Yesterday my co-author Dr. Orlanda Harvey received an email from a sociology journal informing her that “The below co-author name is not matching with the separate title page provided and in the submission. If Van is the middle name please update the name in the author’s account. Name in separate title page appears as Prof Edwin van Teijlingen….Name in site appears as vanTeijlingen, EdwinPlease address the above issue before resubmitting the manuscript.”
If you have an off name in English you are getting used to this kind of misunderstanding. This is the second time this is happening when submitting a paper this month! Interestingly with a different variant of my name. A migration and health journal argued to me co-author that my name on ORCID was ‘Edwin van Teijlingen’ but on Scopus ‘van Teijlingen, Edwin Roland’. the journal then asked that we change it.
To add more example on the inflexibility of online systems, my greatest surprise a few years ago was that I could not add my Dutch family name ‘van Teijlingen’ with a small ‘v’ on the online booking web pages of the Dutch airline KLM.
What’s In A Name? A name is but a name, and to quote Shakespeare: A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.