pseudonym genders

What's the consensus on setting gender for a pseudonym where the gender of the fake identity doesn't match the gender of the actual author? I was working on combining (or sometimes aliasing to) the various pseudonyms of Julian May. The most complete non-split page ended up being Matthew G. Grant. I was surprised that the same person who put their real name in CK also marked the gender as male. Though it also seems slightly odd to me to mark the pseudonym page as female.

I'd use the author's actual gender. Would one really use "male" for George Eliot or the male pseudonyms of the Bronte sisters?

I can see this as an issue down the road when there is a transgender author. Maybe the powers that be need to address this possible issue.

LT includes transgender authors. For example Jan Morris.

See: https://wiki.librarything.com/index.php/HelpThing:Profile/Stats/Gender

Looking at that page, the one thing which occurs to me is that it might help to say something along the lines of "Authors should be classified by their most recent or final statements about their real-life identities". There's undoubtedly a better way to say that, but something establishing an order of temporal precedence seems wise.

(My guess would be that we're already doing reasonably well on this score, to be honest, but surely someone, someday, will want to fight about it.)

Although it does seem to me that "nonbinary" is a category which probably ought to be added to the list as distinct from "other/contested/unknown."

>5 hipdeep: I remember we had to convince site owner Tim that gender isn't binary when this was first introduced. So this was sort of a compromise already. But I agree.

See Tim's comment http://www.librarything.com/topic/57230#1067637 and the original discussion there

>6 Nicole_VanK: and >7 lilithcat: - And sure, having "other/contested/unknown" was a good compromise 8 years ago, and it may well hold us for a while yet. Still, I think we're at or near the tipping point where "other" is distinctly and importantly different than "contested/unknown."

(The UX problem is also real - a list which contains "other," "contested/unknown," and "n/a" is kind of a nightmare for novice CK editors...)

>3 sloreck:

Why on earth would this be an issue for trans authors? Trans men are men. Trans women are women. Full stop. Doesn't matter one iota whether a man was identified as a boy or as a girl when he was born; trans men are men.

I'm definitely not fighting you on that >8 hipdeep:

Didn't think you were. :-) >10 Nicole_VanK:

>9 lorax:

It seems to me that a lot of CK documents what an author was not just what an author is. Why should gender be different?

>12 cpg:

But was is "is"? What is "was"?

Are we talking about plumbing or gender identity? Jan Morris says she has always been a woman. So using her viewpoint, her "James Morris" page CK should show "female".

http://www.librarything.com/author/morrisjames-1

Which it does.

>12 cpg:

Please reread what I said in the post you are responding to.

Trans men are men. It does not matter one bit whether the doctor identified them as boys at birth, or whether or not people knew they were men when they started writing their books. This is pretty basic, and has nothing to do with the vagaries of LT or Common Knowledge.

Tangential, but I need to vent without starting a new thread (yes, I made two false attempts before).

I'm getting very tired of having an editing war on my own author page. Somebody keeps deleting my new name (yes, I happen to be transgender). This is beyond rude, it's transphobic - which is a form of bigotry - and it's starting to feel like a vendetta.

I know my own name. It's official, people know me as such, and I have published under it. (Nothing of that newer stuff entered yet, and seeing how things are going - I may never do so).

I'm very close to asking LT staff to take measures against this person.

>18 Nicole_VanK:

That's appalling. I gather from what you have said that this is an ongoing issue. Personally, I wouldn't wait. I'd contact staff.

Once might be a mistake or misunderstanding. This sort of ongoing behavior arguably constitutes harassment: LibraryThing may not be used to injure, threaten, stalk, impersonate or harrass someone.

Another option instead of using the canonical name, which is problematic, since it appears that all these works are owned by one person, presumably you, is to fix the name on the books in your catalog and click on recalculate author name on the author page.

>20 Collectorator: >22 Collectorator:

In some cases Canonical Names serve a purpose (though they are overused) -- that's why the field exists.

On the other hand a hateful attitude serves no purpose.

>24 Collectorator: If you mean post 18 , I don't see that it's 'hateful'; and you weren't named.

>21 jjwilson61: If I'm understanding the situation correctly, I'm not sure whether changing the author name on the books would be a suitable solution in this case. I'm guessing that the authorship of the books is credited to BarkingMatt's former name, in which case there is an argument for keeping that name associated with the books -- to use the new name when it does not appear in the publications would be confusing from a bibliographical perspective.

