Which artist name should I use for the entry

MusicBrainz
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1

Born Wendellyn Suits.
Married name is Johnson.
Has credits as Wendellyn Suits. Wendy Suits. Wendy Johnson. Wendy Suits Johnson. Wendy S. Johnson (but her middle initial is A). And some others that are easier to determine as aliases.

Obit says Wendy Suits Johnson.

Discogs has “joined” some of the entries, but there are still separate entries floating around.
Wendy Suits (on discogs) has a picture and the most entires under its umbrella.

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2

Looks like the woman is relatively unknown and doesn’t have own releases. So, she has no ‘common’ artistic name. In that case I’d use Wendellyn Suits: that’s the name she was born with and under which she’s already in the database. The rest are aliases or credits variants.

3

The Style Guide is your friend here, especially Style / Artist, Performance names and legal names. It says,

Generally, use the name the artist mainly performs under as the artist name. Alternative names, including any legal names and name variations, should generally be entered as aliases, and can be used in artist credits and relationship credits when appropriate.

So based on the information you give, it sounds like you should:

  1. Pick whichever name seems most commonly found on Releases, and use that as Artist.Name
  2. For each Release you enter, link to the Artist, and give the specific spelling of the name as credited on that Release (consult Style / Artist_Credits for more guidance)
  3. Enter Aliases to help get good search results (consult Style / Aliases for more guidance.

Does that answer your question?

4

Generally, whichever of those credits appears on the most albums or whichever most people would use when talking about her. Since @nedotepa says the former’s less help, I’d think mostly about the latter, and whether she’s in the database under Suits because that’s the more common or just because that was the first credit added. I don’t know the artist myself, but at a guess, one of the three in the middle of the list would probably be best – “Wendy Suits Johnson” might be nicest for clarity so long as people actually use that format, but that could also be solved with a good disambiguation. Everything there should probably be added as an alias as well, obviously, with both “Wendellyn Suits” and “Wendellyn Johnson” as legal names (with dates and the proper middle names if possible), and eveything else you list seeming good enough as an artist name.

5

Thanks.

I went with Suits-Johnson.
That seems to be what most of the recent articles call her.

6

Did she actually replace “Suits” with “Johnson”, or did she ‘just’ append “Johnson” to the name? If so, “Wendy Suits Johnson” (or “Wendy Suits‐Johnson”) would actually be close to their legal name too.

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