Goodreads Librarians Group discussion

Many family names of non English authors contain one or more spaces. If those authors are manually added. GoodReads move the first part of family name after given name, as they would be middle names. Any way to avoid that?

No yet, no. There's a standing request for a name sort order (to handle things like names with spaces and name suffixes) but it hasn't been implemented yet. In the meantime, do input the name correctly (spaces and all).

I did input the name correctly, but there is no way to tell GoodReads which is the family name. For example, if you write in the author field

Vincent van Gogh

the author is listed as

Gogh, Vincent van

There are two solutions. To allow to separate given and family name in a single field as

Vincent, van Gogh

or

Vincent "van Gogh"

Or to use TWO fields.

The top suggestion is actually for a "name sort order" field like the "title sort order" field, so that you'd be able to specify "van Gogh, Vincent" in that field without affecting the display name at all.

Mmmm... When you manually add a new book, the author field is labelled

author* (first last)

so it seems you have to input first name first followed by a space and then last name. Am I wrong?

Yes, that's correct. This is a suggestion that hasn't been implemented yet. You see how there are two title fields, one for the actual title and one below that for the sorting title? There would be, I assume, something like that for authors, so you'd enter the author as the name should be displayed in the first field and then, below that, you'd enter the name of the author again as it should be sorted.

Eg:
Title: The Letters of Vincent van Gogh
Sort title: letters of vincent van gogh, the

Author: Vincent van Gogh
Sort author: van gogh, vincent