Whereas Common Knowledge does seem like it would be an appropriate place to put this information (as for other cases where a person has published under more than one not obviously connected name).

I suppose one could argue for representing this information differently in CK than using the canonical name field -- legal name perhaps? But I do think an author should have some say about how their name is handled...

>28 Collectorator: No, maybe not, but this isn't about "owning" one's author page. People's choices regarding their names -- whether on LibraryThing or outside it -- should be respected. I mean, there have been discussions about whether to alias authors in cases where someone is known or suspected to use a pseudonym that they have never officially acknowledged because they wish to keep it separate from their public identity. If users here are willing to consider the publicly stated positions of people who aren't even on LT when making such decisions, surely we can consider the preferences of someone who is both here and familiar with how LT works when deciding how to best represent information on an author page.

>29 spiphany: People's choices regarding their names -- whether on LibraryThing or outside it -- should be respected.

But that's not the way that LT works with different author names. If Lewis Caroll's mathematical works were more popular than LT would list Alice in Wonderland by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson.

>31 jjwilson61: But Alice in Wonderland would still be listed as by Lewis Caroll, no? Just because two names are combined doesn't mean that the author name at the work level is based on the name that is most popular across all of LT -- it uses the most popular name for that work

>30 Collectorator: Fine -- you don't like canonical names. But a person's new name is still relevant biographical information that should not be simply deleted, which I gather is what has been happening. Find some other way to represent that information.

I think Tim should be consulted on this case.

>33 Collectorator:
I often delete Canonical Names when they are useless or inappropriate. However, if there's a judgement call involved, I go with 'Do No Harm'.

Are you saying that a Canonical Name is NEVER appropriate and and they should all always be deleted?

(The same question could be asked about Canonical Titles. But on the CK pages both the CN and the CT are offered as options exactly as are other CK fields, and with no guidance. No wonder newbies and other non-Power-Combiners often misuse them...)

In my own DB I use "Orthonym" for the "real name" of an author. For me that meen also the name that was being given by parents.
The word "orthonym" exists as an adjectiv in the Duden® (Official German Spelling Dictionary).

I don't know if orthonym exists in english. But maybee it would alleviate the problem.
And for me most important: It is a matter of respect to a person, to use the name she/he wishes to be adressed.

(Please excuse my poor english. I hope it is at least understandable)

>36 birder4106:

Your English is fine! And we do have the word "orthonym" in English (though it's not commonly used), meaning the real name of an author who uses a pseudonym.

Of course, many authors' "real names" are not the names they were given by their parents. Some women use their married names, not their maiden names, other authors have legally changed their names.

We do have Common Knowledge fields for "legal name" and "other names". So George Eliot's birth name, Mary Ann Evans, shows under both those fields, but her author page is under "George Eliot". The opposite is true for Charlotte Bronte, who is primarily known by her legal name. In her case, the name she published under, "Currer Bell", is listed as an "other name".

It is a matter of respect to a person, to use the name she/he wishes to be addressed.

Exactly.

>38 Collectorator:

This is all really quite simple, isn't it.

No, it's not.

If the majority of users decided to call George Eliot "Sam Eliot", by you that's okay?

I've legally changed my name. Not even my family uses my birth name, not even my 95-yr-old mother. If someone decided to change the names on my author page, I'd be pretty miffed.

>40 Collectorator:

In other words, if everyone uses the wrong name (such as "Sam Eliot" rather than "George"), it shouldn't be corrected.

Okay, got it.

>43 Collectorator:

No, the sky is not falling. You're saying that the majority rules, when in fact the majority may be wrong. I question that the majority's errors should outweigh, y'know, accuracy.

People change names all the time when they get married, but other name changes can be wrong?

Don't be silly. The final authority on a person's name is that person.

(Edited to delete offensive remark. Sorry about that, all.)

This site is built on the idea crowd-sourcing data which is a fancy way of saying that the what the majority says is usually right.

>46 jjwilson61:

Key word there is "usually".

If the majority of people say that I'm a svelte, 20-year-old redhead, sadly, they would be wrong.

Seriously, though, when the majority is wrong, why not correct things?

