I wrote that the traditional way to sort fictitious names like
"Scrooge McDuck" is on the whole name, as Musicbrainz explicitly did
earlier, and that it's bad that when Musicbrainz intended to change
that and sort as real names, with RFC 203, it did it by just deleting
that part of the guide, so now nothing is said about it.
>> The traditional way is to sort even fictional human characters with
>> clear first and last names on the whole names. That goes for
>> characters like Blondie Bumstead nee Boopadoop (that I mentioned in my
>> previous post), Linus van Pelt, Gerald McBoing-Boing, Bart Simpson,
>> etc.
Alex / caller#6:
> Can you cite a source for this? I'm not challenging your facts. I'm very
> interested in following prevailing practices when practical.
I've tried to find sources, but it hasn't been that easy. So what I
have is mostly examples. My perception may have been biased by that
when I have seen fictional characters in alphabetical listings it has
mosty been in books about cartoons or comics. Many of the names are
like "Donald Duck" or "Porky Pig" in that they are animals with
species as last name, and can perhaps be seen as joke names, but some
are more obviously "real names".
In the index of Michael Barrier's _Hollywood Cartoons_ (1999) I find
for example Betty Boop and Elmer Fudd sorted on whole name. In _Hippo
in a Tutu_ by Mindy Aloff (2008) the index includes characters like
Horace Horsecollar and Ichabod Crane sorted on the full name. Scott
McCloud's _Reinventing Comics_ (2000) has an index with Al Flosso,
Charlie Brown, Don Quixote, Ernie Weiss, Sherlock Holmes and Veronica
Lodge sorted on their full names. (But, as an unexpected exception
"Croft, Lara"!)
_The Disney Studio Story_ by Holliss and Sibley (1988) makes this
explicit at the beginning of the general index: "Disney animated
characters are indicated to *bold* type entered under their full names
-- e.g., Casey Jones under C, Wise Owl under W.".
_Encyclopedia of Walt Disney's Animated Characters_ by John Grant
(1987) has a similar note.
Except for indices sorting also is used for encyclopedical works.
Books like _The Great Cartoon Stars_ by Denis Gifford (1979) do it
"my" way.
I mentioned "Gerald McBoing-Boing" earlier as example of a real human
name that a cartoon character has. I was reminded when looking through
my books that his "real" name is Gerald McCloy. This is one reason for
full names often being better, that the "real" last names often aren't
remembered.
I have examples that go against my view too. For example _The Complete
Peanuts_, a multivolume work collecting the daily strip, includes an
index in each volume where you can look up for example:
Brown, Charlie
Brown, Sally
Frieda
Schroeder
Shermy
Van Pelt, Linus
Van Pelt, Lucy
Violet
I find this a bit disturbing where we know the last names of some
characters but not of some. (What if Violet's last name was mentioned
just once somewhere?)
I have a few other examples that go against me, but a lot more that I
haven't mentioned that support me, so all in all the comics/cartoon
world mostly does it my way at least.
But when I finally tried to get away from my comics/cartoon ghetto,
and went to the Encyclopedia Britannica, it didn't support me much at
all. There were no stated principes about this. In the index I found
for example:
Brown, Charlie (cartoon character) ...
Charlie Brown (cartoon character); see Brown, Charlie
Don Juan (fictionary character) ...
Holmes, Sherlock (fictionary character) ...
Mickey Mouse (cartoon character) ...
Sherlock Holmes (fictionary character); see Holmes, Sherlock
(Under "Juan, Don" two people are mentioned, but there is no pointer
to the fictionary character.)
I'll add that in many cases you can in practice look up the full name,
because then you'll find a title. If you want to look up Robinson
Crusoe for example, that would be under C, but what you'll find is not
the character but
"Robinson Crusoe" (work by Defoe) ...
- * -
So I take partly back my assuredness. It seems like the usage has
varied more than I have realized, even though for cartoons full names
is clearly the most usual. That makes so much sense in a world where
the line between names and descriptions often isn't clear.
To take this into perspective I think it's clear that it's not clear
how to sort these names, so something needs to be said in the style
guides. On the other hand it's not a major part of Musicbrainz, so I
think the best would be if we could refer to other guidelines instead
of having to formalizing this ourselves. I wish Wikipedia had good
guidelines on this to refer to. Then that would be my suggestion
(regardless of whether those guidelines would agree with me or not).
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