Legal Name : "Credited Name"

Please read the discussion so far at
[bandtoband.com] http://bandtoband.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=760

Our policy is to display members on albums this way:

Legal Name : "Credited Name"

if the credited name and legal name differ.

The issue is whether or not we should recognize a distinction if the person's credited / stage name is an accepted subset of the person's legal name. Is anything gained if we list Les Gray (whose proper name may be Thomas Lesley Gray) as Thomas Gray : "Les Gray"?

I moved the discussion over here to (hopefully) recruit some more viewpoints. Python?

harris here My opinion is that in certain instances It maybe immpossible to know the real name of a performer. So if they have a stage name. Why not? Give credit where it is due. thanks

My view on that is that it's entirely dependent on Mr. Gray's actual name. misterpomp argues that Mr. Gray has only ever been known as Les Gray. If so, then his birth certificate name is indeed irrelevant, and he should go in as Les Gray.
OTOH, if Mr. Gray's legal name is in fact Thomas Gray, and he's simply known "to his friends" as Les, then he should go in as Thomas Gray||Les Gray. As far as I'm concerned the issue of whether Les is a shortening of some part of his birth name is completely irrelevant. This way I can also consistently do "Michael||Mike", "Roy Khantatat||Roy Khan" and similar.

The problem as I see it is that we simply don't know whether Mr. Gray's legal name, by which I mean the name he uses for everything, is "Thomas" or "Les" at this point, and we have two nonconclusive, contradictory pieces of evidence in the form of his birth name and all the album credits he's had. Therefore I think either way we choose is acceptable unless more evidence is produced.

IMO there's absolutely no reason not to have a Thomas Gray||Les Gray in the DB. The fact that Les is short for his middle name is irrelevant. If Nicko McBrain goes in as Michael McBrain||Nico McBrain, Les should go in as Thomas||Les.
We also have Kevin James LaBrie who is in the DB as Kevin LaBrie||James LaBrie. Although, in this case you can argue that he has choosen to go by his middle name to avoid confusion with Kevin Moore who was also in Dream Theater at the time LaBrie joined. So Kevin became James only because of the band.
However, in LaBrie's case we just happen to know the story behind his name change. For all we know, something similar might be going on with Les Gray. But because we don't know anything about him, we should be consistent and use Thomas||Les, Michael||Nicko and Kevin||James.

I'd prefer keeping things the way they are with the alias system used in all cases except when the credited name is "an accepted subset" of the legal name. It's really unnecessary to go back and change "Mick Jagger" to "(Sir) Michael Philip Jagger" and so forth. But in cases like Nicko McBrain and Paul Weller, where the credited first name has no relation to the legal name, then the alias system should be used.

As for Les Gray from Thomas Lesley Gray, that would be a... what would you call it... gray area. But I think I'd side with Python here, since first name vs. middle name usage can be so variable.

Perhaps a criterion we could use is how the person generally appears.

Mick Jagger has *always* (IMO) appeared as "Mick Jagger" on releases. Therefore we are sensible to credit him thus.

However, if he were to appear on some album somewhere credited as "Michael Jagger", then we ought to enter him in the db as "Michael Jagger" and credit him against the existing entries as:
Michael Jagger : "Mick Jagger"
and then we're covered.

A similar issue occurred recently, when Davy O'List turned up on a release as David O'List, thereby necessitating his existing entry to be changed appropriately.

However, if an artist has "always" gone by an "obvious" nickname (Boz Burrell comes to mind), then entering his real name seems to be sensible:
Raymond Burrell : "Boz Burrell"

Now the main issue: I'm coming round more to the point of view that "Les Gray" makes more sense than Thomas Gray : "Les Gray" does.

So: if the credited name is a *subset* of the artist's full name, then that's how he goes into the database *unless* he is credited somewhere as a *larger* subset of his full name, which then becomes his db name. This covers whether we use the full (all names) version or just the first name / last name version.

Or something like that.

