How can I properly force an author name in Biblatex?

Question

I have two issues with the authors names, and I think both of them can be solved by the same answer.

I read somewhere that I should use braces ("{" and "}") in order to explicitly choose what author name biblatex should treat as the last name, or the name that is used for such author. Therefore, all my authors are declared like the following examples:

@Article{article1,
  title = {{T}itle of the {A}rticle {N}umber 1},
  author = {John Smith {Doe} and Fulano Ciclano da {Silva}},
  year = {1966},
  ...
}

@Article{article2,
  title = {{A}wesome {T}itle of {A}rticle {N}umber 2},
  author = {Jonathan Lee {Kriggs} Junior and Someone {Else} and Pedro Paulo Costa {Silva}},
  year = {2016},
  ...
}

This was supposed to eliminate what the biblatex documentation defines as prefix names (like "da" in "Fulano Ciclano da Silva") and suffix names (like "Junior" in "Jonathan Lee Kriggs Junior".

My preamble uses the following biblatex command:

\usepackage[backend = biber, citestyle = authoryear, sorting = none, uniquename=mininit, maxnames=3, minnames=3, maxbibnames=5, minbibnames=3]{biblatex}

For the following text:

Some text is written about some article \parencite{article1} and some newer article \parencite{article2}.

According to the rule that should force biblatex to use authors' name between braces, this should output:

Some text is written about some article (Doe and Silva, 1966) and some newer article (Kriggs, Else and Silva, 2016).

Instead, this is the output I am getting:

Some text is written about some article (Doe and Silva, 1966) and some newer article (Junior, Else and Costa Silva, 2016).

The prefix name thing is working ok ("Fulano Ciclano da Silva" is being cite as "Silva"; the prefix "da" is disregarded, as expected). On the other hand, the suffix name is being cited instead of the name indicated between braces ("Jonathan Lee Kriggs Junior" is being cited as "Junior", instead of "Kriggs").

Even worse than the suffix thing, the last author is cited by both his middle and last names ("Pedro Paulo Costa {Silva}" is "Costa Silva"). "Pedro Paulo" is a double name, like "Mark Anthony" or "John Paul". I don't know if that influences anything (I don't think so), but I chose this example to understand if it does. Also came to mind that maybe it is being displayed wrong because the suffix thing already breaks this citation (again, no high hopes).

Is there a way to explicitly choose the name biblatex displays?

Or maybe ignore last-positioned names that are suffixes and are written differently from what Biblatex expects (i.e. "Jonathan Lee Kriggs Junior" instead of "Kriggs, Jr., Jonathan Lee"). I would like to avoid fiddling with my bib file, since it has over a thousand references, plus it would be very weird to have all author names in a way, and only a couple authors organised differently throughout the file.

Answer 1

tl;dr

There are some ways to influence which (bit of a) name is displayed in which way in citations and the bibliography, but usually this only works properly if the name is specified correctly (according to the BibTeX rules) in the .bib file.

There is little point in trying to fix incorrect input in the .bib file by ad hoc modifications of the name format. And there is probably very little to be gained there anyway.

Braces only really help with what you want to do if they enclosing something containing a space.

---

The full picture

How should I type author names in a bib file? explains how BibTeX and Biber parse names. Roughly speaking a name is separated into family name, given name, prefix ("von part") and suffix ("junior part"). You can choose how these name parts are arranged in the bibliography and citations, but if you stick to the normal name input, you have only limited influence as to what bit of the name gets parsed as which name part.

With biblatex there are ways to override the names shown in the citations by means of the shortauthor field. shortautor is again parsed as a normal name field. So in

\documentclass[british]{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{babel}
\usepackage{csquotes}

\usepackage[backend=biber, style=authoryear]{biblatex}

\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
@book{elk,
  author      = {Anne Elk},
  shortauthor = {Barbara Zelk},
  title       = {A Theory on Brontosauruses},
  year        = {1972},
  publisher   = {Monthy \& Co.},
  location    = {London},
}
\end{filecontents}
\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}

\begin{document}
Lorem \autocite{elk}

\printbibliography
\end{document}

the actual author name is family=Elk, given=Anne, but in citations biblatex uses family=Zelk, given=Barbara, and behaves accordingly. Of course this can be used with 'less' diverging examples than Elk/Zelk to force a particular output in citations for a complex name, see Make biblatex treat different author names as same author in text citations or Peerage titles in the author field in BibTeX. Another common usage for this field is abbreviation of long corporate-type author names (Biblatex: Abbreviating authoring organisations in citations).

