creator names

[Donald Dale Milne]

It seems we've talked enough to develop a working list of things we
want to record in our creators table(s). There's a bunch of things that
had no opposition, some that we should discuss further, and some ideas
were presented that go beyond the scope of this committee. I'm going to
throw these all out for discussion so we can pin down any details we
need. First, I'll go through data currently in the Who's Who that no
one objected to including in the GCD.

_Creator names_ - a given creator should have an "official" name with
us, but could have several other types of names associated with them.
We should record each name, and each name should redirect to the
"official" name and when queried, display a list of all other known
names. Names we might record are:
Birth name - broken down into First name and Last name ?
"common" name - most commonly used name in comics
pen name(s) - including any known signatures, aliases, and abbreviations
house name(s) - including any known shops worked for ?
changed names - names changed due to marriage, legal, or gender changes

Also to consider, how to determine which name to use as our
"official name" for display purposes.

- Don

[R Bottorff]

A lot of creators who did the questionnaire told Jerry how they they preferred to have their name presented. Perhaps, we could do the same, ask the creators themselves (at least the ones we can anyways).

my best
-Ray

--- On Thu, 8/25/11, Donald Dale Milne <dond...@att.net> wrote:

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[Lionel English]

On Thu, Aug 25, 2011 at 3:16 PM, Donald Dale Milne <dond...@att.net> wrote:

_Creator names_ - a given creator should have an "official" name with us, but could have several other types of names associated with them.  We should record each name, and each name should redirect to the "official" name and when queried, display a list of all other known names. Names we might record are:

 

Birth name - broken down into First name and Last name ?

I think Given name and Family Name or Surname would be better choices--that avoids the problem of which is "first" and which "last" when dealing with Chinese/Japanese/Korean names.

 

"common" name - most commonly used name in comics
pen name(s) - including any known signatures, aliases, and abbreviations
house name(s) - including any known shops worked for ?
changed names - names changed due to marriage, legal, or gender changes

House names and changed names suggest that we may possibly with to store some kind of duration associated with some of these names--when was Louise Jones Louise Jones, and when was she Louise Simonson?  

--
Lionel English

San Diego, CA
lio...@beanmar.net

[Henry Andrews]

One option is to just store all of the names, and link them on specific credits.  When you look at any one name, you can see the linkages, which shows what we actually know and avoids problems of year specifications getting out of synch.  

Of course, for changes due to things like marriages, there is a clear objective date.  For pseudonyms, we may be working on very incomplete or tenuous information about who worked under which names when ("Charles Nicholas", for instance, is a very complicated name).

-henry

---

From: Lionel English <lio...@beanmar.net>

 

"common" name - most commonly used name in comics
pen name(s) - including any known signatures, aliases, and abbreviations
house name(s) - including any known shops worked for ?
changed names - names changed due to marriage, legal, or gender changes

House names and changed names suggest that we may possibly with to store some kind of duration associated with some of these names--when was Louise Jones Louise Jones, and when was she Louise Simonson?  

--
Lionel English

San Diego, CA
lio...@beanmar.net

[Donald Dale Milne]

It seems the conversation on names has died down, so here's a
summary. There was nothing controversial, so maybe we can decide on a
list of what we want quickly and move on to another item.

Each creator should record one of:
GCD Official Name (full name as we determine most representative of
their comic work, or their request on questionnaire)
Given name
Family Name (or Surname)
and uncertainty fields ?
Since these two items also would appear only once per person, they could
be recorded with the official name:
Year of birth, Month of birth, Date of birth, and uncertainty fields
Year of death, Month of death, Date of death, and uncertainty fields
And, or course, a Notes field

All other names could be recorded in a different table linked to
the official name. This could be just a list of names, with fields to
check for the type of name and a Notes field. Multiple type fields
could be checked per name. For types, we mentioned:

"common" name - most commonly used name in comics

pen name - any known signature, alias, abbreviation, or collaboration (a
collaboration may need a Note or a link to the other name(s))
house name - signature worked under
shop name - name of shop worked for
changed name due to legal change (including marriage, or gender change)
- would need a way to include the legal date (either this table or another)

It appears most of this could be extracted from the Who's Who, some
automatically and some manually. We would need to make determinations
on GCD Official Names. This should allow us to reconstruct the portion
of the Who's Who that list names, but from a relational database, and
then use the data in other ways going forward. For other dates
associated with a name (begin / end), I think Henry's suggestion of
simply showing the dates of the credits we have would work best as
itavoids problems of year specifications getting out of synch.

We could also create a table of images to link to the official names.
This could include more than one image of each creator. We would need
to be concerned about image copyrights.