... because that's what's suggested by your opening remark, Mark. People really need to get past the fact that his birth certificate said Thomas Lesley Gray and 'pretend' it said Lesley Thomas Gray because that's what seems to be causing the initial problem for some people. If it said Lesley Thomas on the birth certificate we wouldn't even be having this debate.
pk is wrong: there is no contradictory evidence that Les Gray was ever known as anything but Les Gray to anyone at any stage and, sorry to be blunt, all Python's examples (LaBrie/McBrain) are just evidence of the wrong-headed thinking that got us here in the first place. LaBrie and McBrain are known as something different on their albums than they are in 'real life', as far as we know. No-one can show anything to suggest that of Gray. Nothing. The 'use of middle name thing' doesn't count because IT'S SIMPLY NOT IMPORTANT!!!!!!!!
Sorry to get so irate but I can't believe something so obviously right is being argued against.

Calm down.

It wouldn't be argued against if it were "so obviously right" to all of us. Furthermore I'm not arguing against you (well, I wasn't; I think I may be starting now). I was simply trying to state the overall position as I saw it. I am a bit perplexed by your willingness to discard a well-known fact ("his name was Thomas at birth") as completely irrelevant to a discussion of what someone's name is. And since you're apparently unaware, people like James LaBrie are known that way in real life as well (he's not just James on his albums and Kevin in real life). Are we doing things right? I don't know, but I'd prefer to not misstate the facts before making a decision based on them.

As far as I can tell, there is little evidence on EITHER side for Mr. Gray, other than your vociferously stated point of view. For most artists we simply may not know what their true legal name is; "known as" is not the same, despite your insistence that that's all that matters. Only evidence like birth certificates, court documents, and well-researched histories digging into the details of a person's private life avail us much on legal names. And the extremely scanty record we have on Mr. Gray does, in fact, suggest to me that his name _is_ Thomas -- and he always _goes by_ Les.

It's certainly plausible that Mr. Gray actually does sign all his legal documents as Les Gray and is in fact legally Les Gray, birth name notwithstanding. We just don't know. Lacking some sort of concrete proof, but posessing proof that at the very least his name was Thomas at birth, I don't particularly see why you're so CERTAIN we're all wrong. I'd give the benefit of the doubt to the other side, myself.

Why is it so important not to give the additional information that Les Gray is actually Thomas Gray? If you do a search for Les Gray he will come up anyway and you get the fact that his real name is Thomas as a bonus.

You're just making things up now. You said "his name was Thomas at birth". Where did you get that from? You've yet to find *ANY* source that claims this apart from you. Maybe in Belgium there's a law that says you must be known by the first name on the birth certificate but not in the UK...

His full name is undoubtedly Thomas Lesley Gray but nowhere does it suggest he's *EVER* been anything but Les Gray. And that's why it shouldn't be on the dB. It's a name that doesn't exist....

Huh? What are you talking about? I'm not making things up, I got the 'Thomas' part from a fansite. Actually, I think it was Matt who found it first.

If you're going to be so self-contradictory as to insist that someone's "full name is undoubtedly" "a name that doesn't exist", there seems little point in arguing with you.

The only way I can make any sense at all out of your post is that you're very confused as to what we all mean by legal name. What everyone else CALLS you isn't your legal name. What you're "known as" ISN'T your legal name. That would be your common name. What you really want, I think, is a new policy to cite people in the database ONLY as their common name and ignore their legal name, whereas we all seem to see some benefit to including a legal name.

No one who disagrees with you is arguing that Mr. Gray is known to his friends as Thomas. However, the fact that someone is known consistently by the name "x" does not make "x" their name unless they also use "x" in all legal contexts.

I'll say it again. Simply.

No-one has shown anywhere, from any source that the person in question has ever been known, to anyone, as Thomas Gray. So how come he's in the dB as that? It's really that simple.

And pk there is a huge difference which you are ignoring between my two statements which are totally consistent:
"full name is undoubtedly" Thomas Lesley Gray
"a name that doesn't exist" Thomas Gray

As I understand the rule it is a "legal name"; not a birth certificate name. You guys seem to want some recognition of the name Thomas PURELY because it happens to sit first on his birth certificate. What is it about that order of names that makes you want to include that name? There's no "legal requirement" that anyone use the first listed name on a birth certificate for any purpose, any more than any insistence they use their second/middle name. Of course on some formal documents, all forenames are likely to be given, but that would be a call for full birth certificate names on all entries in the dB. Which is a different matter that may merit discussion but is NOT the current rule.

