Authors with Last Name prefix or suffix sent to Kobo

[Phil_C]

Author sorting in calibre is working well. But I have issues with books sent to Kobo devices when the author name contains a prefix or suffix.

How can I get an author name e.g. John Smith Jr. to sort on the Kobo by "Smith" and NOT by "Jr."?

Same problem with a prefix. Jane von Doe should sort under "von", but sorts under "Doe" on the Kobo.

Is there a way to make the Kobo device do this properly?

[Clebbel]

Originally Posted by Phil_C

Author sorting in calibre is working well. But I have issues with books sent to Kobo devices when the author name contains a prefix or suffix.

How can I get an author name e.g. John Smith Jr. to sort on the Kobo by "Smith" and NOT by "Jr."?

Same problem with a prefix. Jane von Doe should sort under "von", but sorts under "Doe" on the Kobo.

Is there a way to make the Kobo device do this properly?

Have you tried to bulk sort the books by the specific Author you want to change and manually change the sort order to be what you would like to view - e.g. Smith Jr., John or von Doe, Jane

[Phil_C]

Originally Posted by Clebbel

Have you tried to bulk sort the books by the specific Author you want to change and manually change the sort order to be what you would like to view - e.g. Smith Jr., John or von Doe, Jane

I want consistency across all authors in the way they appear. That is, "John Q. Smith". That is how they appear in calibre and on the Kobo. The problem is that the device will only sort on the last word of the name.

Somewhere someone suggested using a non-breaking space between "van" and "Smith", but that did not work.

The only way is to run the names together as in "John vanSmith". Which is incorrect and doesn't look so great. The "Jr." problem can be sort of fixed by adding a comma instead of a space, as in "John Smith,Jr.", which again is incorrect.

I have only a few of these authors, so I suppose I can just ignore the problem.

[BetterRed]

Moderator Notice
Moved to separate thread

It'll get lost in a MR single thread topic.

BR

[chaley]

Originally Posted by Phil_C

Author sorting in calibre is working well. But I have issues with books sent to Kobo devices when the author name contains a prefix or suffix.

How can I get an author name e.g. John Smith Jr. to sort on the Kobo by "Smith" and NOT by "Jr."?

Same problem with a prefix. Jane von Doe should sort under "von", but sorts under "Doe" on the Kobo.

Is there a way to make the Kobo device do this properly?

FWIW, in almost all cases "von Doe" should sort under Doe. They are considered "particles". There are exceptions for some people (I know a few people who want the particle in the family name and many others who don't), in some countries, and for some names. And of course exceptions for the "librarian's" taste.

In your case and with your tastes, I would consider hyphenating the particle and the name, as in von-Doe. Yes, it is wrong but not as wrong as "vonDoe". Or perhaps one of the "unusual" space characters here might work, such as the "open box" or one of the different-sized spaces.

I would also consider using a plugboard to remove suffixes such as Jr, Sr, PhD, etc.

[Phil_C]

Originally Posted by chaley

FWIW, in almost all cases "von Doe" should sort under Doe. They are considered "particles". There are exceptions for some people (I know a few people who want the particle in the family name and many others who don't), in some countries, and for some names. And of course exceptions for the "librarian's" taste.

In your case and with your tastes, I would consider hyphenating the particle and the name, as in von-Doe. Yes, it is wrong but not as wrong as "vonDoe". Or perhaps one of the "unusual" space characters here might work, such as the "open box" or one of the different-sized spaces.

I would also consider using a plugboard to remove suffixes such as Jr, Sr, PhD, etc.

Thanks for the interesting information on particles. I now have it permanently bookmarked as the "particle article".

I tried several of the different types of spaces with no success. Use of a hyphen, as you suggest, is probably the least obtrusive option.