Normally, I would say that the name used on the majority of cataloged entries is reasonably the correct name to appear on the author page. In this case, however, the author has changed their name since the majority of the cataloged books were published, is an active and contributing member of LibraryThing, and has made their wishes clear. I'm in favor of setting the Canonical Name to the author's preferred name.

Not that I expect my opinion to sway anyone else's in this discussion.

>50 Collectorator:
From the other person's point of view, I can see that having their new, female, name repeatedly removed in favor of their old, male, name would be seen as a transphobic, bigoted, action.

That doesn't mean that you are a transphobic bigot, but I can see why in this particular case that particular person would see you as such.

>52 Collectorator:

If you don't want to be seen as a transphobic bigot then it might be better to not continue repeatedly misgendering BarkingMatt in your posts.

>52 Collectorator:
You don't seem to be making any effort to see this from the author's point of view. While you claim that your edits weren't gender-motivated (and from what I know of your CK editing history, I do believe you), I suspect she gets plenty of gender motivated hassle, and your repeated edits appeared to be just more of the same.

I have no idea where you or anyone else comes up with this notion of 'repeatedly.'
Perhaps from looking at the CK history in question:

Nov 16, 2017, 12:52 pm (archived) Author Nicole van Klaveren canonical name Klaveren, Nicole van eng BarkingMatt
... three days later...
Nov 19, 2017, 3:27 am (archived) Author Nicole van Klaveren canonical name deleted previous content eng Collectorator
... a month later...
Dec 30, 2017, 6:21 am (archived) Author Nicole van Klaveren canonical name Klaveren, Nicole van eng BarkingMatt
... a few hours later...
Dec 30, 2017, 12:58 pm (archived) Author Nicole van Klaveren canonical name deleted previous content eng Collectorator

You appear to be paying closer attention to this particular Canonical Name entry than the author herself.

>52 Collectorator:

I had no idea, nor did I know who this person was, as in a person I did know from these Talk forums.

You didn't notice, as you were making changes on the Author page, right up there at the top with the big yellow badge: LibraryThing Author

Nicole van Klaveren is a LibraryThing Author, an author who lists their personal library on LibraryThing.

Nicole van Klaveren / BarkingMatt profile

>16 lorax:

I've reread it and my point still stands. Do we erase an author's residence when he moves away? Do we erase an author's profession when he retires?

>13 lilithcat: "Jan Morris says she has always been a woman."

Somebody should fix her Wikipedia page then, because it refers to her "transitioning from living as male to living as female."

>58 cpg:

There is a difference between being a male and "living as male".

>57 cpg:

It's not even remotely the same thing.

A trans man may have lived for some time as a woman. He may have been identified as female at birth and given a female name by his parents. That doesn't mean he *was* a woman. Most trans people I know consider use of their former names or pronouns to be extremely hurtful; I don't know anyone who considers "She used to live in California" to be similarly hurtful.

>59 lilithcat: "There is a difference between being a male and 'living as male'."

Okay, since outward appearances can be deceiving, should we delete the LT gender of all authors who haven't declared what gender they feel like deep down inside?

>60 lorax:

If hurtfulness is the standard of what to exclude from LT, then we should probably delete Anne Perry's Short biography.

>61 cpg:

You’re still not getting it. It’s not “what they feel like deep down inside”. It’s what they are, despite outward appearances.

>63 lilithcat:

Okay, since outward appearances can be deceiving, should we delete the LT gender of all authors who haven't declared what gender they are?

>64 cpg:

I'd prefer that to deliberate and active misgendering (i.e. members deliberately listing an author as "female" when they know him to be male, just because he was given a female name at birth).

>64 cpg: I'm not sure how you get from "we should delete information that the author has said is incorrect" to "we should delete all information that hasn't been verified".

There's a pretty significant difference between something that's actually known to be wrong and something that's just not 100% certain.

What's the question?

