Legal Name

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A Legal Name is the name of a person as used in official dealings, especially with governments. Many musicians are known by an alias, and we refer to that as the PerformanceName.

For MusicBrainz purposes, if an artist works under their PerformanceName, the Legal Name is primarily used to hold PerformanceNameRelationshipType to PerformanceNames, and biographical details such as Personal Association Relationship Class.

The birth certificate is the usual place you will find a legal name. However, legal names can be changed at any time (eg by marriage, deed poll etc).

Style

SameArtistWithDifferentNames contains details about how and when to use both performance names and legal names.
Note that only persons have LegalNames, not bands.

Examples

Declan Patrick MacManus is the Legal Name of Elvis Costello. Paul David Hewson is the Legal Name of Bono.

Official Documentation: Artist Overview \| Release Artist \| Track Artist \| Primary Artist \| Secondary Artist \| Featuring Artist \| Fictitious Artist \| Special Purpose Artist Attributes: ID \| Name \| Sort Name \| Alias \| Begin Date \| End Date \| Comment \| Annotation Style: Release Artist Style \| Track Artist Style \| Featuring Artist Style \| Sortname Style \| Same Artist With Different Names \| Different Artists With Same Name \| Band With Main Performer Name Misc: Merge Misspelled Artists \| Editing Suggestions \| Subscriptions / Lists: International Artists

This page is part of the official MusicBrainz editor documentation (version 1.0), and is monitored by TransclusionEditor dmppanda