It's legally acceptable to shorten a full legal name to the first name + surname. So Thomas Gray is a legally acceptable form of Thomas Lesley Gray. Therefore if Thomas Lesley Gray exists then Thomas Gray exists by definition, regardless of usage. You seem to be trying to argue that one's first name has absolutely no more standing or default, legally, than any other piece of one's name, but that's simply not the case. While someone born "Thomas Lesley Gray" can certainly adopt "Lesley Gray" or "Les Gray" as their legal name through consistent usage, "Lesley Gray" is not the correct "first + last name" shortening of "Thomas Lesley Gray" and thus would not be used in a legal context if the full legal name is in fact Thomas Lesley Gray.

To clarify our existing rule, as far as I can tell it isn't "legal name" but "legal 'first + surname' form of full legal name". (Otherwise, you'd be right, we'd need middle names everywhere we can find them, and we've certainly omitted them in cases where we know them. I don't understand why we do sometimes include them; whatever.)

Therefore if Thomas Lesley Gray is in fact Mr. Gray's correct full legal name, current rules (as far as I know) say that he goes in the DB as Thomas Gray.

The only issue is if his legal name is actually Lesley Gray (or Les Gray) at this point. That's certainly how he's commonly known. Which is, of course, why we list him as credited that way.

It seems we are reaching the root of our lack of understanding of each other. At least that's progress!

You make a series of comments in your latest post which, frankly, I don't understand.

I don't know what you mean by "legally acceptable to shorten a full legal name to the first name + surname". I don't think there is any statute governing this in the prescriptive way you portray, i.e. that this is "acceptable" but using an alternate forename is less so. In fact there certainly isn't in the UK, where Mr Gray hailed from. If I decided to use my middle name as of today, that would become my name and, unless a document required that I list ALL forenames the name I currently use would never apper again. Note : listing ALL forenames does not imply any particular importance for the first one any more than you could argue that my current 'middle' name is my real name because it appears on various documents.

You say: "You seem to be trying to argue that one's first name has absolutely no more standing or default, legally, than any other piece of one's name, but that's simply not the case.". Damn right I'm arguing that and I'd like you to show me otherwise. I'm not sure why you throw in "default" because obviously one might default to the first-listed forename in the absence of knowing the actuality but the first-listed name certainly has no additional "legal standing".

You say "To clarify our existing rule ... it isn't "legal name" but "legal 'first + surname' form of full legal name". I was unaware of that and don't think it's so: I think it's "legal name only if it differs materially from the given name and trivial contractions and any omitted forenames are disregarded"

I don't know about the UK, but many documents I've come in contact with require you to specify first, middle (if available), and last names, which are then sometimes used to construct a first + last name representation of you that is legally binding. Certainly when changing your own name by common usage, you may elect to use your middle name, or any other name. However, in the case where you don't actually change your name but simply use it most of the time, every legal document I've encountered will either use your full name ("Thomas Lesley Gray") to avoid ambiguity, or shorten to first + surname. The fact that I've seen the shortening happen in a legally binding context implies that it is legally acceptable. The fact that I've never seen an alternate shortening happen implies that it is the assumed method. This is why I'm throwing in "default": of course someone wanting to shorten one's full name might shorten to middle + last if they knew you preferred that, and this would possibly be legally acceptable too. But in every case I've worked with where someone wished to indicate this, they reversed the order of their first and middle names and begin going as e.g. "Lesley Thomas Gray" when asked for full name.

I'm not sure I understand "and trivial contractions and any omitted forenames are disregarded". I'm certainly prepared to believe I don't understand our existing rules on what name, exactly, we list, since we seem very inconsistent about the usage of middle names and initials, short vs. long versions of first names, etc.

If our rule on usage is to simply list any legally-acceptable name for this person that is as close as possible to their given name, then Lesley Gray is probably legally acceptable. I would assume Les isn't, but then again, I wouldn't list Mick Jagger that way either.

However, the usage of first + last name as the shortened form of full name is so ingrained that people assume when given "Lesley Gray" that "Lesley" is one's first name. For this reason I'd be most in favor of "Thomas Lesley Gray" as the name we use for Mr. Gray, as it is accurate and unambiguous without implying anything about his common usage, the way you feel "Thomas Gray" does. The only reason I haven't argued for this is that I have felt that's not what our pattern is here. So if Mark/Kevin can clarify what "legal name" means that'd probably be helpful.