A few quick answers:

1. Canonical names are indeed useful.
2. Authors don't own their pages.
3. Authors don't own their work pages.

A few quick opinions about LT data:

1. People should be identified by the gender they currently identify as, or died as. Purported gender of pen-names doesn't count.
2. The gender of corporate names, pen names that get passed on and so forth should go as "n/a" even if every member of the group is a man or woman.*
3. I'm a little more wiggly about names. I think for living people their preference should rule, drawing the line at non-Latin characters or symbols. I'm less dogmatic about dead authors, where I think consensus is important. We should say "Vergil" not hill full name. And some medieval author with a common and accepted name who joined a monastery and took a new name should not, I think, have all his books changed to that name.
4. Works should use the form of the name that most belongs to the book, whether or not they subsequently changed it. LT solves that by majority-rules.
5. I believe in data. So, although some consider it "deadnaming," I think the other-names section is an entirely good, useful and appropriate place to put names someone was known by before a change. I could see the argument that they should be omitted if the author didn't publish or otherwise do book-notable things under that name.
6. I stand by what I said before. I think a catch-all category is better than having either a binary or a free-text gender. If people really want to go free text, I don't care. But I reserve the right to condense them back into the larger catch-all in graphs and so forth.
7. Either way, we aren't going to come up with a list of the 32 real genders, and others are an angry email to staff, another staff decision, and etc.
8. While "nonbinary" is used a lot, it doesn't float so far above the others that I can see making it a separate choice and leaving all others as "other." So if you want nonbinary as a choice, it needs to be part of a free text solution.

BarkingMatt: I remember we had to convince site owner Tim that gender isn't binary when this was first introduced.

No. To quote Lorax: "Why the hell are some people so upset about not having a binary here? (Not you, Tim.)"

*That said, I think I'd mark Homer as male. I contain contradictions!

There's a pretty significant difference between something that's actually known to be wrong and something that's just not 100% certain.

There are those who say you shouldn't use "he" or "she" about someone until they explicitly declare it, for fear of misgendering. If so, this might follow. I don't agree with that.

>67 timspalding:

I said that because you weren't adamantly digging in your heels about gender being binary like some people were. I seem to recall it took a lot of work to convince you that non-binary gender was important enough to actually have the option available here. (That may have been because you were unaware of the conversation, of course.)

1. People should be identified by the gender they currently identify as,

I think for living people their preference should rule

Can we conclude this has been settled now and that any further deletions etc. of @BarkingMatt's edits of her own name will be officially recognised as harassment? I'd like official reassurance that she and other people in her position will be protected here.

Can we conclude this has been settled now

I gave it as my opinion, but, yes, I'm willing to make that alone a rule, applying to the gender field on author pages. It doesn't necessarily determine other questions, such as names applied to work. And there are edge cases and extensions open, like pen-names.

>70 LolaWalser:

I'm not going to declare an automatic trigger when I don't know the background or who's said or done what, with what knowledge or for what reason. I did not receive any report of anything or investigate. But if anyone changes @BarkingMatt's author gender, everyone here should feel free to change it back and reference this conversation and post as final. If someone refuses to listen, tell me or Loranne and we'll tell them to stop officially.

>71 Collectorator:

Report TOS violations when you see them.

>72 timspalding: It wasn't BarkingMatt's gender being changed but her name.

>73 jjwilson61:

See how little I know?

So, I agree, we go with someone's current name—for living authors anyway.

>66 _Zoe_:

It sounds like you don't think outward appearances are deceiving. How reactionary!

>67 timspalding:

Jan Morris is listed as her son's "parent" in CK Relationships. That seems like fence-sitting. Apparently Kylie Jenner calls Caitlyn "dad"; is that usage authorized on LT?

>77 cpg: Why would what a child calls their parent be of concern to anyone on LibaryThing?

>78 norabelle414:

Why would anyone on LibraryThing care that Angie Thomas was born in Jackson, Mississippi?

Hey collectorator, can you give us a very short paragraph on why canonical names are always bad?

Can you give me an example of A #2?

>81 Collectorator: What you think is 'wrong' or needs to be corrected is an assault on the majority and an imposition of your will.

Sorry? You mentioned assaults and impositions?
https://www.librarything.com/commonknowledge/search.php?q=Collectorator&f=us...

Here's another problem with Canonical Names, though it's a problem with the implementation not the concept: https://www.librarything.com/topic/228563#6317415
Why does a Canonical Name, and a deleted one at that, come up first in the search results?

>85 Collectorator: No idea what your point is, but I'm sure I don't care. Thanks for playing.

Thanks for trying to shut me down, but no thanks. My point is that I can think of no better description of your "editing" - and for that matter the tone of most of your messages - than "an assault on the majority and an imposition of your will".

