BibLaTeX – Handling Prefixes in Author Names in References and Bibliography

biblatexciting

I have a problem related to prefixes in the family names of researchers that I cite in my thesis. People whose names start with "van", "von, "den", "van der", and the like. I would want these to appear with the prefix in small letters in front of the family name in the reference in the running text, like (den Besten1983), then also in the same way in the bibliography, but not sorted after the prefix. So "den Besten, Hans" should be listed under B. With my current settings, I get (Besten1983) in the text, and "Besten, Hans den" in the bibliography. I have tried enclosing "den Besten" in curly brackets in the BibTex source (I use Jabref), like this {den Besten}, Hans. This gives the right result in the reference, but lists the name as "den Besten, Hans" under D in the bibliography.

Source in JabRef:
author = {den Besten, Hans},

Here is a MWE: 

\documentclass[12]{article}

\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[english]{babel}
\usepackage [T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[backend=biber, style=authoryear-comp]{biblatex}
\addbibresource{ref.bib}
\begin{document}
Blabla \cite{denBesten1983}. 
\printbibliography
\end{document}

Best Answer

There are several ways to do this (see for example Biblatex handling of Dutch "van" prefix), but with a current biblatex I would do the following

  1. Set the useprefix=true option. This tells biblatex to treat "den Boer" as the family name, always printing "den Boer" and sorting under "d".
  2. Change the sorting so names are sorted by their family component first and only then by the prefix. Hence, contrary to what useprefix=true from point 1 would dictate, "den Boer" sorts under "B".
  3. Modify the bibliography so that the prefix is not capitalised. (Since each bib item issues \bibsentence by default at a very late stage after the \AtEveryBibitem hook is processed, the cleanest solution I could find is to hook into the begentry bibmacro.)

\documentclass[12]{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[english]{babel}
\usepackage{csquotes}
\usepackage[backend=biber, style=authoryear-comp, useprefix]{biblatex}

\DeclareSortingNamekeyTemplate{
  \keypart{
    \namepart{family}
  }
  \keypart{
    \namepart{prefix}
  }
  \keypart{
    \namepart{given}
  }
  \keypart{
    \namepart{suffix}
  }
}

\renewbibmacro{begentry}{\midsentence}

\usepackage{filecontents}
\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
@book{besten,
  author  = {Hans den Besten},
  title   = {On the Importance of the Civil Service},
  date    = {1980},
}
@book{boer,
  author  = {Hans de Boer},
  title   = {On the Importance of the Civil Service},
  date    = {1980},
}
\end{filecontents}

\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}
\addbibresource{biblatex-examples.bib}


\begin{document}
\cite{besten}\nocite{boer,baez/article,cicero,worman,sigfridsson} 
\printbibliography
\end{document}

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