Style/Artist/Sort Name

Style for artist sort names

The sort name is the name that will be used when the artist is listed in a sorted list with other artists.

• Sort names contain all the accented characters that are present in the artist name.
• If an ArtistName consists of two or more collaborating artists, each individual name is sorted following the rules below. The 'separator' (e.g. "&", "and" or "with") stays the same. Examples: "Bob Dylan and The Band" have sort name "Dylan, Bob and Band, The". "B.B. King & Eric Clapton" have sort name "King, B.B. & Clapton, Eric". This rule does not apply for artist names that seem to consist of more than one artist, but do not. Example: sort name for "Hootie & the Blowfish" is the same, because the Blowfish are not are separate band.
• All parts of a sort name are separated by ", " (comma and space). How to distinguishing parts is explained below.
• For artist names that are regular names, the sort name will be "Last Name, First Name". Example: "Eric Clapton" 's sort name is "Clapton, Eric". (Note that this does not apply to icelandic artists, as those sort on their first name.)
• For artist names that are ficticious names, the sort name is the same as the artist name. Examples: "Franz Ferdinand" and "Cypress Hill".
• For artist names that start with "The", that word is treated as is it were a first name of a regular name. Examples: "The Beatles" have sort name "Beatles, The".
• Non-english articles like La, El, Los and Le are treated as the English article The. Example: "Los Lobos" have sort name "Lobos, Los".
• For artist names that start with a title like "Dr.", "DJ" or "MC", that title is treated as is it were a first name of a regular name. Example: "DJ Tiësto" has sort name "Tiësto, DJ".
• For artist names that end with a title like "Jr." or "Sr.", that title is always put at the end of the sort name, preceded by ", ". Example: "Harry Connick, Jr." has sort name "Connick, Harry, Jr.".
• For artist names with a nickname between the first name and last name, the nickname is treated as if it's part of the first name of the artist. Example: "Jean 'Toots' Thielemans" has sort name "Thielemans, Jean 'Toots'".
• For artists whose last names start with an abbreviation, the last names are unabbreviated in the sort name. Example: "Rebecca St. James" has sort name "Saint James, Rebecca".

More examples:

• "A Perfect Circle" has sort name "A Perfect Circle".

Discussion

Sort names for non-English artist names are not discussed yet. Please help out. --Zout

Portuguese: Person

• Last name, First name [2nd, 3rd, ...]. Example: "Moreira, Gilberto Passos Gil"
• Specific rules:
  • Compost last name. Example: "Espírito Santo, Pedro"
  • Familiar ship indication names (Filho, Neto, Júnior), go with the last name. Example: "Connick Júnior, Harry"
  • de, da, e before last name. Example: "Hollanda, Francisco Buarque de"

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Suggestion for sorting artists with an adjective (is that the right word?): Originally an idea by Zout when moderating the sortname for the Dutch artist "Boudewijn de Groot" to "Groot, de, Boudewijn". This seems to me the most clear and logically correct way to sort these artists. Since "de" is not part of the first name ("De Groot" is the last name), and since we want to sort these persons under "Groot" the best option is "Groot, de, Boudewijn". Better than "Groot, Boudewijn de" where "de" seems to be part of the first name, which it is incorrect. --prupert 

!BibTeX has a pretty complete sorting algorithm and that one defines a "von-part" of the Name, Thus IIRC Manfred Albrecht Freiherr von Richthofen (The 'Red Baron') is sorted: Richthofen, Frieherr von, Manfred Albrecht. I assume that is what you mean by 'adjective'. The correct desciption is either "von-part" or aristocratic title or something like that. I think most sorting practices agree that this is a special part that has to be treated by itself. --DonRedman

After about an hour and half of thought on the subject of van names, I concluded that the best way to do it was "[Last Name], van, [First Name]" as well. However, I had no proof to back my conclusion up. In less words, I agree. --SenRepus

another example: The Sensational Alex Harvey Band and just Alex Harvey, how to sort this? ~mo

• As resp. "Sensational Alex Harvey Band, The" and "Harvey, Alex" I think. -- Zout

Does anyone actually use the 'An' and 'A' sorting rule that's just been added? The reason for ignoring 'The' is because otherwise the T section would be rediculous. Personally I'd look under A in a record shop/book index for these artists.

• probably not. perhaps it's better to remove it again. --Zout Agreed... moving the A or An to the end is just ugly and unneeded IMO. --SenRepus removed. --Zout

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Some artists commonly use "stylised" names, i.e. ones which include unusual punctuation or spacing which is not intended to be pronounced using the normal rules. Examples:

• DJ Angu$ http://musicbrainz.org/artist/8669baf9-8d29-4d74-8be3-8786b39086e0.html: which I'm guessing is pronounced "DJ Angus", not "DJ Angu-dollar"
• t r a n c e [] c o n t r o l http://musicbrainz.org/artist/902286c2-e7d1-4ee8-adb6-216d6a71a05c.html: which is presumably "trance control", not "tee are aye en see ee open-square-bracket" etc.
• m u s l i m g a u z e http://musicbrainz.org/artist/06fc1189-d7cd-4344-b09a-51cd82cfefe5.html: "muslim gauze", not "em you es el eye" etc.
• *NSync http://musicbrainz.org/artist/603ba565-3967-4be1-931e-9cb945394e86.html: who variously are described as "N Sync", "'N Sync", "N*Sync" etc.

So far when I've been moderating these sorts of things I've tended to leave the "name" alone, but change the sortname to a non-stylised equivalent, e.g. "Angus, DJ"; "trance control"; "muslimgauze" etc.

What do people think of this? I'm 99% sure that I'm doing the right thing as far as the sortname goes, but what about the (display) name? Should that be "normalised" to something more like standard English? Doing so would also improve database searching accuracy (e.g. searching for "trance control" will currently NOT find the above artist; but searching for "t r a n c e" WILL). It also has other fringe benefits such as accessibility (blind readers, etc).

To an extent the same applies to album names:

--: Eurodance 7 :-- http://musicbrainz.org/album/393f3541-bc01-4fe1-b0f3-ea7f506368ed.html

but at least in the above example the word "eurodance" is intact and thus searchable / readable. There's probably a better example out there somewhere - but the very fact that this "suspect" data is hard to search for makes it, err, hard to find.  :-)

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Isn't this what aliases are for? I believe the correct thing to do is something along these lines: 

• ArtistName: "t r a n c e [] c o n t r o l"
• SortName: "trance control"
• ArtistAlias: "trance control"
• ArtistAlias: "trance [] control"
• ArtistAlias: "t r a n c e c o n t r o l"

spooge

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I think that including as many access points as possible in the form of aliases is the way to go. What works is what's important.

There actually are standardised names for most artists which have been determined by the wise seers at the Library of Congress (and are in the processes of being harmonised with the British Library and other national libraries). These are called "name authority records" and can be conveniently searched online at: http://authorities.loc.gov/

According to them, the official names for the above are: "Muslimgauze (Musician)" and " 'N Sync (Musical group)". (Authorised names are in the "100's" fields, and known alternate names or aliases are found in the "600's" fields.) The others don't seem to have authority records..., yet.

Another scheme that librarians use, primarily for electronic records, is called the Dublin Core. (It's a way of adding information to HTML documents to identify the creator, etc.) I found a site about the Dublin Core which contains a very good description of how people who catalogue things for a living approach unknown names and non-standard characters. There's a PDF document or you can skip directly to an HTML version of page 9 ("Creator") in the Google cache.

These resources might prove useful in helping to resolve questions about names, and might help keep MusicBrainz more 'N Sync with international cataloguing.

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Authors: Zout ZeroGravitas