#1

Is there a syntax that can be used to recognize aliases with spaces or commas?

I set up note with a person’s name as a title, and put the alias in the front matter to account for the various ways I might reference the person.

For example, the “main” title of a note might be “Doe, John” but I also want to link to it as “John Doe”. The reverse might also be true. I know I could just put a dash or underscore between the first and last name, but I want to remove as much friction as possible when typing on the fly.

In the above example, the system recognizes the names as two different entries.

Thank you for any help.

An alias wrongly treated as a list of aliases by obsidian if they contain comma in them
#2 
---
aliases: ["Doe, John", "John Doe"]
---
#3

Thank you for the reply. I must be doing something wrong, as when I created a Doe, John note with that alias syntax at the start of the note, and then create another note with a link to John Doe, it creates a new note when I click the link instead of taking me to the original note (leaving me with a Doe, John note, and a John Doe note).

EDIT: I suspect I might just totally misunderstand how to do aliases, or how they work. Even when I create a link to [[John-Doe]] with an alias at the start as above, but with the single alias being [John-Doe], it still creates a new note. Is the alias really just a shortcut for the autofill feature (not sure if that is the correct term) for when I start typing a backlink? In other words, it doesn’t work if I highlight John-Doe and hit the bracket key twice (i.e., I create it manually)?

#4

test
test1113×586 76.9 KB

1 Like
#5

Thank you, that helps. I think that confirms my question at the end of my last post – the alias is a shortcut for the auto-fill feature, as in your screen capture, as opposed to something that translates manual links behind the scenes. I think I get it now. :+1:

#6

I just ran into this problem. In the past, I’ve wikilinked someone’s name in bibliographies so they are linked as [[Lincoln, Abraham]] (just an example)

His page did not exist yet. I created a page titled “Lincoln” and added:

---
alias: ["Abraham Lincoln", "Lincoln, Abraham"]
---

The note correctly displays these as metadata in the header.

However, every note with [[Lincoln, Abraham]] wants to create a new note with that title. They don’t automatically ‘see’ the new aliases.

And the Unlinked mentions view for note “Lincoln” doesn’t find those other notes.

#7

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