[ ] Fore-Play name change example

[www.bandtoband.com] http://www.bandtoband.com/page/rules
"Example: Jermaine Jackson became Muhammad Abdul-Aziz but the name change is not reflected here as he has not released material since adopting the new legal name."

Looks like we might need a better example. Most sources seem to indicate that the change to Muhammad wasn't a legal change anyway.

[takimag.com] http://takimag.com/article/the_jacksun_also_rises_jim_goad/
"Now that singer Jermaine Jackson—brother of Michael, Janet, La Toya, and the eternally rotund and underappreciated Tito—has legally changed his name to Jermaine Jacksun, I think it's high time to talk about American blacks and the ridiculous things they do with their names. Yeah, sure, right, well, OK, the “Jacksun” thing sounds like an incredibly insignificant news story, yet somehow I feel it embodies everything that's wrong with our culture right now. This was the tipping point for me. This was the one that broke my back. This was the one that made me feel that something must be done, that compelled me to finally speak out after years of smoldering silence. This is the Jermost I can take, and I can't take any Jermore."

I've always been of the view that we should take an artist's earliest name as the primary name, and not the latest. (In cases like Eric Clapton (born Eric Clapp) and Gene Simmonds (born something else) whose names were changed in childhood by adoption or something, the plan would be to take the name that they first recorded / performed with.)

In that way there would never be a need to update all instances on the database after an artist has changed his/her name. This particularly affects female artists who marry.

I would go the other way.

Whatever the person's legal name now should be the primary name. I think it is insulting to the trans community to have people in our database under a name that does not represent their true gender.

Also, I've never seen that takimag website before. And I wish I hadn't. Cesspool of bigoted dribble.

I like Matt's idea of locking something in so changes need never take place. Name as at the first time they do something band-to-band-able seems like a good start.