Ho to express nicknames and unknown names

CSL Development
1

The issuse Jakob raises below apply to CSL, forwarding from citeproc-
js group.

Frank---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Jakob jakob.v...@gbv.de
Date: Jun 17, 7:06 am
Subject: Ho to express nicknames and unknown names
To: citeproc-js

Hi,

According the the CSL 1.0 spec ‘Personal names require a "family"
name-
part, and may also contain “given”, “suffix”, "non-dropping-particle"
and “dropping-particle” name-parts’. Alternatively a name can be a
literal name.

Although I do not want to expand this even more complex, I think there
should be a “nick” name-part to specify a nickname. According to
Wikipedia “the nickname is placed between the first and last names and
surrounded by quotation marks (e.g. Catherine “Cate” Jones). The
middle name is eliminated (if there is one).”

For instance:

{“given”:“Catherine”,“family”:“Jones”,“nick”:“Cate”}
{“given”:“Georges Prosper”,“family”:“Remi”,“nick”:“Hergé”}

Most citation styles will silently drop the nick but others want to
show it or even show the nick in favor of the given and surname - for
instance it is common for artists like comic writers to cite them by
their nickname. What do you think?

My second question is about unknown names. How do you express

  1. a single unknown name (“anonymous”)
  2. the fact that there are more names but you don’t know them (“et
    al.”)

A workaround would be to use a dummy literal name like this:

“author”:[{“literal”:“unknown”}]
“author”:[ …, {“literal”:“et al.”}]

But we could also define a third type of name (beside name-parts and
literal) that can only ocurr once at the end of the list of names.

Please note that there is a difference between just omitting a name
and explicitly stating that there are one or more names which are
unknown.

Cheers
Jakob

2

From: Jakob jakob.v...@gbv.de
I think there should be a “nick” name-part to specify a nickname.

Do you know of any style guides that discuss the use of nicknames with
regard to citations? I couldn’t find any mention in the Chicago Manual of
Style.

My second question is about unknown names. How do you express

  1. a single unknown name (“anonymous”)

Existing CSL styles typically test whether a name variable is empty. If it
is, the “anonymous” term can be used. Would that suit your need?

  1. the fact that there are more names but you don’t know them (“et
    al.”)

A workaround would be to use a dummy literal name like this:

“author”:[{“literal”:“unknown”}]
“author”:[ …, {“literal”:“et al.”}]

But we could also define a third type of name (beside name-parts and
literal) that can only ocurr once at the end of the list of names.

What is the use case here exactly? Reading this, this topic about
thousand-author papers came to mind:

Rintze> ---------- Forwarded message ----------

3

Yeah, I’d reiterate the question.

Bruce

4

Rintze wrote:

From: Jakob jakob.v...@gbv.de
I think there should be a “nick” name-part to specify a nickname.

Do you know of any style guides that discuss the use of nicknames with
regard to citations? I couldn’t find any mention in the Chicago
Manual of Style.

I found http://www.beadsland.com/weapas/ and in RefMan you can add
nicknames as author synonyms. However most styles I know recommend to
use the full name or the nickname instead, so I could also just put the
nickname in the “family” or “literal” field.

The broader question is which name to choose if a person is known under
multiple names. Nicknames are only one case and they can act as
given-name replacement or as mononyms:

Theodor Holm Nelson = Theodor “Ted” Nelson = Ted Nelson
Jean Giraud = Jean “Moebius” Giraud = Moebius

I think it is still relevant, especially if you cite digital objects
like an image at flickr or a commit in a source code repository - the
workaround is to include the nick as part of one of the name fields, but
it’s still a workaround. Maybe this can also be treated with
transliterated names.

My second question is about unknown names. How do you express

  1. a single unknown name (“anonymous”)

Existing CSL styles typically test whether a name variable is empty.
If it is, the “anonymous” term can be used. Would that suit your need?

Yes, if this will explicitely be stated in the spec. Otherwise the empty
name variable will get lost somewhere in the process of copying the data
around because some implementations will silently remove it. However
multiple empty name variables of the same role should be normalized to
one, right?

  1. the fact that there are more names but you don’t know them (“et
    al.”)

A workaround would be to use a dummy literal name like this:

“author”:[{“literal”:“unknown”}]
“author”:[ …, {“literal”:“et al.”}]

But we could also define a third type of name (beside name-parts and
literal) that can only ocurr once at the end of the list of names.

