Style/Artist/Sort Name

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Style for sorting artist names

This pages describes how to format the SortName for ArtistNames.

Sortnames are heavily edited in order to sort all artists well, international ones and those with extremely weird names. The following rules apply:

  1. All SortNames should be in Latin script. For Japanese, Chinese, Greek, etc. ArtistNames this means they have to be transliterated.
  2. For artist names that are stylised, change stylised characters to their equivalent letter and remove any style-only characters and apply the rules below. This applies to names which include unusual punctuation or spacing which is not intended to be pronounced using the normal rules.
  3. SortNames contain all the accented characters that are present in the ArtistName, as long as they're in Latin script.
  4. If an ArtistName consists of two or more collaborating artists, each individual name is sorted separately according to the rules below. The 'separator' (e.g. "&", "and" or "with") stays the same.
  5. 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".
    • 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". This also holds for groups. "St. Lunatics" has sort name "Saint Lunatics".
    • Artist names that contain a person's name (usually bands) do not sort as persons, but as ficticious names. Examples: "The Sensational Alex Harvey Band" has sort name "Sensational Alex Harvey Band, The". "The Jimi Hendrix Experience" has sort name "Jimi Hendrix Experience, The".

Examples

  1. De-stylizing: My$t:c DJz have sort name "Mystic DJz". *NSync have sort name "NSync". t r a n c e [ c o n t r o l] has sort name "trance control". Exceptions to this rule are Artists whose name do not mean anything and cannot be transliterated in any way. Examples: (´・д・)ノ has sort name "(´・д・)ノ". ♪◆m599XGSMF6 has sort name "♪◆m599XGSMF6".
  2. Accented characters: "René Löwe" has sort name "Löwe, René".
  3. Collaborating Artists: "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". "Bill Haley & His Comets" have sort name "Haley, Bill & His Comets". 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.
  4. "A Perfect Circle" has sort name "A Perfect Circle".

Language specific rules

These language specific rules are not official, but are generally applied for artist names in the languages listed below. Sort names for non-English artist names are not discussed yet. Please help out.

Dutch

ArtistNames with a tussenvoegsel (there is no English word for this; it's the bit between the first and last name): 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.

Hungarian

Hungarian names follow the "western" custom, using given name and family name. However, Hungary is the only European country to place the family name before the given names, i.e. it uses the eastern name order. So effectively the sort name equals the name there.

Icelandic

Sort on their first name.

Italian

All of the official rules above apply. Articles to put after if they come first are "il", "gli", "lo", "la", "i", "le". The Italian equivalent of the Dutch "van" are "de" and "del" and should be treated as the Dutch rules.

Japanese

Names are usually family name first, given name second. As a result, the sortname (once transliterated) is the same as the artist name. However, Japanese artists commonly known in countries that use Latin script often reverse their name for releases in those nations, so some caution is required when adding such artists.

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"

Romanian

Persons are sorted normally (LastName, FirstName). There are no "de" or "von" particles in normal Romanian names. Bands with Romanian names are always sorted by their name, because the definite article in Romanian is a suffix.

Discussion

!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



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.


What about fictitious artist names like Pete Namlook? It looks like a real person's name, but it isn't. It is, however, an alias for a person. --Zout 
  • I would treat it as a real name. -- WolfSong 13:48, 01 February 2006 (UTC)

I personally treat artists like ♪◆m599XGSMF6 under #2 (giving m599XGSMF6 as a sortname) whereas artists like (´・д・)ノ I have no idea about (Japan probably has some name for them...). --Nikki 


  • Is it counter-intuitive to sort bands that contain single artists under the band rather than the artist? It'd be a pretty weird record shop where Bob Dylan and The Band is in the "D" section, Jimi Hendrix is in the "H" section but the Jimi Hendrix experience is in the "J" section.
    • Which is probably why I've never liked this sorting scheme. I used to work in record store retail and groups with a members name were always sorted by the sort name of the member. So Dave Matthews Band would be under Matthews; Alan Parsons Project would be under Parsons. I do realize that the actual sort name will look ugly but I don't think people generally "look" at sort names with any frequency. You're more likely to look at the "sorted" name (meaning how it looks in a list). The hurdle will be how to place the elements. Is it Hendrix Experience, The Jimi or Hendrix Experience, Jimi, The. The driver for that decision should be how the system (Picard and TaggerScript in general) will interpret it not is it visually appealing to humans. -- WolfSong 17:14, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
      • totally agree, it seems odd that 'Jimmie Hendrix' and 'Jimmie Hendrix Experience' is not sorted together, it seems to defy the purpose of sortnames mo

Either option is counterintuitive, and Sortname is used for things other than sorting. It's also the method Picard and other clients use to transliterate names in non-Latin scripts for people who cannot read them, or cannot use them in filenames. -Sailorleo

  • actually for picard, it no longer uses sortname, but aliases, so we get Kago Ai, not Ai, Kago. picard will also be using taggersript in just a little bit. mo Really? That sounds like it's a potential source of problems... if we had an artist named, say "Dr. Johņ 'Saint' de St. Doę, Jr.", the sort-name would be something along the lines of "de Saint Doe, Dr. John 'Saint', Jr." which strikes me as not being a terribly friendly name...


I have a question about artists like, "The Ghost Who Walks"; Should we edit their name in the style of "Ghost Who Walks, The" or just leave it as "The Ghost Who Walks". I think it should be more the latter because it seems more like a sentence/statement than a name. -- Mackattack

  • I think that the sortname should be "Ghost Who Walks, The", on the off chance that somewhere there is a release that left out the "The", so that they get sorted right next to each other. -- MartinRudat 13:34, 17 June 2006 (UTC)


In Flanders (Dutch-speaking part of Belgium), family names that start with "Van", "De" or similar are generally sorted under "Van ...", "De ...", etc. E.g. "Boudewijn de Groot" would be sorted under "de Groot, Boudewijn". --JanC



In the Netherlands they are definitely sorted without the article or preposition though. And that answers the question as well: definitely not adjectives: 'de' and 'het' and their variations are articles 'van' (and some other less common ones like 'in' or 'op') are prepositions. -- thisfred