Thread:The Many-Angled One/@comment-1409931-20160211121728/@comment-61022-20160212204634

I was never a fan of the "Name-of-the-Original (Clone-Adopted-Name)" style. X-23 and Madelyne Pryor are perfect examples. I think the distinction between the two is that both of those characters were well established by their given names before they were ever revealed to be clones.

That said, particularly in the case of Ben Reilly... Again not a fan.... I get that when he was first introduced he was simply a clone of Peter Parker who seemingly died in that story and only adopted the Ben Reilly name when they revived the character 20 years later in that awful awful Clone Saga... But the fact of the matter is, anyone who knows Spider-Man well enough knows that the clone of Spider-Man is known as Ben Reilly.

I think that we should use the name a character is commonly known by.

I have the same sticking point with characters who legally change their name. Carl Lucas legally changed his name to Luke Cage. Which is fine, because he has identified with that name for decades of publications and that is the name he is more commonly known. Versus the Wizard, who stated once off-hand in a random Fantastic Four comic from the 90s that he legally changed his name to "The Wizard". Naming the page "The Wizard (Earth-616)" instead of "Bentley Wittman" doesn't make any sense to me because ever since they revealed Bentley's real name -- other than that single Fantastic Four comic -- he has always been consistently named Bentley Wittman.

I would even go so far as agreeing to changing Susan Storm (Earth-616) to Susan Richards (Earth-616) since she has gone by her married name for over 40 years of publications.

At the end of the day, naming conventions should be balanced between (a) what's "legally" accurate and (b) what is easier for a layman to navigate. Some of these naming conventions assume that the person trying to find a character is as well versed as the biggest fan.

The way I see it: If the page name is something easy for someone to navigate to, all the other pertinent details (such as legal name changes, marriages, if a character is a clone etc.) can be found by reading said page... provided people are adding that info.

Obviously we can't do that with a characters code name since characters change or use the same codenames plenty of times it's an overly complicated nightmare. So we have to go with a more specific descriptor. However I think focusing on the "real name" is not always better than using their "common name".