No doubt about, the common names have been a good invention to kind of "unify" several spellings of a name.

I know that most of you are not interested in adding data for the voice actors, especially if this language doesn't matter for you (or isn't even available on your release).

Well, like a lot of countries around the world Germany imports countless movies and series fron anywhere and synchronizes them with voice actors.

For a long long time we only heard their voices, never knowing the names of the speakers, but in (as far as I could find out) 2018 there was introduced kind of a new rule, that those voice actors also have to be listed on every single release. In case of German language, there are credits after the end credits if the German language is chosen in the menu.

In my opinion this was a very good idea, but it seems they are not very careful in typing those credits. If you have ever tried to type such listings to your local database, you will agree that a lot of the speakers' names are spelled more times wrong than correct.

As a load of them additionally works as actors, too, their counts in the database are growing very much since the mentioned law was introduced.

What I am thinking about now is this (just as an example): In the past a (voice-)actor had a bunch of credits, 20 times version A (e. g. Thomas Nero Wolff), 3 times version B (e. g. Thomas N. Wolff) and 5 times version C (e. g. Thomas-Nero Wolff) of the spelling (or the name). So this way version A became his common name (which could be even his real name and B + C are only kind of misspellings).

Now he is found as a voice actor for a series with more than 100 episodes, were he is credited in every single one as a speaker, but each time spelled with wrong version D (e. g. Thomas Nero Wolf). In theory now his common name would have to change to version D.

As he is still working as a voice actor, for sure he has a lot of jobs to do, and so he works for 2 - 3 other series with more than 150 episodes, and this time they do better and list him each time with version A - which then should become the common name once again.

So especially in case of the voice actors, you might see my "problem" concerning the common name. We can't check the numbers often enough to find out if the common name still really is the common.

I have no idea if the voice actors are also credited in any other language than German, so I prefer ideas from guys with German Discs. If the situation is the same for any other language, ideas are welcome, too.

It is a huge load of work to modify my complete collection with the allready defined common names, but imagine you are doing this job, are half way through your database, and then a bunch of common names changes, caused by misspellings.

Any idea for a solution to avoid work?

Thtat's why I was talking about Germany as I don't know how this works in different countries.

But "at any time" is still vague: If I insert a German release but choose English language, they are not shown (why should they as they are not heard).

And I'd like to say that it was easier for the producers to show the speakers with an extra clip than to add them to the film/episode itself where it only makes sence if German language is chosen.

Did you ever see the speakers in 20+ languages ALWAYS shown at the end of something from Netflix?

I totally agree! German releases in Germany usually show the German speakers at the end (standard German settings). And only if any other language is chosen, they are not shown.

But the influence of this rule/law, established in 2018, totally confuses the common name-aspect.

My listed example "Thomas Nero Wolff" was the best idea I could have. Altough so far no common name was chosen for him, for a long long time there were no misspellings and only a very few times he had a different writing.

But while typing the voice actors for the series "Criminal Minds", I had to find out, that he is written wrong EVERY SINGLE TIME: "Thomas Nero Wolf". So far I am only through the first 6 seasons (some technical problems), but they have 138 episodes. Starting at season 7, a different voice actor does that role, so Wolff is off. But this is just one example. (Same series "Tanja Geke" so far always was spelled wrong as "Tanje Geke", an she went on for more than 300 episodes - what would possibly change her common name to the wrong spelling)

So is there a chance to redefine the rules for common names if it is about voice actors? I can't count the misspellings anymore, and as soon as a common name would be defined, it might be neccessary to change it because of them.