The Thammasat University Library has newly acquired a book by a modern British novelist that underlines the importance of avoiding confusion when citing author’s names in academic research projects and theses. Librarians are also aware of this problem.

A Game of Hide and Seek is by the British writer Elizabeth Taylor (1912-1975) who shares a name with the Hollywood film star Elizabeth Taylor (1932 –2011). The novel is shelved in the Fiction Stacks of the Pridi Banomyong Library, Tha Prachan campus. In a serious work of research, it would be a major error to confuse these two people, yet since their names are identical, how can we be sure to avoid this mistake? A long word, disambiguation, is sometimes used to describe what must be done. The word ambiguity means vagueness or uncertainty. If we try to remove what is unclear in a reference, we disambiguate it.

On some websites for librarians, the problem of authors who share the same name, or homonyms, is discussed. Among them is the case of an American comedian Jon Stewart, who writes books of political humor. There is also a Jon Stewart who is an American philosopher and historian of philosophy. He specializes in 19th century Continental philosophy with an emphasis on the thought of Kierkegaard and Hegel. Professor Stewart currently works as a researcher at the Institute of Philosophy at the Slovak Academy of Sciences. His books include The Unity of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit: A Systematic Interpretation; Kierkegaard’s Relations to Hegel Reconsidered; A History of Hegelianism in Golden Age Denmark, Tome I, The Heiberg Period: 1824-1836; A History of Hegelianism in Golden Age Denmark, Tome II, The Martensen Period: 1837-1842; Idealism and Existentialism: Hegel and Nineteenth and Twentieth-Century European Philosophy; The Unity of Content and Form in Philosophical Writing: The Perils of Conformity; The Cultural Crisis of the Danish Golden Age: Heiberg, Martensen and Kierkegaard; Søren Kierkegaard: Subjectivity, Irony and the Crisis of Modernity; and Hegel’s Interpretation of the Religions of the World: The Logic of the Gods. The TU Library owns some of the philosophy books by Professor Jon Stewart, with the author identified Stewart, Jon. (Jon Bartley) to make it clear that this is not the same writer as yet another Jon Stewart, not the comedian, who wrote books on econometrics, also in the TU Library collection. Sometimes using a middle initial or date of birth in a citation will make it clear which writer we mean to refer to in our research.

Complex choices

Some names are very common in America and the UK. There are at least eight authors named Robert Harris who have published books. Robert A. Harris, an American, writes non-fiction about research, plagiarism, rhetoric, and writing style. His books include Using Sources Effectively, The Way to True Happiness, and Webquester. Another Robert Harris, an American software engineer, wrote programming manuals, including The Definitive Guide to SWT and JFACE. The Australian poet Robert Harris wrote a number of collections of verse. Another Australian, Dr. Robert Harris, is a chiropractor who wrote the diet book, Slim Forever. In the UK, there is a Robert Harris who is a professor of criminology at the University of Hull. His books include Welfare, Power, and Juvenile Justice. Robert P. Harris is a numismatist, or specialist in the study of currency, including coins, tokens, paper money, and related objects. His books include A Guidebook to Modern European Coins. Robert D. Harris is a British journalist who has published fiction and nonfiction works such as Enigma, Fatherland, Imperium, and Pompeii. His non-fiction books include Good and Faithful Servant, Gotcha, A Higher Form of Killing, The Making of Neil Kinnock, Selling Hitler, What to Listen for in Beethoven, and What to Listen for in Mozart.

As we see, some authors with common names sign their works with middle initials to help readers tell the difference between them and other writers with the name name. Yet this is not always the case. Other ways that writers may be told apart is by listing their years of birth and death, if they are no longer living. An example of this might be something like the following:

Harris, Robert (1900-1999)

Harris, Robert W. (1950- )

Harris, Robert H. (18??-1900)

Sometimes library cataloguing will add a middle initial to an author’s name to make the identity clear, even if the author does not use the middle initial. For students and researchers, uncertainty about writers with the same name can be a problem. For example, a thesis or academic research project may be planned on Ian Fleming, the author of the James Bond series of novels. There is also a different Ian Fleming, a specialist in organic chemistry, who wrote such books as Spectroscopic Methods in Organic Chemistry; Molecular Orbitals and Organic Chemical Reactions; Frontier Orbitals and Organic Chemical Reactions; Supervision and Clinical Psychology: Theory, Practice and Perspectives; and Selected Organic Syntheses: A Guidebook for Organic Chemists. A third Ian Fleming wrote such popular books as The Time Management Pocketbook; The Teamworking Pocketbook; The Coaching Pocketbook; The People Manager’s Pocketbook; and others. If a book is about a topic different from what the subject of a thesis or academic research project usually writes about, it is worth checking if it is by a different author, before citing it as part of the project.

As all Thais know, in China, Vietnam, and other Asian countries, many people share the same names. One website of scholarship tries to separate these names to avoid confusion. There are four separate scholars named Nan Li, three named Bing Xu, five named Lei Zhang, and two named Xin Meng. In Vietnam, there are scholars named Minh Nguyen; Minh C. Nguyen; Minh H. Nguyen; and Minh T. Nguyen as well as Thang N. Nguyen; Thang Q. Nguyen; and Thang V. Nguyen. Also in Vietnam, Thanh C. Nguyen; Thanh D. Nguyen; and Thanh V. Nguyen are published researchers and three named Huong D. Nguyen.

This situation is not only found in Asia. In the Spanish speaking world, there are published researchers named Jose A. Romero; Jose G. Romero; Jose M. Romero; and Jose V. Romero. As we have already seen, in the English speaking world, some names appear frequently, as with the authors David A. Smith; David J. Smith; David M. Smith; and David R. Smith. Or Richard A. Smith; Richard B. Smith; Richard J. Smith; Richard L. Smith; and Richard T. Smith.

As one research study noted, there is a special problem in Thailand with Romanization. Some Thai names which are spelled differently in the Thai language are spelled the same way in Roman letters, causing confusion:

There are also transcription and translation problems involved for countries not using the Latin alphabet. This is exemplified in transcriptions of Thai to Latin letters where nuances often disappear. As a result, different names in Thai may become identical when translated using Latin.

As long as we are alert to the possibility of error, we can usually prevent such mix-ups in our theses and academic research papers.

(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)