Let's take the top page of you Helper page, https://www.librarything.com/commonknowledge/search.php?q=Collectorator&f=us... : twelve out of 200 entries are for adding content, so 188 for deleting previous content. The previous page, 29 new content, 171 deleting previous content, page 3, fifteen new content, 185 deleting old content. And so on for how many of your 1,112 pages of 'help'?

And let's take the current most recent 'help', 2018-01-05 05:55, "Bronwen Astor / relationships / deleted previous content". Full disclosure: I added that content a couple of days ago, and it read "Astor, Nancy (mother in law)". What did you find so wrong with that, that it warranted deletion? And what is so right about the reciprocal link, "Astor, Bronwen (daughter in law)" from https://www.librarything.com/author/astornancywitcherlan, that it was spared deletion?

In the meantime, some of the very little CK you have contributed to your own most recent books seems to be canonical titles:
https://www.librarything.com/work/20718853/book/148677976
https://www.librarything.com/work/10002015/book/148625754
https://www.librarything.com/work/6648997/book/148614927

So you do not seem to have a problem with using some CK canonical fields to 'obfuscate the underlying data'. Some might see an inconsistency here. Others might see someone channelling 2001AD's Torqueada: "Be Pure! Be Vigilant! Behave!"

It's not obvious, but what I think Collectorator is referring to is that there isn't an author page for Nancy Astor (by that name), so the relationship link that was entered on Bronwen Astor's page would have been broken if entered as "Astor, Nancy (mother in law)".

As for the pointless Canonical Titles on the three works listed in >87 Cynfelyn:, they're not at all self-evident.

Did you look at the editions?
Yes. In two cases the first listed edition has the same title that you put into Canonical Title. (Though looking again, I'll grant that the second edition listed has the same use count as the first, and on Songs for Primaries I too would have added the Canonical title if the second edition title was chosen.)

On New Ways in the New World, difference of opinion about title case isn't a valid reason to use Canonical Title. From the Common Knowledge help page:

Note: Canonical titles and names are not a solution to these three problems:

• Library vs. Amazon capitalization differences
• ...

>88 Collectorator: But Nancy Astor did write at least one book -- it just hadn't yet been entered on LT. Bur now https://www.librarything.com/author/astornancy

>20 Collectorator: >22 Collectorator: (and some other) - I don't even know why I'm answering this, since you've already blocked me. For transparency maybe?

a.) I never even mentioned you.
b.) I called the practice transphobic (and thus bigoted), not you - there is a difference.
c.) You immediately referring to my groin (which you know nothing about) IS transphobic as heck though.

Sorry for hijacking your thread >1 omargosh: I didn't imagine this would get so much out of hand.

Sorry, sorry, sorry.

>95 Nicole_VanK: You shouldn't have to be apologizing here. And I think there was some valuable discussion in between the bouts of people yelling at each other.

>95 Nicole_VanK:

Not your fault.

>95 Nicole_VanK:
No need to apologize to me. I'm sorry, sorry, sorry that you have to face transphobic bigotry.

>95 Nicole_VanK: What they^ said. A couple sorries ought to be given from this thread but you are definitely not one of them.

Despite this conversation, LT members are still wiping the preferred names of trans people from the Canonical name field: https://www.librarything.com/commonknowledge/changelog.php?item=6026129&type...

>100 Stevil2001:: Same person, actually

>100 Stevil2001:

Trans people have names the same as everyone else. It's not "preferred" anymore than anyone else's name is just because it's not the name their parents gave them when they were born - my friend J.'s name *is* J, the same as my name is mine, it's not a whim or a preference.

>100 Stevil2001: It's always the same person. If it isn't the name that's on the physical copies of the books, the user erases the name.

>103 gilroy: If it isn't the name that's on the physical copies of the books, :

Somehow I doubt the name appears this way on any books, but I could be wrong:
http://www.librarything.com/author/plattjrrutherfordh

>104 Taphophile13: Yeah, but the user tends to delete anything in the author field that isn't what the system assigns too. *shrug*

I do think that we need to distinguish between canonical author names that are entered to correct a wrong name or an oddly entered name, and those that sinply repeat the name already on the page.

In the latter case, I believe the consensus is to not enter a canonical name, and that seems to be the situation with Philip Sandifer. That appears to be the name showing on the page without the entry of a canonical name.

So, here's the official ruling.

