BibTeX, biblatex and biber ⇒ Capitalization of von-part first and second author

[Pepijn]

Hi,

I managed to solve the following and I thought it was interesting for others to share.

When citing two authors using the natbib style I ran in to problems when the second author had a "von" part. As is usual in Dutch formal writing my name is written as follows when including the first name: Pepijn de Jong and as follows when excluding the first name: De Jong. Note the difference in capitalization of the "de" part (a.k.a. "von" part).

Fortunately natbib has a feature that allows the enforce the capitalization in the citation label by using the \Cite command and its derivatives. However, unfortunately this only operates on the first author. When the second author has a "von" part then this fails and the label shows for instance as: "Smith and de Jong (2011)" instead of "Smith and De Jong (2011)" as would be correct (at least according to Dutch spelling).

I solved this by making a custom bst file based on the plainnat.bst, replacing the function "format.lab.names" by the following code:

Code: Select all

FUNCTION {format.lab.names}
{ 's :=
  s #1 "{vv~}" format.name$ "u" change.case$ "t" change.case$ s #1 "{ll}" format.name$ *
  s num.names$ duplicate$
  #2 >
    { pop$ " et~al." * }
    { #2 <
        'skip$
        { s #2 "{ff }{vv }{ll}{ jj}" format.name$ "others" =
            { " et~al." * }
            { " and " * s #2 "{vv~}" format.name$ "u" change.case$ "t" change.case$ * s #2 "{ll}" format.name$ * }
          if$
        }
      if$
    }
  if$
}

This piece of code enforces capitalization of the "von" part for both the first and the second author, rendering the use of the \Cite commands unnecessary. In the reference list there are no problems in my case, as there I included the initials of the authors and Bibtex correctly shows the "von" part in lower case.

I hope this may be of help for some (Dutch or German?) authors.

Good luck,

Pepijn de Jong