citations - Common practice for references to articles with different spellings of author's names

It quite known that the transliteration of names of non-latin-based languages is quite ambiguous: a known example is Chebyshev (where at least 8 different transliterations are accepted, not counting incorrect spellings).

Now suppose that I want to cite three works by the same author: one published in French in one spelling (call it SP1), another in English in another spelling SP2, and the third was published only in his native language (the correct transliteration of the name, according to the current rules, would be SP3).

What is the common practice in this case?

If I preserve the historical spelling of these articles, then it seems that they were written by three different authors.

If I choose one spelling for all three references (I'm tempted to choose SP3), then it historically inaccurate and could lead to problems with finding the referenced article (not all search engines use flexible enough to take into account different spellings).

Any advice would be welcome.

Answer

I suspect there is no single practice, for the simple reason that our society is very bad at dealing with the massive degree of variation found in names.

As a matter of principle, however, I would tend to approach transliterated names in the same way that one approaches name differences within a single language (e.g., complete formal name on a dissertation vs. "preferred name" on articles; post-marriage vs. pre-marriage name; name change following change in gender identity). Here, I see two general use cases, which fortunately correspond with the two options you identified, and it's just a matter of selecting which is most important for a particular usage.

• Name as an identifier for a person: This is the use for references, either in the citations/bibliography or in prose (e.g., "As Chebyshev writes in [5]..."). In this case, you should use the same single name for the person, ignoring different historical versions, because the most important thing to communicate is the shared identity. Since people generally are allowed to choose their own names, you should typically choose the most current accepted name, as the best reflection of the person's current identity (though there are some exceptions).


• Name as a historical record: In this case, the thing to be identified is the artifact, not the person, and any issues in the rendering of the person's name are secondary (e.g., "Festschrift for Tschebyscheff" would not be modified).

Something that I see as a somewhat problematic boundary case is when there is an "live" artifact named after a person, e.g., Chebyshev's inequality. Here, I would recommend simply going with a recognizable version of current consensus in the community where the publication is being sent.