Artist Requesting to Change Legal Name

[ibitsu]

Please see edit #73610425 and edit #73583690. The artist herself contacted me directly through MusicBrainz as well as on another site asking me to help remove her legal name from her projects ASAP.

She goes by Joan Pope and wants that to be the hub for her music projects Blacktantra, Temple ov Saturn, and The Whip Angels (https://linktr.ee/joanpope // https://www.joanpope.com/).

Is there any way to expedite all of this? Also, is my merge edit the correct way to go about this? I do understand that the “is person” relationship is strictly meant to link from the legal name of a person to their performance name(s), but in this case the artist needs Joan Pope to be treated as her legal name.

[bsammon]

Is this another instance of a artist wanting to remove their (or one of their) legal name from Musicbrainz?

Judging by my Googling and some reading-between-the-lines of these edits, my impression is that this artist had the legal name of Jenna Kraus. At some point in the last few years they decided to use the name Joan Pope. I have no idea if they actually filed paperwork to have their name legally changed, or if “Joan Pope” is more like a stage name.

Unless we (or the musicbrainz powers-that-be) decide that this artist should get privacy protection, I think that, whatever the main artist name ends up as, “Jenna Kraus” should be a “legal name” alias for the artist entry (maybe with an end date)

Edit:
Now that I think about it – merges automatically make the one name an alias of the other, don’t they?
The only thing missing would be to flag the alias as a “legal name”

[justcheckingitout]

Admittedly, I take issue with some of these artists having a dozen names.
But, outside of my feelings on the situation -

To me, it defeats the purpose of “legal name / performs as” if we allow an artist name to be used as the legal name.

[justcheckingitout]

@bsammon

I have no idea if they actually filed paperwork to have their name legally changed, or if “Joan Pope” is more like a stage name.

shouldn’t matter if they legally changed their legal name. we would still keep the record of the old name(s) as legal name aliases with start and end dates.

@bsammon

Now that I think about it – merges automatically make the one name an alias of the other, don’t they?

No, they don’t. But it is something I would like to see. Perhaps you are thinking of “credited as”, not alias.

[jesus2099]

You shouldn’t have mentioned the discussed name in your post.
Editing it out now, will leave it visible in the post edit history but it would still be better, I think.

If a legal name is not published anywhere in musical documentation, I think there is no problem in following artist’s wish not to show their real name.

For big artists, however, we can keep it, as it is documented in many widespread places.

[reosarevok]

@bsammon

Now that I think about it – merges automatically make the one name an alias of the other, don’t they?
The only thing missing would be to flag the alias as a “legal name”

Yeah, that sounds about right.

[bsammon]

@jesus2099

You shouldn’t have mentioned the discussed name in your post.
Editing it out now, will leave it visible in the post edit history but it would still be better, I think.

If a legal name is not published anywhere in musical documentation, I think there is no problem in following artist’s wish not to show their real name.

For big artists, however, we can keep it, as it is documented in many widespread places.

Not sure what the threshhold is here, but Google turns up a number of pages linking “Jenna Kraus” to “The Whip Angels” So, I think the cat’s sorta already out of the bag.

[justcheckingitout]

And she isn’t claiming “I demand privacy”. She is claiming it is the wrong person/name.
So, really, naming her isn’t an issue in this case.

[jesus2099]

I don’t know if it’s the case but if the editor said it’s me but I want privacy, they would fear an answer of the type: We are a factual encyclopedic database so now we know this and keep it.