Artist sort order for artists with stage names / fake names?

I’m not sure what the artist sort order for an artist like Ace Buchannon should be. It’s currently “Buchannon, Ace”, however that’s not the artist’s real name, and so the artist name is only a stage-name.

Names such as Aphex Twin (depending on the breadth of what you consider to be a forename and a surname) could also be sorted as “Twin, Aphex”, though arguably, it’s sorted correctly as just “Aphex Twin”.

My question is, should Ace Buchannon be formated as-is, or in the “surname, forename” format? I’m leaning towards “Ace Buchannon”.

The sort name documentation wasn’t unambiguous enough for me. But maybe a name is a name is a name.

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One determinant for seeing how a stage name should be sorted is whether it contains what could be considered a first and last name.
For example, a name like Michael Monroe has a clearly delineated first and last name, whereas a name like Macintosh Plus does not.

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Thanks for the explanation. Sounds like the answer is “Buchannon, Ace” then.

Assuming I didn’t miss this detail, it’d be nice if such an example was included in the docs.

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I thought it was somewhere, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy to find (I failed)

Another example I came across: Com Truise (a play on Tom Cruise), yet its sort name isn’t “Truise, Com” as you might expect due to being based on a first and last name. With my limited experience, I’m finding it hard to spot when a sort name has been incorrectly given.

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If this is the case, then why is “Lemon Demon” sorted as “Demon, Lemon”?

Neither of those words are names, and it’s not the name of the artist himself either, so I don’t know why MusicBrainz treats it like it is a name.

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When adding a new artist it needs a sort name, and there are two buttons to autofill that field. Probably someone didn’t pay attention and used the wrong button.

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