Separating two single-name authors

[Fumijo]

There are two authors who go by the name "Hanako", and I can't figure out how to differentiate between them. I can't put an extra space between the first and last name as there is no last name.

The author labelled "Hanako (I)" is a pen name used by Noriyuki Yamahana (author of the "Yume de Aetara - If I See You in my Dreams" series (see here).

The other author is labelled "Hanako (II)" (author of the book The Geisha Secret). I tried adding the (I) and (II) to the names (as they were both just "Hanako"), but the Geisha book still appears under Hanako (I).

Should I just change the author on the first eight "Yume de Aetara" books to Noriyuki Yamahana and put a note on the individual book pages noting why (in the book description)? Later rerelease editions of the books in the series all use Noriyuki Yamahana as the author.

Doing that wouldn't address the single-name author issue, though, so I'd like some thoughts on that, too.

Thanks!

[Cait]

Unfortunately, there is no way to disambig single-name authors. Policy is to leave them together on one profile and put extensive notes in the author bio detailing the authors known to use this name. (So far we have not had any single-name authors asking to claim author profiles.)

[Banjomike]

Cait wrote: "So far we have not had any single-name authors asking to claim author profiles"

There are some single name GR authors.

http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/...

[Fumijo]

My preference in this case would be to change the one set to use the author's real name and just put a note on each of those eight books (see my original note above). Especially since later editions of the books use his real name. Is that acceptable?

[lafon حمزة]

Banjomike wrote: "There are some single name GR authors.

http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/..."

This is the one that caused the most problems: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/...

[Banjomike]

Nihonjoe wrote: "My preference in this case would be to change the one set to use the author's real name and just put a note on each of those eight books (see my original note above). Especially since later edition..."

The general rule is to use the name that appears on the book cover as the primary author and then add real names as secondary authors. Like this one from the series you linked to already is:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11...

Adding (I) or (II) to the author is debatable. When people start to add books they are just going to use the raw name Hanako.

[Fumijo]

That is not a very accurate way to do this, and has the potential to cause big problems and a lot of confusion. Some way needs to be created to avoid having 20 authors under the same name (or even 2-3, as 20 may be a little unlikely). Having multiple authors under the same listing defeats the whole purpose of listing the author: to see what else s/he has written.

[zjakkelien]

I also found 2 authors with the same name (Anthony Ryan and Anthony Ryan). The first one is a Goodreads author and has written a book named Blood song. An edition of this book has also been added to the second author. How do I shift that book back to the correct Anthony Ryan?

[Moloch]

This can be done inserting extra spaces between first and last name: I have edited the book attributed to the wrong author changing the author's field from Anthony^Ryan to Anthony^^Ryan (^ = space): the names look the same, but link to different profiles.

So, a third potential "Anthony Ryan" would be Anthony^^^Ryan and so on

This is impossible when the author's name consists of one word, as the OP asked.

[zjakkelien]

I see, thank you very much!

[Nenangs]

Nihonjoe wrote: "That is not a very accurate way to do this, and has the potential to cause big problems and a lot of confusion. Some way needs to be created to avoid having 20 authors under the same name (or even ..."

single name author disambiguation is an old problem known to us since a long time ago. the agreed solution at the moment is what banjomike wrote in message #6. it's not perfect, but at least it's something we can work on.

to see what else s/he has written, one can see under the real name of the author.

[Fumijo]

It could be fixed by adding a checkbox for "single name author" and allowing the system to recognize multiple spaces after the single name if the box was checked. This would probably be easiest to implement as it wouldn't require reworking a lot of things in the database (where it would be unchecked by default) other than checking the box (after it's implemented) on those entries with single-name authors and adding the spaces.

[Banjomike]

Nihonjoe wrote: "It could be fixed by adding a checkbox for "single name author" and allowing the system to recognize multiple spaces after the single name if the box was checked."

I like the checkbox idea.

Currently, adding spaces after a name is treated as something to be corrected (which it usually is). Allowing it in some, quite rare, circumstances would probably cause new problems.

[rivka, Former Moderator]

It would definitely cause other problems. And duplicate single-name authors is a rare enough case that I doubt it will be addressed programatically.