн Себастьян Бах", with the sort name "Бах, Иоганн Себастьян".
  • "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).

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).


Style
Overview
Title Style
Entities
Relationships
Classical
Special Cases/Misc.
Languages