[x] Fore-Play Rule 4 - diminutives

The rule says this:

We standardize on the diminutive rendering of a forename so long as the diminutive form is used consistently throughout the artist's career consistent with The "The" Rules above.

--

This works nicely in a situation in which a musician appears as David or Dave. Defaulting to David for those instances in which it is used and aliasing as necessary means we don't have to alias all the time.

Examples:

David Rosenberg
David Rosengber : Dave Rosenberg

But it's not so clear what to do when the musician has always used two or more diminutives of the first name but never the full expansion first name. There are a few ways we can handle this situation, and we'd like some input.

Examples:

William Bozo : Bill Bozo
William Bozo : Billy Bozo

vs.

Bill Bozo
Bill Bozo : Billy Bozo

vs.

Billy Bozo
Billy Bozo : Bill Bozo

---or---

Philip Squeak : Pip Squeak
Philip Squeak : Phil Squeak

vs.

Phil Squeak
Phil Squeak : Pip Squeak

vs.

Pip Squeak
Pip Squeak : Phil Squeak

---------

It all boils down to these questions (and maybe others):

1) Is it reasonable to recognize diminutives of diminutives? And if so,
2) Which diminutive becomes the default?

Allowing diminutives of diminutives would allow our default to match a name actually used on a recording.

... if that can be established.

There is a problem with "Steve Groves". He appears on some of his releases as "Stevie Groves", which makes it necessary to apply an alias for those releases. As both Steve and Stevie are dims, we need to put his real name - but is it Steven or Stephen? Nowhere can this info be found.

Rather than leave Steve Groves forever banished from the db, it seems pragmatic to alias him as Steve Groves||Stevie Groves for these releases, and leave him as just Steve Groves on all the rest.

Only the first (which is the current) allows for objective entry of names in the dB. A 'full name' can be established with certainty.

I don't like it much but the most sensible alternative is to make the most commonly-used diminutive the primary name and that will require revisiting names as people 'rename' themselves for later releases (or we find earlier ones we didn't have). I agree with Matt that the Stevie/Steve Groves issue shouldn't preclude him forever from the dB as it's trivial compared to losing some bands altogether.

Full name if we can find it, most-commonly-used diminutive if we can't?

We already have to revisit the db in some cases anyway, if we find a release by a non-diminutive.

Matt - as regards your specific problem, Stephen Groves is the co-writer of many songs with Stephen Kipner so Stephen's what you're looking for...

... amended as appropriate.

I think I'm fine with Matt's formulation: "full name if we can find it, most-commonly-used diminutive if we can't." But we still might run into problems with what to consider "most commonly used." For instance, if we didn't know that Rick(y) Nelson's birth name is Eric Nelson, how would we decide on Rick or Ricky? He was consistently Ricky through 1960 and consistently Rick afterwards. Rick would seem to outweigh Ricky -- plus I think Rick would be preferable since Ricky is, as Mark put it, a diminutive of a diminutive.

Here's another case. I've queued up a release with the Australian guitarist Bill(y) Miller. One can find Bill or Billy used at various points in his career -- sometimes they even coexist on the same page, e.g.:

[www.thedavegraneyshow.com] http://www.thedavegraneyshow.com/davegraneyshow/ktgbilly.htm
[web.archive.org] http://web.archive.org/web/20060819232421/www.billmillermusic.com/index.html

Like Ricky Nelson, Miller seems to have preferred Billy earlier in his career and now more often goes by Bill. His (currently defunct) website is billmillermusic.com, and he used the name Bill Miller to register the domain (according to [tucows.com] http://tucows.com/whois). He was probably born as William, but I can't find a single reference confirming this. So I think he should go in as Bill Miller, aliased as Billy (the "diminutive of a diminutive") where appropriate, since he uses Bill in the most official or authoritative contexts I can find.

Whatever we decide, we should avoid making assumptions about what is diminutivized from what, since there are no hard and fast rules: Rick(y) Nelson is Eric and not Richard, Bill(y) Liesegang is Wilhelm and not William, etc.

I think we are needlessly complicating things by adding diminutives of diminutives. I think the simplest solution is to default to the full first name if there are different diminutives used.

If we choose a diminutive, then we have to worry about which one of these is the diminutive of the diminutive, "Xander" or "Sandy" for "Alexander" (for example.)

I also think we should be aware of the situation that bgz pointed out concerning assuming that "William" is the full name of "Will".

The "needless complication" arises when we can't find what two different diminutives actually are. From both mine and bgz's examples, it has been shown that it's possible to get it wrong if we try to guess.

Having said that, it is often not easy to determine when a diminutive *is* a diminutive. E.g. my grandmother was christened Bess. Not Elizabeth. Used to send her into screaming rages when someone "assumed" it was a diminutive, and high-handedly called her Elizabeth.

Another example: "John" is a full name, "Jon" usually (at least in the UK) a dim of Jonathan. We can't guess that it *is*, however, without corroboration.

Other examples from the Swedish: "Jocke" seems to be a diminutive of Joakim, but we routinely expand it to Joakim and supply the dim as an alias.