Gender:

1. People should be identified by the gender they publicly identify as, or died as.
2. Purported gender of pen-names doesn't matter. They aren't authors; they are masks.
3. The gender of corporate names, pen names that get passed on and so forth should go as "n/a" even if every member of the group is a man or woman.
4. I am working on a free-text field, as I promised somewhere.

Work author names:

1. Works should use the form of the name that most belongs to the book, whether or not they subsequently changed it. LT solves that by majority-rules.
2. This should ONLY be overridden by simple error (e.g., if Amazon spells an author's name wrong and the bad Amazon record is winning).

Author names:

1. Most names should be calculated names. There is usually no good reason to reinforce a calculated name with a canonical one.
2. All things being equal, LT goes with the social or consensus name. Usually this will be the calculated name. If by some accident Mark Twain got changed to Samuel Clemens, it would be appropriate to give him the canonical name "Mark Twain."
3. All things being equal, living and recently dead authors get to decide their author-page name. (Today, this is also the consensus name, or shall become so when people learn.) So, for example, Elizabeth Sandifer wins over Philip Sandifer on the author page, because the author has made the change publicly and clearly.
4. The other-names section is an acceptable place to put names someone was known by, and especially published under. For example, in Sandifer's case, ever current work is by "Philip Sandifer," so it's quite reasonable and will avoid confusion if "Philip Sandifer" is listed under "Other names." Of course "Other names" is also good for pen names, etc.
5. Disambiguation notices are also an acceptable place to use in cases like Sandifer's, where there is chance of future helper confusion.

Canonical names has some limitations. So, for example, she's J. K. Rowling in the UK, but Joanne K. Rowling in Germany. "J. K. Rowling" must win, because it's the best consensus, but we know that it's imperfect; canonical names aren't fully language specific.

Good faith:

1. All edits must be made in good faith and reasonably. So, for example, if an angry author wants to change their name to "Fuck LibraryThing," no, they don't get that.

Edit wars:

1. We need a rule about edit wars. We are thinking about it. Do not engage in them. They are a sign of bad faith.

>107 timspalding:: Tim, this seems like a good set of rules, thanks for that. (And I engaged in no edit wars! Well, not this time.)

>107 timspalding: So, for example, if an angry author wants to change their name to "Fuck LibraryThing," no, they don't get that.

Not even if they change it legally? :-)

It's a decent set of rules. I'd change some of the phrasing a bit - trans people have genders just like cis people, it's not just an arbitrary whim of "identification" which is unfortunately what bigots have twisted the previously innocuous phrasing to imply - but overall it seems reasonable.

I tend to put previously-published-as information in the disambiguation notice - any previous names will show up in the "includes the name" section anyway - rather than highlighting them in Other Names. The disambiguation notice prevents confused folks from incorrect separation if they don't realize that someone previously published under a different name, and it doesn't call attention to the former name the way Other Names does. But that's not a big enough deal to me to ask to change that policy.

Not even if they change it legally? :-)

There's only one way to find out!

I tend to put previously-published-as information in the disambiguation notice - any previous names will show up in the "includes the name" section anyway - rather than highlighting them in Other Names. The disambiguation notice prevents confused folks from incorrect separation if they don't realize that someone previously published under a different name, and it doesn't call attention to the former name the way Other Names does. But that's not a big enough deal to me to ask to change that policy.

So, the policy isn't "put them in the Other Names." It's "you can put them in the Other Names." I agree with you about how, in some cases, putting them in the disambiguation notice would be a good idea. I might do this for Sandifer. She's an edge case here, and I can understand why people might be confused. It's reasonable to be confused on LibraryThing in particular, because I can see various ways that a very wrong name would get into the Canonical Names field (e.g., someone combines a bunch of Sandifers, they try to fix it with canonical names, the separate out the authors—hey presto!).

This is perceptual, but I think the disambiguation "calls attention" much more strongly than the Other Names. But clearly our mileage varies on this.

>110 lorax:

I added: "5. Disambiguation notices are also an acceptable place to use in cases like Sandifer's, where there is chance of future helper confusion."

This goes to the difference as I see it. Other names is a neutral place for other names they have used. It's an omnigatherum, really--pen names, past legal names, stylizations, etc. The Disambiguation Notice mostly there to help people understand how they relate to other people they might be confused with, and especially with the combinations and separations system.