- Don

[R Bottorff]

It just dawned on m e, we should have some way of being able to tell the difference between different creators who share the same name. As time goes along, this will almost certainly happened more often. I think there are 2-3 examples right now, though I cannot think of their names off hand.

my best
-Ray

--- On Sun, 9/11/11, Donald Dale Milne <dond...@att.net> wrote:

> From: Donald Dale Milne <dond...@att.net>
> Subject: Re: [gcd-Whos Who] creator names
> To: gcd-wh...@googlegroups.com

[Henry Andrews]

"Charles Nicholas" is a pretty convoluted example.  It was a house name at Eisner & Iger / Fox, probably starting from Chuck Cuidera's first and middle names (which were actually "Charles Nicholas").  It was also used by Jack Kirby and by Charles Wojtkowski, who continued to use it elsewhere.  Not an example of an identical real name (which Ray is correct that we need to handle) but a similar problem.  You don't want to just classify them all as sharing a house name- "Charles Nicholas" as the house name for Blue Beetle's creator at Fox doesn't really line up with his appearances at Timely, for instance.

-henry

---

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[Henry Andrews]

I mean Wojtkoski.  There are so many ways to spell it wrong...

-henry

---

From: Henry Andrews <hh...@cornell.edu>
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[Lionel English]

On Sun, Sep 11, 2011 at 5:50 PM, Donald Dale Milne <dond...@att.net> wrote:

Since these two items also would appear only once per person, they could be recorded with the official name:
   Year of birth, Month of birth, Date of birth, and uncertainty fields
   Year of death, Month of death, Date of death, and uncertainty fields

I think Tony had suggested (and I support) birthplace and deathplace.

[Tony Rose]

Birth and death dates allow distinction between identically named people like Frank Miller (1957 - ) and Frank Miller (1898 - 1949).





tony

---

From: "R Bottorff" <carch...@yahoo.com>
To: gcd-wh...@googlegroups.com

Sent: Sunday, September 11, 2011 8:11:06 PM

[Lionel English]

On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 6:49 AM, Lionel English <lio...@beanmar.net> wrote:

On Sun, Sep 11, 2011 at 5:50 PM, Donald Dale Milne <dond...@att.net> wrote:

Since these two items also would appear only once per person, they could be recorded with the official name:
   Year of birth, Month of birth, Date of birth, and uncertainty fields
   Year of death, Month of death, Date of death, and uncertainty fields

I think Tony had suggested (and I support) birthplace and deathplace.

 

 

Let me amend that.  We should probably make it more granular.

* birth_country, birth_state/province, birth_city

* death_country, death_state/province, death_city

 

And, perhaps, add nationality or country_of_residence.

 

 

--
Lionel English

San Diego, CA
lio...@beanmar.net

[Lionel English]

I think we had discussed adding links to link one creator with another for various reasons.  Family relationships would be one reason.  Aliases, house names, changed names, etc is another.  Perhaps we should also consider "cf." links, just to highlight that there is another person you should be aware of whom you don't want to confuse with this person.  Could be used for the Frank Miller example, and for things like Flint Henry vs Henry Flint.  You're correct that birth and death dates will distinguish between the records, but it wouldn't hurt to do something to draw people's attention to the fact that a distinction needs to be made.

[Tony Rose]

That last one can be tricky. 




tony

---

From: "Lionel English" <lio...@beanmar.net>

To: gcd-wh...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Monday, September 12, 2011 12:03:59 PM

Subject: Re: [gcd-Whos Who] creator names

[Henry Andrews]

Yes, cf./see also links are nice to have.  We also want to be able to correct things, like where the Marvel Masterworks Mystic Comics vol. 1 mis-identified comics artist Newt Alfred with another individual named Alfred Newton, and credited all of the Newt Alfred work as Alfred Newton.

-henry

---

From: Lionel English <lio...@beanmar.net>
To: gcd-wh...@googlegroups.com

Sent: Monday, September 12, 2011 10:09 AM

[Henry Andrews]

Country of residence is something that can change a lot and would require a lot of work to do right.  Let's try not to get too far ahead of ourselves here.

-henry

---

From: Lionel English <lio...@beanmar.net>

To: gcd-wh...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Monday, September 12, 2011 10:03 AM

Subject: Re: [gcd-Whos Who] creator names

[Donald Dale Milne]

Sounds good; I don't think I heard that suggested before.

- Don

> lio...@beanmar.net <mailto:lio...@beanmar.net>

[Donald Dale Milne]

That should do it without adding a disambiguation field with some
unique identifier.

- Don

On 9/12/2011 12:44 PM, Tony Rose wrote:
> Birth and death dates allow distinction between identically named
> people like Frank Miller (1957 - ) and Frank Miller (1898 - 1949).
>
>
>
>
>
> tony
>

> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *From: *"R Bottorff" <carch...@yahoo.com>
> *To: *gcd-wh...@googlegroups.com
> *Sent: *Sunday, September 11, 2011 8:11:06 PM
> *Subject: *Re: [gcd-Whos Who] creator names

[Donald Dale Milne]

Country of residence is something that would need date ranges added.

- Don

> lio...@beanmar.net <mailto:lio...@beanmar.net>

[R Bottorff]

That sounds good to me. my best -Ray --- On Mon, 9/12/11, Lionel English <lio...@beanmar.net> wrote: