Author Sort with de/von/...

[ThSpeck]

As far as I know, things like de, von... are parts of the Last Name, so the Default Author Sort should be (at the example of Aliette de Bodard or Dirk van den Boom) "de Bodard, Aliette" and "van den Boom, Dirk", but Calibre defaults to "Bodard, Aliette de" and "Boom, Dirk van den".

Is there a way to change that behavior? That is without manually inputting the values?

[chaley]

Originally Posted by ThSpeck

As far as I know, things like de, von... are parts of the Last Name, so the Default Author Sort should be (at the example of Aliette de Bodard or Dirk van den Boom) "de Bodard, Aliette" and "van den Boom, Dirk", but Calibre defaults to "Bodard, Aliette de" and "Boom, Dirk van den".

Enter the quagmire.

The de/von/van/del/della etc are called "particles". Often particles are not part of the surname when alphabetized. Consider "Ludwig van Beethoven", which is alphabetised as "Beethoven, Ludwig van". The name "Simone de Beauvoir" is ordered "Beauvoir, Simone de". To make things more confusing, If the particle is capitalized then it is usually considered part of the surname.

It is also personal preference. I know people with particles in their name who want it the "old" way (Surname, Given-name de) and others who want the particle as part of the surname. When I encounter such a name I try to find an example where the person shows what they want, often possible with living writers especially in academic writing.

The above notwithstanding, it is your library so you can organize it however you want.

Is there a way to change that behavior? That is without manually inputting the values?

See the tweak (Preferences / Tweaks) "Author sort name algorithm (ID: author_sort_copy_method)", in particular "author_use_surname_prefixes".

For fun try the google search "alphabetizing names with particles".

EDIT: changing the tweak won't change existing authors. For that, after changing the tweak you should use Manage Authors (right click on an author in the tag browser) and change them there using the "Recalculate all author sort values" button. That will change the author sort in all books. I advise that before you press OK to save the new values you look through the list to be sure that the result is what you want.

[ThSpeck]

Thanks for your information. Jumping into the rabbit hole on how particles are handled in German is as interesting as the English version. As far as I have found out, there exists a DIN norm (5007) telling to put the particle after the given Name, but in encyclopaedias it is put before the surname (which caused my impression, that the former usage sounded false to me). After spending some time reading on the matter, I decided to leave everything as it is per default, since that is the easier way.

Will possible ask some particular particled individuals I know how they would prefer it.