kelly_l_6500954's profile

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Sunday, April 13th, 2014

Questions about "birth name" on IMDb

In a case where one's name as shown on their birth certificate was amended for whatever reason, is the "birth name" for IMDb purposes the name before or after the amendment? And if the former, is there a way to prevent it from appearing in a biography in "sensitive" cases, like if the person is transgender (and do not want to advertise themselves as such) or they were adopted (and because of issues with their biological family do not want to remain associated with them)? I think these are cases where a person's personal situations ought to be respected (in contrast to the usual purpose of showing a birth name c.f. to a chosen stage name or a married name). Thanks for your thoughts on this.

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12 years ago

I'd add that this assumes the individual never mentioned their "original" birth name publicly and doesn't have anything that would be credited on IMDb under that name. For reference here's a couple of transgender people who this would be true for (they've publicly acknowledged their transgender status but have not told the public their prior names):
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2092175/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1679529/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1

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9 years ago

Sorry about resurrecting an old question, but what exactly is IMDb's policy on birth names of transgender people, particularly those who were not credited or widely known prior to their transition/name change* - or even more egregiously, those who are not publicly out about having changed gender? Since IMDb under their trivia guidelines considers trivia about "sexual orientation" and "medical history" taboo (and in some jurisdictions, including California, a transgender person's name change record has protections against public exposure that regular name changes don't and a new birth certificate without any indications of what was changed is issued if born there) they ought to follow the same for transgender people when their birth name is indicative that they have changed gender.

*If they were famous or credited pre-transition (e.g. Caitlyn Jenner) then it's different, as for example here the public should know that the credits of "Caitlyn Jenner" and "Bruce Jenner" come from the same person. This is similar to Wikipedia's policy - in contrast to their usual policy on posting birth names, for transgender people they'll post them when submitted by someone else only if the biography is about someone who had fame that would warrant an article prior to transitioning.

The recent post about someone wanting their birth name removed made me re-think about this special situation.