My intuitive response that this was not a great edit.
Further consideration has me thinking that in some cultures the use of surnames as primary identifiers is common. And in other cultures the use of first names as primary identifiers is common.
So maybe having surnames as aliases in some Locales for some Artists does make sense.
I could see the point of an English primary alias âJacques Brelâ, to indicate âin English the artistâs primary name is also Jacques Brelâ. But yeah, I donât really see a point to the surname only. It doesnât hurt as such, I guess? But it seems like a waste of time.
As said on the original edit before, adding the surname alone as alias based just on ââwritingââ credits (which are often truncated, for reason of missing space or just out of laziness) has no added value whatsoever and is IMO just cluttering the database. On a side note I also never use Artist Credits on ââwritingââ credits that are simply truncated versions of the main artist name
@reosarevok: Do you really suggest to add âJacques Brelâ as primary alias for: English, French, Dutch, German, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and every other language using Latin script?
If it also specifies a locale it could hurt, though. E.g. you have the artist âJacques Brelâ with an alias âBrelâ dir the English locale, the artist might be shown as just âBrelâ by software localizing artist names to English.
So while just having an alias âBrelâ without locale ist harmless but also useless, having it with locale is just wrong. Aliases with locale serve a specific purpose of localizing artist names, and as such they should provide a legit representation of the artistâs actually used name for this locale.
I donât suggest to add them, but if someone did I wouldnât remove them either. Thereâs been suggestions before to have a per-script primary alias, although of course weâd need to be able to override it for Latvia and their Ĺ˝aks Brels