[Heb-NACO] Romanization of non-Hebrew proper nouns

[Aaron Kuperman]

We are dealing with a situation whereby an Israel author uses that
Italian/English name "Mario" as a forename in writing in Hebrew.

Based on a search in the Google data base, it appears that no Hebrew
speaker use any romanization other than "Mario".  If the rules as
currently applied by LC result in an absurdity that impairs useabilty of
our cataloging metadata, it is apparent that the rule is clearly wrong and
should be changed. The guiding principle is that a catalog should provide
access to works by the name that the author is known by, and that means
know by the users in the real world. By this standard, the current
AACR2/LCRI is a failure. Systematic romanization means apply a mechanical
and artificial standard that benefits no users and merely makes cataloging
more expensive and less useful.

I suggest the first rule in romanization of an author whose name is only
in Hebrew characters in the book, is to "google" him and check what form
he/she/it uses, or institutions associated with him/her (such as
universities, publishers, professional groups, etc.) use. At this point in
time, it should be easy to find the individual's preferred romanized from
of name (at least for non-Hareidi authors, which pose other issues).

Aaron

Obviously not the opinion of LC. However I respectfully submit that in
this matter I am right and LC practice is clearly wrong.



On Mon, 28 Nov 2011, ...  wrote:


> In order to preserve the natural and expected pronunciation of the word Mario I would romanize îøéå or îàøéå
as Maryo rather than Mariyo.   This is my bias and does not reflect official LC practice.         
                                             Benjamin