Author with four profiles

[Linda]

I'm aware that it's policy for authors to have two profiles if one is written in another script. Is it normal for an author to have four profiles, though? (There may be more, but I've found four so far.)

The Greek author Ρέα Γαλανάκη has her Greek profile plus three different ones in Roman transliteration:

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

Unfortunately, I can't verify that any books actually have the third Roman version, Rea Galanake, because I can't find covers for those.

Should the three Roman ones be merged, or is it OK for them to stay separate? (And if separate, can/should we combine editions by adding multiple versions of the author's name on books?)

[Banjomike]

Ρέα can be "Rea" or "Rhea" depending how you translate the "Ρ" which is a Rho (Rh or R).

The Goodreads criteria for other scripts is 'do books exist which have the author name spelled this way'. If they do exist then so does the profile. If not, then the profile probably has no reason to exist and whould either be merged into a real profile or the books moved individually to real profiles.

You should probably wait for a few more comments before proceeding.

[Linda]

I'm not aiming to do anything, just asking if this is normal. I'm familiar with double profiles (say, one in Japanese and one in Roman script), but I just haven't run across four yet. Two of the Ρέα versions in Roman script seem cross-referenced to each other, but the third doesn't seem to connect to either of them.

[Linda]

Although, I would like some clarification about combining editions in cases like these. Given that a book's author should match the cover, there will be different versions of an author's name depending on script. But am I correct to assume that to combine them, they have to have the same primary author? What is the approved method here? Add all necessary versions of the name to a book to facilitate combining editions? I've checked the librarian manual, but I don't see the answer. (Please direct me to it if I've missed it.)

[Z-squared]

I know for authors that publish multiple editions of the same book under different names (say, with or without a middle name, for example), librarians are supposed to use the name originally used on the first (or oldest known) edition as the primary author an all editions (so they can be combined), then add alternative names, pen names, whatever as secondary authors. That way all related editions are combined into one work, but all editions with alternative names are still searchable with that name.

My guess is we're supposed to do the same thing with transliterations. Because the primary language of this site is English, I think that the Roman script transliteration is always the primary author, and the native script is secondary. It therefore follows that if there are editions/translations published with different transliterations of the same name, then the originally used transliteration should be used as the primary author on all editions, and the alternate transliteration attached to those editions whose covers show differently. To be super correct, each author profile is usually amended with a librarian's note giving links to all related transliterated profiles and native-script profiles.

For the examples you linked to, I admit, things get more complicated by transliterations using the same Roman alphabet but sourced from different languages. Who knew that Italian speakers would transliterate that author's name differently than English speakers? And it doesn't help that even WorldCat has 3+ transliterations, too, and more when you include diacritics.

My quick fix for this particular mess would be to edit the author profiles for all four to include all 3 transliterations and links to each profile. A longer fix would involve some creative searching on Goodreads and WorldCat. For example, the translator attached to one of the works on the 4th unconnected Rea Galanake profile, Kay Cicellis, has a profile that links to another edition of "The Life of Ismail...":

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22...

It has a clearly discernible cover with the transliteration "Rhea Galanacki". Therefore, if I had the time, I would try and find every edition of "The Life of Ismail..." on this site I could, add Rhea Galanacki as the primary author on all of them, and combine.

[Linda]

Thanks for the helpful response. I'll try to tackle this later and hopefully not botch it up.

There are even more variations on her name in the Library of Congress databases, believe it or not.