What is the use case here exactly? Reading this, this topic about
thousand-author papers came to mind:
Cap author count? - Zotero Forums

Yes and also many other publications with only five, four or three
authors: if you just copy the citation from another citation that does
not list all authors, you must either ignore the remaining authors or
add a dummy author named “et al.”. I think the latter is the most common
workaround.

In summary there are the following cases to cover:

1 Alice and Bob.
2 Alice, Bob et al.
3 anonymous.
4 anonymous et al.
5 Alice, Bob, and anonymous
6 Alice, Bob, anonymous et al. [*]

I am not sure whether case 6 is really needed but you need case 4.

Jakob–
Jakob Voß <@Jakob_Voss>, skype: nichtich
Verbundzentrale des GBV (VZG) / Common Library Network
Platz der Goettinger Sieben 1, 37073 Göttingen, Germany
+49 (0)551 39-10242, http://www.gbv.de

5

I found http://www.beadsland.com/weapas/ and in RefMan you can add
nicknames as author synonyms. However most styles I know recommend to
use the full name or the nickname instead, so I could also just put the
nickname in the “family” or “literal” field.

The broader question is which name to choose if a person is known under
multiple names. Nicknames are only one case and they can act as
given-name replacement or as mononyms:

Just the other day I noticed a reference including a name like “T.R. (Sean)
Doe” (not sure if it was from a style in use though). I’m getting convinced
adding support for nicknames would be useful, but there are quite a few
questions to answer with regard to disambiguation, sorting, etc. But I feel
it might be handier to hold off on this until we have the input model
completed for the current CSL 1.0 spec.

My second question is about unknown names. How do you express

  1. a single unknown name (“anonymous”)

Existing CSL styles typically test whether a name variable is empty.
If it is, the “anonymous” term can be used. Would that suit your need?

Yes, if this will explicitely be stated in the spec. Otherwise the empty
name variable will get lost somewhere in the process of copying the data
around because some implementations will silently remove it. However
multiple empty name variables of the same role should be normalized to
one, right?

Sorry, I don’t follow. In my understanding, CSL doesn’t distinguish between
an empty variable and a non-existing one. Also, each role only has a single
name variable (which can be an array of multiple names).

  1. the fact that there are more names but you don’t know them ("et

al.")

A workaround would be to use a dummy literal name like this:

“author”:[{“literal”:“unknown”}]
“author”:[ …, {“literal”:“et al.”}]

But we could also define a third type of name (beside name-parts and
literal) that can only ocurr once at the end of the list of names.

What is the use case here exactly? Reading this, this topic about
thousand-author papers came to mind:
Cap author count? - Zotero Forums

Yes and also many other publications with only five, four or three
authors: if you just copy the citation from another citation that does
not list all authors, you must either ignore the remaining authors or
add a dummy author named “et al.”. I think the latter is the most common
workaround.

In summary there are the following cases to cover:

1 Alice and Bob.
2 Alice, Bob et al.
3 anonymous.
4 anonymous et al.
5 Alice, Bob, and anonymous
6 Alice, Bob, anonymous et al. [*]

I am not sure whether case 6 is really needed but you need case 4.

Right. As with nicknames, I’d suggest we revisit this at a later point, as
any solution will have quite a few implications. Feel free to create
tickets, though.

Rintze

6

Just the other day I noticed a reference including a name like “T.R.
(Sean) Doe” (not sure if it was from a style in use though). I’m getting
convinced adding support for nicknames would be useful, but there are
quite a few questions to answer with regard to disambiguation, sorting,
etc. But I feel it might be handier to hold off on this until we have
the input model completed for the current CSL 1.0 spec.

Ok

Sorry, I don’t follow. In my understanding, CSL doesn’t distinguish
between an empty variable and a non-existing one. Also, each role only
has a single name variable (which can be an array of multiple names).

We should clearly define whether there is a difference between an empty
variable and a non-existing one and what means “empty variable”. In JSON
it could be one or some of:

no author variable given
“author”: { }
“author”: “”
“author”: false
“author”: true
“author”: 1
“author”:

Right. As with nicknames, I’d suggest we revisit this at a later point,
as any solution will have quite a few implications. Feel free to create
tickets, though.

http://bitbucket.org/bdarcus/csl-schema/issue/23/define-how-to-express-anonymous-and-et-al-as

Jakob