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I use Wikipedia mainly to look up details about musical artists or bands, and their songs. I am particularly interested in song-writing credits and the real names of the people who have them. I started off by referring to the details printed on the inlays of CDs. I gave up on this when I read on the inlay for The Best Rap Album In The World...Ever! that "Can I Kick It?" by A Tribe Called Quest was witten solely by Lou Reed. I have found similar cases on Wikipedia, although nothing this ludicrous.

I have found various sources of information which have allowed me to correct Wikipedia articles. Usually it is straightforward but I have encountered some problematic issues that I have documented on this page. Some of them are still unresolved, so please let me know if you have any comments or suggestions.

I have come across quite a few names and birth names that do not match records from reliable sources. I expect that, in the absence of information to the contrary, the commonly-known name of the artist has been used at the inception of the article and it has stayed there. However, some cases are unclear or are complicated by the existance of sources which contradict each other. I present some examples here.

The issue of Dido's real name has caused controversy. Since it was created, the Dido's article has opened with a variety of names, the most popular choices being:

• Dido Florian Cloud de Bounevialle Armstrong
• Florian Cloud de Bounevialle Armstrong
• Florian Cloud de Bounevialle O'Malley Armstrong
• Dido Florian Cloud de Bounevialle O'Malley Armstrong — the current version (as of October 2008)

The opening sentence of the Dido article has changed little in format over the years, being edited mainly as part of a protracted edit war over her name. This reached maximum intensity between October 2007 and March 2008, during which time 28 edits merely added "Dido" to or deleted it from the name in the first sentence (and sometimes the birth-name field in the infobox). Occasionally citations were added to support one point of view, and were ignored or even deleted. The edit war ended abruptly at the end of March when two references were cited, a posting by Dido to her fans^[1] in which she states that "Dido" is her real name, and an interview with Dido on television^[2] in which she recites her name as "Dido Florian Cloud de Bounevialle O'Malley Armstrong".

In an interview with The Observer in 2001, Dido discussed her name in more depth.^[3] On her birth certificate, her name is registered as Florian Cloud De Bounevialle Armstrong,^[4][5] but she has always been known as Dido. As a child, she had to deal with the ambiguity and the unusual nature of her names:

To be called one thing and christened another is actually very confusing and annoying. It's one of the most irritating things that my parents did to me. ...Florian is a German man's name. That's just mean. To give your child a whole lot of odd names. They were all so embarrassing. ...I thought it was cruel to call me Dido and then expect me to just deal with it.

— Dido, Interview published in The Observer in 2001^[3]

Simply referring to "Dido" as a stage name or a nickname is inappropriate — this has in fact happened on earlier versions of the Wikipedia page.

Performing rights organizations such as the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers and Broadcast Music Incorporated do not recognize the existence of Dido Florian Cloud de Bounevialle O'Malley Armstrong, although they do recognize Dido and Dido Armstrong. The principal entry for this artist is Florian Cloud de Bounevialle Armstrong.^[6][7]

Was Seal really named Seal at birth? ^{[8][9][10][11]}

Many websites state that Jay Kay was born Jason Cheetham. If his mother's maiden name is Pringle, his biological father's surname is Silveira (or perhaps Waddington) and his stepfather's surname is Kay then where does the the birth name Cheetham come from?

I have checked the England & Wales, Birth Index: 1837-1983. Of the births registered in January–March 1970, none were for Jason Kay, Jason Silveira or Jason Waddington. Jason Pringle was registered, with the mother's maiden name being Pringle, but this was registered in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. However, the birth of Jason Luis J. Cheetham^[12] was registered in the district of Barton. As well as being a geographical match, the middle name is the same as the biological father's first name. What does not fit is that the mother's maiden name is also registered as being Cheetham. If this discrepancy can be explained then maybe we have a verifiable source that Cheetham is Jay Kay's birth name. Alternatively, this could be a coincidence.

The opening sentence of the Wikipedia article on Shaznay Lewis reads "Shaznay Tricia Lewis (born October 14, 1975 in Islington, London)", with no citation for the name. The performing rights organizations list her as Tricia Marie Shaznay Lewis,^[13][14] although they recognize Shaznay Lewis and Shaznay T. Lewis as being the same person.

I tried to find Shaznay's birth registration using the England & Wales, Birth Index: 1837-1983. I found no match at all in the births registered in the final quarter of 1975. In the first quarter of 1976 there was a single match to the names quoted above: the birth of Tricia Marie Lewis^[15] was registered in the London City district, which is a geographical match. The mother's maiden name is Russell but I have been unable to discover the maiden name of Shaznay's mother in order to verify the match.

