"Where's Wanda"? How We File Our Collections
- Thread starter Harry
- Start date
Definitely S. Like we would file The Rolling Stones under R.
My half-awake logic for that: Sá is actually her "professional" name she goes by, and I have a feeling that she was referred to as "de Sah" only on US-released albums (as kind of a rough translation...hence the "h" added onto "Sah"...and perhaps they felt "Wanda de Sah" rolled off the tongue a little easier than "Wanda Sá").
The "de" is some part of the naming custom in Brazil. Her full name is Wanda Maria Ferreira de Sá. Chico Buarque's full name is Francisco Buarque de Hollanda, and his sister's is Heloísa Maria Buarque de Hollanda (known professionally as Miúcha, former wife of Joao Gilberto and mother to Isabel Gilberto de Oliveira aka Bebel Gilberto). Antônio Carlos Brasileiro de Almeida Jobim is another example (and we often call him Tom Jobim...bonus points for correct pronunciation of "Jobim"
). Wanda's former husband was Eduardo de Góes Lobo, aka Edu Lobo to the rest of us.
My half-awake logic for that: Sá is actually her "professional" name she goes by, and I have a feeling that she was referred to as "de Sah" only on US-released albums (as kind of a rough translation...hence the "h" added onto "Sah"...and perhaps they felt "Wanda de Sah" rolled off the tongue a little easier than "Wanda Sá").
The "de" is some part of the naming custom in Brazil. Her full name is Wanda Maria Ferreira de Sá. Chico Buarque's full name is Francisco Buarque de Hollanda, and his sister's is Heloísa Maria Buarque de Hollanda (known professionally as Miúcha, former wife of Joao Gilberto and mother to Isabel Gilberto de Oliveira aka Bebel Gilberto). Antônio Carlos Brasileiro de Almeida Jobim is another example (and we often call him Tom Jobim...bonus points for correct pronunciation of "Jobim"
). Wanda's former husband was Eduardo de Góes Lobo, aka Edu Lobo to the rest of us.
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Which of course, reminds me of a story told to me by the owner of PJ's Records in Ann Arbor. He and another customer had gotten into a discussion about alphabetical filing of records, and his customer was especially fastidious on how he filed his records at home, very much in agreement with how the shop owner filed records.
Except for one thing. This customer had the hardest time finding Van Morrison in the record store...because he kept looking under "V".
It took the owner prompting him where to look! Although one could argue that Van Halen's records are filed under "V"...but the key is knowing if "Van" is a person's first name, or part of their last name. (And even there, is "Van Halen" sort of similar to "de Sah" as sort of a modifier to a surname?? )
One final note: where would you look for Matt Bianco? In my physical collection, it is located under "M" since Matt Bianco is the name of the group, and not a real person's name. (They wanted to come up with a name that kind of had a spy/James Bond feel to it.) Although I think I have seen them filed under "B".
I'm confused and heading back to bed...or the booze...
Except for one thing. This customer had the hardest time finding Van Morrison in the record store...because he kept looking under "V".
It took the owner prompting him where to look! Although one could argue that Van Halen's records are filed under "V"...but the key is knowing if "Van" is a person's first name, or part of their last name. (And even there, is "Van Halen" sort of similar to "de Sah" as sort of a modifier to a surname?? )One final note: where would you look for Matt Bianco? In my physical collection, it is located under "M" since Matt Bianco is the name of the group, and not a real person's name. (They wanted to come up with a name that kind of had a spy/James Bond feel to it.) Although I think I have seen them filed under "B".
I'm confused and heading back to bed...or the booze...
One last thing on naming conventions, courtesy of the world's most accurate 
source, Wikipedia:
source, Wikipedia:The particle 'de'
Prepositions that can be used in Portuguese surnames are da, das, do, dos and de, such as in Maria da Cunha, José das Neves, Joana do Rosário, Luís dos Santos, Gabriela de Sousa, etc. and mean "from" or "of." Da, dos, etc. are contractions of the preposition de and a definite article (o, as, etc.), meaning "from the" or "of the." The current convention in Portuguese is that they be written in lower case[citation needed]. Different from in Italian surnames, these conjunctives are usually not part of a composite name, i.e., "Sousa" is not different from "de Sousa," and both are ordered under 'S' in an alphabetical list. Therefore, one should not refer to Luiz Pereira da Silva as Mr. Da Silva but rather Mr. Silva.
The number of surnames is also variable--commonly, the mother's surname precedes the father's, yet some have four or even six surnames (which would cover the grandparents as well). But in common use, the final surname is what you typically call someone.Prepositions that can be used in Portuguese surnames are da, das, do, dos and de, such as in Maria da Cunha, José das Neves, Joana do Rosário, Luís dos Santos, Gabriela de Sousa, etc. and mean "from" or "of." Da, dos, etc. are contractions of the preposition de and a definite article (o, as, etc.), meaning "from the" or "of the." The current convention in Portuguese is that they be written in lower case[citation needed]. Different from in Italian surnames, these conjunctives are usually not part of a composite name, i.e., "Sousa" is not different from "de Sousa," and both are ordered under 'S' in an alphabetical list. Therefore, one should not refer to Luiz Pereira da Silva as Mr. Da Silva but rather Mr. Silva.
It happens.And then there were the folks I used to work with who would file “The Rolling Stones” under “T”.
In my music server, I have gotten used to artists being sorted by their first names. And JRiver will ignore "the," so The Police are located within the P section vs. the T section for instance. There really is no good way to tag music files other than first name and last name, not unless someone wants to edit two tags in over 60,000 music files naming them "Last, First" in the %artist% and %albumartist% tags for me. (Tags are pulled in from online databases so we don't have to type everything by hand.)
As I'm using Roon now, it pulls data from an extensive metadata source (which is part of its subscription cost), and it knows from the data whether the name of the performer on the album is an individual or a group. Because of this, it lets you sort the performer based on the artist's first or last name. I've gotten so used to finding things in a digital collection by first name (especially when scrolling through a master listing of performers) that I likely will keep it that way. With Roon's search capabilities, though, I find I don't scroll through artists as much as I used to. Two or three letters gives me a choice from search suggestions, most of the time giving me what I want.
