Goodreads Librarians Group discussion

I came across Juvenal who was as a variant author name used as Juvenal Juvenal. While merging the profiles I spotted Persius Persius as a co-author in one of the books. I tried to find a profile to merge to, but found none with additional information such as I had found with the other example. Below are the variants I found, I need clarification which name variant is the correct one to keep. I will list all the ones I found, just in case anyone wants to take it over and solve it:
Persius Persius
Persius Works 1814
A Persius Flaccus (Persius)
A Persius Flaccus
Aulus Persius FlaccusPersius
Persius Juvenal

This looks like a small project, not a simple book fix. You may want to post it there.

I would prefer to move this entire post then to the project area, how do I do that? edit: found out how to and moved it.

Maybe also edit the thread title. These are Roman/Latin authors :)

thanks I updated it as well.

If this were my project, I would make a decision - probably Persius as I have noticed that most ancient/classic Greek and Roman authors have a single name. Then I would complete that author profile to the best of my ability, using a public domain photo from wikipedia, as well as a short blurb. Then I would merge all those other author profiles into the newly completed one, and merge as many titles as possible.

There will be new imports with bad author names, but because time was taken to make a more complete profile, it will be easy in the future to see which profile to use.

But it is not my project. ;-)

I thought about doing that, but I was not sure if there is a naming policy that prevents using Persius. As I wrote in my initial post, I was seeking clarification regarding the name.

Not all Roman authors are listed with a single name though. Cicero f.e. is called "Marcus Tullius Cicero" here: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...

Of course that can be a mistake, since even Loeb lists him as Cicero. But there is a librarian note saying this is preferred, being the most complete version of his name (I thought we went with what is on the covers? ETA Although I do see at least one reputable publisher, Oxford University Press, list his full name).

Personally, I would call Cicero Cicero, and mention the full name in his bio. (Okay, so maybe not for Cicero, then.) Ditto for Persius, full name Aulus Persius Flaccus in the bio.

Due to the mixed answers, just to make sure, recommendation is now to use Aulus Persius Flaccus as the main profile, right?

From the answers I sense that there is no strict way from the manual to follow, or is using the full name the rule and the profile of Juvenal need some adjustment too?

Redangel333 wrote: "Due to the mixed answers, just to make sure, recommendation is now to use Aulus Persius Flaccus as the main profile, right?

From the answers I sense that there is no strict way from the manual to ..."

I believe there is not a fixed rule. Why I answered as I did, is that with a complete profile, it becomes very easy to fix things in the future. And things will have to be fixed in the future, because there will continue to be imports with a variety of names. And once everything is on one profile, should Rivka or someone else decide that another name is preferred, it is easy to make that change to that one profile.

Redangel333 wrote: "Due to the mixed answers, just to make sure, recommendation is now to use Aulus Persius Flaccus as the main profile, right?"

No, no! That was just Cicero, because at least one reputable publisher had his full name (and Cicero's brother also had some works to his name).

For Persius, I would use Persius and mention his full name in the bio.

Persius it is then.