Author last name with multiple words

[Encoder1]

Hi,

Is there any way we can put a clear demarcation between the given and family names of an author? For example, Johannes Diderik van der Waals has the first name "Johannes", middle name "Diderik", and the last name "van der Waals", so when sorted by author names, his books should appear in "V", not "W".

Thanks a lot!

[Krystal109]

I don't think there is a way around this other than the user knowing to look under Waals.

[❂ Murder by Death]

Unfortunately this is a known limitation of the GoodReads database - it is unable to correctly distinguish authors with multi-word last names or authors with "III" in their name, for example. It's a pain, but at the moment there is no way around it.

[Renske]

With your example, the name of this Dutch physicist appearing at "W" isn't wrong, as in Dutch prefixes are not used for sorting names.
(Just to illustrate how difficult is to get the sorting of the names right, as there are so many differences)

[Carola]

What the precious person says... In case of Dutch last names as in the example, sorting under W is actually correct!

[Micah]

But in the case of "Patricia St. John", it should be sorted under S.