The extra Shaznay in the name held by the performing rights organizations does not provide conclusive information about whether this is in her current legal name. Compare Buddy Holly's entry, which reads Charles Hardin Buddy Holly.^[16]

I used to simply change incorrect names as I found them, without logging in and without citing a source. This was fine until one day I noticed that all of the changes that I had made had been reverted, with the comment "dubious/uncited edit". It turned out that I had edited the John Digweed page at a time when an experienced editor was giving it some serious attention. He left a message on my talk page (i.e. that of my IP address) but received no reply — I never checked it. Being unable to verify my edit using a Google search, the editor reverted it, as well as all of the others that I had made! The lesson for me was to always cite the source.

The UK government offers many reliable sources of information, some of which are available online and can be linked to. For those that can not be linked to directly, an image can be uploaded to Wikipedia as long as the following template is added: Template:Non-free Crown copyright
This page is a soft redirect.

An example is shown to the right. However, it is important to note that birth certificates are not covered by the waiver referred to above^[17] and should be treated as copyrighted material.

There are various was to obtain information about births registerd in the UK, and you can even purchase a birth certificate online. This is not usually necessary to verify the name of an individual, but is a step that I took in the cases of Dido and Seal discussed above. This process works best if you already have the GRO index for the birth in question, and this is the tricky part.

My solution was to use the England & Wales, Birth Index: 1837-1983, a searchable database provided by ancestry.co.uk which contains scanned images of original records. It is a searchable, digitized version of the indices of civil registrations in England and Wales, reported quarterly to the General Register Office in London. The results can be accessed only if you have a subscription. A 14-day free trial is available, which I took advantage of. A sample page is shown in the figure, which showed that Dido's birth name was not Dido.

It sometimes happens that a performing artist wishes to adopt his stage name as his legal name. A popular way to do this is by deed poll. Once the deed has been enrolled, an announcement will be made in the London Gazette which may well be accessible online. I have found several of these announcements and used them to edit the following Wikipedia articles:

• Cliff Richard who changed his name from Harry Rodger Webb^[18]
• Elton John who changed his name from Reginald Kenneth Dwight to Elton Hercules John^[19]
• Hank Marvin who changed his name from Brian Robson Rankin to Hank Brian Marvin^[20]
• Fatboy Slim who changed his name from Quentin Leo Cook to Norman Quentin Cook^[21]

I used to believe that a person's legal name would remain their birth name until they went through a formal legal process to change it. If this were true then failure to find an announcement could be construed as proof that a legal change of name has not taken place. Recently I have been informed by people who know more than me that this is not the case. To quote from a standard work on the subject:^[22]

The acquisition of a new name by use and reputation is in truth the only way by which a name is changed, for a man's name is the name by which he is known, an Act of Parliament or Royal licence being permissive only, and a deed poll being merely evidence of intention to be known by another name. ...It is a matter of evidence whether a change by repute has in fact taken place...but if the evidence is adequate the reputed name will become the effective one for legal purposes.

— J.F. Josling, Change of Name (13th Edition)

Thus, it is difficult to argue that a stage name is not a legal name if the artist wishes it to be. Knowing what an artist wishes and which name they use outside of their professional life is hard to know and harder to verify. Dido made it easy by making it clear that "Dido" was her real name, despite not being on her birth certificate. Having been called "Dido" by family and friends since childhood^[3] she has no need to employ any formal legal process.

Performance rights organisations maintain databases which record who receives royalties for songs by the composers whom they represent. As such, they usually record the legal names of the composers. These organisations are the sources that I most often use to discover who wrote which song, and what their real name is. Often it is a simple case of discovering that Steve is actually Stephen, or that John Digweed is actually Thomas John Digweed.

The ACE Title Search provided by the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers is possibly the most useful of the PRO databases, firstly because it seems to have the broadest coverage of the three. The second reason applies to composers who have more than one alias in the database, as the ASCAP database clearly distinguishes which alias it considers to be the principal entry. Usually, this can be considered the real name of the person in question. This is not always the case, however.

• A search for Q-Tip is successful but when you click on the link you are directed to a list of songs by Kamaal Ibn John Fareed.
• A search for Reginald Kenneth Dwight is successful but when you click on the link you are directed to a list of songs by Elton John. As discussed above, he changed his name by deed poll.
• A search for Dido is successful but when you click on the link you are directed to a list of songs by Florian Cloud De Bou Armstrong. As discussed above, this is her birth name (within the constraints of the number of characters stored by the database). It was this discovery that led me to look into Dido's real name further.

The final example demonstrates one of the drawbacks of the ASCAP database — it limits names to a length of 30 characters. The effect is usually noticeable by the way it crops the names, as in the case of Bounevialle above. An exception to this can be seen if you search for Rollo Armstrong, in which case you will find a list of songs by Rowland Constantine Armstrong. In fact, the name O'Malley has been neatly cropped out, as you can see on his entry in the BMI database.

• Repertoire Search of Broadcast Music Incorporated.

• Repertory Search of the Society of European Stage Authors & Composers. It is here that you should turn to gather information about the songs of Bob Dylan and Neil Diamond.