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In Norwegian, aa is an (obsolete) alternative spelling of å, but it is still very commonly used in names. In bibliographies, it should as a result be alphabetized as if it said å (cf. Wikipedia). In biblatex, however, it is alphabetized under a. How can I fix this? In the MWE below, the entry Aasen should in fact follow Årst, since Aasen should be treated as Åsen.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{polyglossia}
    \setdefaultlanguage{nynorsk}
\usepackage[style = authoryear, language = nynorsk]{biblatex}
\usepackage{filecontents}
\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
@book{aasen1864,
    AUTHOR = "Ivar Aasen",
    TITLE = "Norsk Grammatik",
    YEAR = "1864"}
@book{aarst2010,
    AUTHOR = "Ole Martin Årst",
    TITLE = "Playing soccer is cool!",
    YEAR = "2010"}
\end{filecontents}
\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}
\begin{document}
\nocite{*}
\printbibliography
\end{document}

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  • 4
    Are there any occurrences of aa that are not replacements of å? (You might get into trouble with Aachen/Aabenraa thingy mentioned in Wikipedia.) Your best bet is probably manually using sortname. Copy-pasting the author to sortname and replacing aa with å can be done with Biber's mapping features, but this will sort Aachen under Åchen (probably wrong) and might not work particularly well if you play around with useauthor=false a bit. (I'm not sure whether the upcoming multiscript version 3.0 of biblatex could be of any help here).
    – moewe
    Mar 10, 2014 at 17:04
  • 4
    @moewe If a Scandinavian name begins in Aa-, it should always be alphabetized as Å-. If there's a foreign name beginning in Aa-, it should not (Aachen and Aabenraa are cities, btw, and wouldn't appear in a bibliography). I guess that would apply to Finnish names like Paavo Aaltonen. So you might be right that using sortname is the way to go here.
    – Sverre
    Mar 10, 2014 at 17:12
  • 2
    But actually, using sortname = Ivar Åsen doesn't yield the correct result either, because biblatex will treat Å as a kind of A. I will open a new question about this.
    – Sverre
    Mar 10, 2014 at 17:17
  • 3
    Actually, I found the answer here: heim.ifi.uio.no/dag/latex-links/biblatex-guide.pdf. I need to add sortlocale = nb_NO.
    – Sverre
    Mar 10, 2014 at 17:23

1 Answer 1

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17

Adding sortlocale = nn_NO (nn for Norwegian nynorsk, nb for Norwegian bokmål) as a package option will ensure that Aa is treated as Å, and that Å is alphabetized last. Cf. the University of Oslo’s Local guide to biblatex.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{polyglossia}
    \setdefaultlanguage{nynorsk}
\usepackage[style = authoryear, language = nynorsk, sortlocale = nn_NO]{biblatex}
\usepackage{filecontents}
\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
@book{aasen1864,
    AUTHOR = "Ivar Aasen",
    TITLE = "Norsk Grammatik",
    YEAR = "1864"}
@book{aarst2010,
    AUTHOR = "Ole Martin Årst",
    TITLE = "Playing soccer is cool!",
    YEAR = "2010"}
@book{lennon1975,
    AUTHOR = "John Lennon",
    TITLE = "I like to play the guitar",
    YEAR = "1975"}
\end{filecontents}
\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}
\begin{document}
\nocite{*}
\printbibliography
\end{document}

enter image description here

EDIT

With the current version of biber (version 2.10), sortlocale will automatically be set by the command \setdefaultlanguage{nynorsk} from polyglossia, cf. this comment. It is therefore no longer necessary to add an explicit sortlocale = nn_NO as a biblatex option. That is, one can replace the line

\usepackage[style = authoryear, language = nynorsk, sortlocale = nn_NO]

from the MWE above with

\usepackage[style = authoryear, language = nynorsk]{biblatex}

and get the same result.

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  • That guide will be a very useful resource for anyone trying to get to grips with Biblatex.
    – Paul Stanley
    Mar 10, 2014 at 17:47
  • Due to bugs (?), this solution does not work with the current versions of biblatex and biber, cf. this question.
    – Sverre
    Aug 30, 2015 at 17:08
  • On my system (Biber 2.7, MikTeX on Win 10) I get the correct sorting even with \usepackage[style = authoryear]{biblatex} without explicitly setting language = nynorsk, sortlocale = nn_NO. Does that also work for you?
    – moewe
    Oct 14, 2017 at 9:10
  • @moewe No, I don't. I get the order Årst-Aasen-Lennon instead of Lennon-Årst-Aasen. Biber 2.7. Biblatex version 3.7. Tex live 2017.
    – Sverre
    Oct 14, 2017 at 10:55
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    Thank you for updating your answer. In fact the language = nynorsk will also be inferred automatically, so it should not be necessary either.
    – moewe
    Jan 10, 2018 at 16:07

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