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When an author's name contains something like "van der", "de la", etc, and you wish to initial the author's first/middle names (all but surname) in a reference, how do you deal with the extra words?

For example, if I wish to reference a paper by António Franco de Oliveira Falcão, would I write Falcão, A.F.O. or Falcão, A.F.d.O., or maybe Falcão, A.F.D.O.? Although, it seems that this is a Portuguese name, with two surnames. I'm not sure how I should deal with two surnames

I'm using the Leeds Numeric style. I've found an example of an author with the name Leo Cornelius van Rijn, which is referenced as van Rijn, L.C., so that answers what to do if the word is part of the surname. But in the Falcão example "de" is part of the Oliveira name, I'm not sure if that would be part of the surname or not.

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  • What citation style are you using?
    – Azor Ahai -him-
    Commented Oct 25 at 16:49
  • Leeds Numeric, can't find anything about this question though
    – jonnybolton16
    Commented Oct 25 at 16:52
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    @jonnybolton16 Well, yes, of course?
    – Azor Ahai -him-
    Commented Oct 25 at 17:03
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    Sorry, I meant to say that Oliveira is part of the surname. Copied the wrong part of the name.
    – Maeher
    Commented Oct 25 at 17:54
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    For what it's worth, if it is this António Franco de Oliveira Falcão you're asking about, they seem to mainly publish as "A.F.O. Falcão", corresponding to "Falcão, A.F.O." the way you write it. Now, whether or not that is fully correct, and whether this is by choice or due to resignation from dealing with systems too inflexible to deal with Lusophone names...
    – Anyon
    Commented Oct 25 at 21:28

2 Answers 2

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To do it right, you typically need to have a little bit of understanding of the language/culture from which the name comes from. That's because that determines whether a word is part of the middle names, or part of the family name. For example, in German, if my name happened to be "Wolfgang von Muehlendahl", then you'd have to know that "von" is part of the family name, and so correctly abbreviated, my name would be "W. von Muehlendahl".

In some Spanish-speaking languages, people have two family names (from the sides of both parents), and both of these are part of the family name. So if someone is "Jose Hernandez Hermosa", then it is possible that this is correctly abbreviated "J. Hernandez Hermosa". Of course, there are plenty of people in the US these days who have Hispanic names but no longer follow the Spanish precedent, and it wouldn't be out of the ordinary if there are some for which "Hernandez" for whatever reason was chosen as a middle name, and for whom the name abbreviated would be "J. H. Hermosa".

For your example, "António Franco de Oliveira Falcão", the question then is what the convention in the Portuguese culture is. It is possible that only "Falcão" is the family name, but it may also be "de Oliveira Falcão" or perhaps even "Franco de Oliveira Falcão".

The upshot is that it is actually quite difficult to do this correctly if you're not familiar with the conventions of the culture from which someone comes.

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    "The upshot"? Haha. Also, it might help to clarify that in those Spanish names, the first surname is the primary one, so Jose probably would go by "Jose Hernandez" in a short form, not "Jose Hermosa," as might be more natural for an Anglo.
    – Azor Ahai -him-
    Commented Oct 26 at 13:15
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    Thanks. So to summarise: 1) If the word is attached to a surname it is usually written out; 2) Sometimes it's hard to understand exactly what to do when there are multiple surnames 3) if in doubt, have a look at how others, or the Author themselves, format their name
    – jonnybolton16
    Commented Oct 28 at 14:14
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    Yes, I think this is good advice.
    – Wolfgang Bangerth
    Commented Oct 28 at 17:49
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Usually these particles remain before the full surname, and are omitted when there are only initial letters.

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