[Tex/LaTex] How to handle double lastnames in latex bibtex

Question

I have an author name of an article, P de Jong, which I would like to reference in Latex as

Jong, P. de , [article name].

Can someone give me an example code for how to do so?

Answer 1

The "correct" solution depends on several factors. As I will demonstrate, what you appear to be interested in is the "Dutch" bibliography style. Do read on.

• Most bibliography styles -- but see below for the main exception: the so-called "Dutch" style -- automatically place the "von" component ahead of the "lastname" component. Hence, if one writes

  author = "Paul de Jong",
  

  or

  author = "Casper de Vries",
  

  or [!]

  author = "Vincent van Gogh",
  

  the "von" component will be placed ahead of the surname.

• How does BibTeX identify the "von" component of the full name? By default, if the full name is entered in the author field in first-von-last-jr ordering, the "von" component is taken to consist of the words that start with lowercase letters:

  Walter von der Vogelweide: "von der"
  Peter von zur Muehlen:     "von zur"
  

  etc.

• If you're dealing with von components that start with uppercase letters, though, you need to provide an override. In fact, when it comes to names such as "Dominique Von Matt" and "Pasquale Della Corte", it's actually becoming a bit academic to argue whether "Von" and "Della" are the "von" components of the full names or, alternatively, parts of a two-word surname. Either way, you should enter the names as

  Von Matt, Dominique
  Della Corte, Pasquale
  

  That way, BibTeX will happily (and correctly...) think that the full names consist of a two-word surname and a single first name.

• The same goes for full names where the true surname consists of two (or more) separate names. Some examples:

  Scott Thomas, Kristin
  Garcia Pascual, Antonio
  Mies van der Rohe, Ludwig (it would be wrong to treat "Mies" as a first name!)
  

  Note that there's no "von" component in these names.

• Finally, let's turn to the so-called "Dutch" exception: A huge number of (full) Dutch names contain the "von" components "de" and "van" (or "van de", "van den", "van der", etc). If you're writing in Dutch for a Dutch publication, it's customary to sort all entries by the surname component only, i.e., not to include the "de" and "van" particles. Otherwise, I suppose, a rather large subset of all entries would be sorted under "D" and "V", respectively...

  If you need to apply the "Dutch" bibliography style, I suggest you start by employing the nederlands bibliography style. It is part of the harvard citation management package.

A full MWE -- observe that "Gogh" is listed before "Vries", and that that citation callouts provide the 'von' components.

\RequirePackage{filecontents}
\begin{filecontents}{test.bib}
@misc{abc,author="Vincent van Gogh", title="Sunflowers",   year=1888}
@misc{def,author="Casper G. de Vries",  title="Econometrics", year=1992}
\end{filecontents}
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{harvard}
\bibliographystyle{nederlands}
\begin{document}
\noindent
\cite{abc}, \cite{def}
\bibliography{test}
\end{document}

---

Addendum: If you need to list the entries in the bibliography as "Jong, P. de" rather than as "Paul de Jong" (which is the default setting in the nederlands bibliography style), I suggest you proceed as follows:

• Find the file nederlands.bst in your TeX distribution.

• Make a copy of this file and call the copy, say, mynederlands.bst. (Don't edit an original file of the TeX distribution directly.)

• Open the file mynederlands.bst in a text editor. The program you use to edit your tex files will do fine.

• In mynederlands.bst, locate the function format.names. (It starts on line 326 in my copy of the file.) In this function, locate the line

      { s nameptr "{ff~}{vv~}{ll}{, jj}" format.name$ 't :=
  

  In this line, change "{ff~}{vv~}{ll}{, jj}" to "{ll}{, jj}{, f.}{ vv}".

  Basically, this change serves to (a) place the surname component first, to abbreviate any given names, and to place the "von" component last.

• Locate the function format.crossref.editor. (It should start around line 690). In this function, change the string "{ff }{vv }{ll}{ jj}" to "{ll}{, jj}{, f.}{ vv}".

• Save the file mynederlands.bst either in the directory where your main tex file is located or in a directory that's searched by BibTeX. If you choose the second option, be sure to update the filename database of your TeX distribution suitably.

• In your main tex file, change the instruction \bibliographystyle{nederlands} to \bibliographystyle{mynederlands} and perform a full recompile (latex-bibtex-latex-latex).

A revised MWE:

\RequirePackage{filecontents}
\begin{filecontents}{test.bib}
@misc{abc, author="Vincent van Gogh", title="Sunflowers", year=1888}
@misc{def, author="Casper G. de Vries", title="Econometrics", year=1992}
@misc{ghi, author="Paul de Jong", title="Thoughts", year=3001}
@misc{jkl, author="Skander van den Heuvel", title="Risk Management", year=2005}
\end{filecontents}

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{harvard}
\bibliographystyle{mynederlands}
\begin{document}
\noindent
\cite{abc}, \cite{def}, \cite{ghi}, \cite{jkl}
\bibliography{test}
\end{document}