Multiple persons with identical names

[reccmo]

While updating a number of work pages for compositions transferred from WIMA I've encountered a limitation in IMSLP's registering of Persons: among the WIMA contributors is a musicologist whose name is 'Jens Peter Jacobsen', i.e. exactly the same as a famous Danish poet living in the second half of the 19th century. That poet was already registered in WIMA as author of song lyrics.

When I attempted to register 'my' 'Jens Peter Jacobsen' the person entry was rejected saying that a person with that name was already in the IMSLP list of persons. Per coincidence I know the musicologist quite well. He was my teacher once and was always called 'Jesper'. Only by adding that nickname within parentheses I was able to create a Person record for him. This is an OK work-around for that specific person. But IMHO the case brings a principal problem to light: there are people, incl. composers etc., in this world with identical names. Hence it must be possible to register multiple persons with identical names. That might require kind of ID to uniquely identify and distinct such persons within IMSLP

[Davydov]

Actually this happens more often than you would think, and there are several fathers and sons who shared the same names, for example. Each case is taken on its merits, and in this particular one the best solution is to use "Jesper Jacobsen" for the modern editor, which would leave no room for ambiguity. His full name would appear in on his person page, and notes could be added there and on his namesake's page "Not to be confused with...", in the "Extra Information" field.

[reccmo]

Actually this happens more often than you would think, and there are several fathers and sons who shared the same names, for example. Each case is taken on its merits, and in this particular one the best solution is to use "Jesper Jacobsen" for the modern editor, which would leave no room for ambiguity. His full name would appear in on his person page, and notes could be added there and on his namesake's page "Not to be confused with...", in the "Extra Information" field.

Maybe you're missing my real message: in my role as database developer I say that it is a methodical problem to make entries within a list of persons unique based on the names of the persons. You need a unique identification, typically a number, which must be completely independent of the name of the person.

[KGill]

... it is a methodical problem to make entries within a list of persons unique based on the names of the persons. You need a unique identification, typically a number, which must be completely independent of the name of the person.

How would we do this, though? IMSLP uses MediaWiki, and that means that each composer name is just a page title, not really a database entry. Every page on the site has to have a unique title, of course, which creates the problem - but I don't really see how we could have a unique identifier for each person apart from that with the current structure. I think implementing that would probably entail a complete rewrite of MediaWiki, which honestly I don't see happening anytime soon...

[reccmo]

... it is a methodical problem to make entries within a list of persons unique based on the names of the persons. You need a unique identification, typically a number, which must be completely independent of the name of the person.

How would we do this, though? IMSLP uses MediaWiki, and that means that each composer name is just a page title, not really a database entry. Every page on the site has to have a unique title, of course, which creates the problem - but I don't really see how we could have a unique identifier for each person apart from that with the current structure. I think implementing that would probably entail a complete rewrite of MediaWiki, which honestly I don't see happening anytime soon...

OK - I realize that MediaWiki pages pose some conditions. On that background I suggest adapting Wikipedia styles for handling Disambiguation. In the IMSLP case of 2 persons named 'Jens Peter Jacobsen' we could distinguish the poet by renaming his IMSLP page to 'Jacobsen, Jens Peter (Poet)'. If I had named the page on the musicologist to ''Jacobsen, Jesper' I guess I had not got search hits on his IMSLP editions when searching for 'Jens Peter Jacobsen'