Change the author name order in Biblatex APA style

Question

I'm trying to recreate a very specific style based off of Benjamins style, with a few changes. Benjamins is close to APA, but has some small differences, and the supervisor for this project has other idiosyncrasies she has picked up over her years of editing. I am hoping to use the APA style and make these modifications 'on the fly' as it were.

By default, it looks like the biblatex package constructs the bibliography reference with the author of the citation as 'family-given' and all following authors as 'given-family.' Unfortunately, when I use the APA style, all authors change to 'family-given.' I can't figure out how to stop this from happening. Can anyone help me with this?

Simplified code:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{colortbl}
\usepackage{xcolor}
\usepackage{multicol}
\usepackage{multirow}
\usepackage{graphicx}

\usepackage{hyperref}
\usepackage{covington}
\usepackage{fancyref}
\usepackage[
    style=apa,
    dashed=false
 ]{biblatex}
\if@pdfa
  \usepackage[a-3b]{pdfx}
\fi
\renewcommand*{\nameyeardelim}{\addcomma\space}
\renewcommand*{\postnotedelim}{\addcolon}

\DefineBibliographyStrings{english}{%
  page             = {},
  pages            = {},
} 

%RENEW APA
% argument meanings from apa.bbx
% #1 = family name
% #2 = given name
% #3 = given name (initials)
% #4 = name prefix
% #5 = name suffix

\renewbibmacro*{name:apa:family-given}[5]{%
  \ifuseprefix
    {\usebibmacro{name:delim:apa:family-given}{#4#1}%
     \usebibmacro{name:hook}{#4#1}%
     \ifdefvoid{#4}{}{%
       \mkbibnameprefix{#4}\isdot%
       \ifprefchar{}{\bibnamedelimc}}%
     \mkbibnamefamily{#1}\isdot%
     \ifdefvoid{#2}{}{\revsdnamepunct\bibnamedelimd\mkbibnamegiven{#2}\isdot}%
     \ifdefvoid{#5}{}{\addcomma\bibnamedelimd\mkbibnamesuffix{#5}\isdot}}
    {\usebibmacro{name:delim:apa:family-given}{#1}%
     \usebibmacro{name:hook}{#1}%
     \mkbibnamefamily{#1}\isdot
     \ifboolexpe{%
       test {\ifdefvoid{#2}}
       and
       test {\ifdefvoid{#4}}}
       {}
       {\revsdnamepunct}%
     \ifdefvoid{#2}{}{\bibnamedelimd\mkbibnamegiven{#2}\isdot}%
     \ifdefvoid{#4}{}{%
       \bibnamedelimc\mkbibnameprefix{#4}%
       \ifprefchar{}{\bibnamedelimc}}%
\ifdefvoid{#5}{}{\addcomma\bibnamedelimd\mkbibnamesuffix{#5}\isdot}}}

\renewbibmacro*{name:apa:given-family}[5]{%
  \usebibmacro{name:delim}{#2#4#1#5}%
  \usebibmacro{name:hook}{#2#4#1#5}%
  \ifdefvoid{#2}{}{\mkbibnamegiven{#2}\isdot%
                   \bibnamedelimd}%
  \ifdefvoid{#4}{}{%
    \mkbibnameprefix{#4}\isdot
    \ifprefchar{}{\bibnamedelimc}}%
  \mkbibnamefamily{#1}\isdot%
  \ifdefvoid{#5}{}{\bibnamedelimd\mkbibnamesuffix{#5}\isdot}}


\hypersetup{
    colorlinks=true,
    linkcolor=blue,
    filecolor=magenta,      
    urlcolor=cyan,
    pdftitle={Test DocumOverleaf Examplent},
    pdfpagemode=FullScreen
    }

\title{Testing}
\date{2023}

\addbibresource{References.bib}

\begin{document}

%\include{Test.tex}

\maketitle

\section{Introduction}

\nocite{*}   %Uncomment if you have a bibliography with work read but not cited
\renewcommand\bibname{References}
\begin{refcontext}[sorting=nty]
\printbibliography[heading=bibintoc]
\end{refcontext}
\bigskip


\end{document}

With APA style included:

Epps, Patience L., Webster, Anthony K., & Woodbury, Anthony C. (2017). A holistic
humanities of speaking: Franz Boas and the continuing centrality of texts.
International Journal of American Linguistics, 83 (1), 41–78. https://doi.org/
10.1086/689547

Without APA style included:

[50] Patience L. Epps, Anthony K. Webster, and Anthony C. Woodbury.
“A Holistic Humanities of Speaking: Franz Boas and the Continuing
Centrality of Texts”. In: International Journal of American Linguistics
83.1 (2017), 41–78. doi: 10.1086/689547. eprint: https://doi.org/
10.1086/689547. url: https://doi.org/10.1086/689547.

I would like the style of the first, but only the order of the first name in the list should change, not all of them. In other words:

Epps, Patience L.,  Anthony K. Webster, & Anthony C. Woodbury (2017). A holistic
humanities of speaking: Franz Boas and the continuing centrality of texts.
International Journal of American Linguistics, 83 (1), 41–78. https://doi.org/
10.1086/689547.

Answer 1

As mentioned in the comments, biblatex-apa implements the complex requirements of APA style. It was not written with customisability in mind. Even changes that look small and "should be easy" can be tricky to pull off. It is therefore often better to base a custom style on a biblatex standard style rather than biblatex-apa.

If the only thing you need to change are the name format and the colon, the following might be viable. (Changing the name format like this may disable some of the more obscure features of APA style involving names, but you can probably live with that. In any case, check the output carefully.)

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[
  style=apa,
  dashed=false
]{biblatex}
\usepackage{hyperref}

\DeclareNameAlias{apaauthor}{family-given/given-family}
\DeclareNameAlias{apanames}{given-family}

\DeclareDelimFormat[bib]{nameyeardelim}{\addspace}

\renewcommand*{\nameyeardelim}{\addcomma\space}
\renewcommand*{\postnotedelim}{\addcolon\space}

\DeclareFieldFormat{postnote}{\mknormrange{#1}}

\addbibresource{biblatex-examples.bib}

\begin{document}
\autocite{sigfridsson,aksin}

\autocite[380]{sigfridsson}

\printbibliography[heading=bibintoc]
\end{document}