If you use biblatex with Biber, you can use the extended name format to explicitly specify each bit of a name. This is useful if you want to override the normal parsing rules locally (see e.g. Use only the last name as namepartfamily instead of everything after prefix and Two or three letter initials in bibliography with Biblatex (again)), but unless you declare new name parts and use them (Bibliography according to icelandic system, Bibtex/Biber: how to cite an author using Ethiopian conventions?, CJK Bibliography Problem, Biblatex-Chicago author-date style) things will still have to fit into the four name part scheme, so you usually don't gain a lot over specifying the name in <prefix> <family>, <suffix>, <given> format.

\documentclass[british]{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{babel}
\usepackage{csquotes}

\usepackage[backend=biber, style=authoryear, giveninits]{biblatex}

\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
@book{book1,
  author    = {family=Doe Roe, given=Charles, given-i={Ch}},
  title     = {An Important Book},
  publisher = {Publisher},
  date      = {2012},
}
\end{filecontents}
\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}

\begin{document}
Lorem \autocite{book1}

\printbibliography
\end{document}

---

How should I type author names in a bib file? does not mention it explicitly, but curly braces around a bit of a name that is separated with spaces from other bits does not make a relevant difference for the name parsing you are interested in. Curly braces are particularly relevant if you want to 'protect' names (or name parts) with spaces in them from being broken apart (see Using a 'corporate author' in the "author" field of a bibliographic entry (spelling out the name in full)).

So

Fulano Ciclano da {Silva}

is pretty much the same as

Fulano Ciclano da Silva

when it comes to breaking up the name into different parts. The difference is only the additional curly braces in the name part

  \name{author}{1}{}{%
    {{un=0,uniquepart=base,hash=fa2fe34e8e6f02735fb558279b21902f}{%
       family={{Silva}},
       familyi={S\bibinitperiod},
       given={Fulano\bibnamedelima Ciclano},
       giveni={F\bibinitperiod\bibinitdelim C\bibinitperiod},
       givenun=0,
       prefix={da},
       prefixi={d\bibinitperiod},
       prefixun=0}}%
  }

(there were some issues with initials generation with the excessive braces: ! Paragraph ended before \name was complete) vs

  \name{author}{1}{}{%
    {{un=0,uniquepart=base,hash=fa2fe34e8e6f02735fb558279b21902f}{%
       family={Silva},
       familyi={S\bibinitperiod},
       given={Fulano\bibnamedelima Ciclano},
       giveni={F\bibinitperiod\bibinitdelim C\bibinitperiod},
       givenun=0,
       prefix={da},
       prefixi={d\bibinitperiod},
       prefixun=0}}%
  }

Assuming in Fulano Ciclano da Silva the Fulano Ciclano bit is the given name, the da the name prefix and Silva the family name, the input

Fulano Ciclano da Silva

is correct.

Hispanic names with two family names are not so simple, however, because BibTeX and Biber assume a person has one family name and not two. So if the name is actually family=Ciclano da Silva, given=Fulano, but is only cited as Silva, things are more tricky and you will probably have to resort to shortauthor or define new name parts that account for hispanic name customs.

---

For names with a junior or senior part, the only correct input is

von Last, Jr, First

so

Jonathan Lee Kriggs Junior

will not be parsed as expected, it must be given as

Kriggs, Junior, Jonathan Lee

I understand that it is annoying to go through your database to change this, but I'm afraid you will have to stick with the correct format if you want the names to be parsed correctly. In theory you could try some of the workarounds suggested above to force the desired output, but that is probably just as much (if not more) work and definitely not recommended.

---

I cannot reproduce the Costa Silva issue.

\documentclass[british]{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{babel}
\usepackage{csquotes}

\usepackage[
  backend = biber,
  citestyle = authoryear,
  sorting = none,
  uniquename=mininit,
  maxnames=3, minnames=3,
  maxbibnames=5, minbibnames=3,
]{biblatex}

\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
@Article{article1,
  title  = {Title of the Article Number 1},
  author = {John Smith {Doe} and Fulano Ciclano da {Silva}},
  year   = {1966},
}
@Article{article2,
  title  = {Awesome Title of Article Number 2},
  author = {Jonathan Lee {Kriggs} Junior and Someone {Else}
            and Pedro Paulo Costa {Silva}},
  year   = {2016},
}
\end{filecontents}
\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}

\begin{document}
Some text is written about some article \parencite{article1}
and some newer article \parencite{article2}.

\printbibliography
\end{document}

gives

for me, which is expected.

In general when first names pop up citations the option uniquename (biblatex, authoryear style: In-text citations display first name initials for certain bibliography entries) is relevant. (A related option is uniquelist, which is usually the next thing people who don't like uniquename ask about: Set limit to one author when using "et al." in biblatex). But you evidently already know about this option and I don't think this option could explain Costa Silva popping up in the citation, because it would add given name initials or given names, which for Pedro Paulo Costa {Silva} would be Pedro Paulo Costa and not just Costa.