"Harry G. Lee" wrote:

> How about an eminent eighteenth century scientist who was given the
> honorific for his sentinel contribution to biology then used that
> name exclusively in his authorship of works spanning nearly two
> decades?  Does such a name change, Linné né Linnaeus...

* certainly everyone has the right to change their legal name, whether
by marriage, or by selecting to spell out one or another of their given
names, or by using an honorific. Those who change their legal names
should recognize that if they've published before changing their names
they're inconveniencing bibliographers (the wife remained "Aleta
Karstad" as an artist and author for that reason, though she's "Aleta
Karstad Schueler" on cheques).

"Mary Jane West" becoming "Mary Jane West Eberhard" or "Mary Jane
West-Eberhard" is an example of a scientist changing her name as an
author, and thereby causing potential confusion. I think the original
question was about how to deal with this situation in cases where it's
desireable to recognize the individual rather than just using the name
as a tag.  Maybe you just have an "original name" field in the "authors"
table of the bibliographic database, and index on that when you're
interested in authorial identity. A name change doesn't formally matter
in a synonomy, since each publication is independent (i.e. no author
retains any 'ownership' of a name once it's published).

fred.
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           Bishops Mills Natural History Centre
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   on the Smiths Falls Limestone Plain 44* 52'N 75* 42'W
     (613)258-3107 <[log in to unmask]> http://pinicola.ca
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