How can I prevent citations with the second author as Firstname Lastname

Question

I am using biblatex with the following command:

\usepackage[backend=biber,style=authoryear-comp,
      bibstyle=authoryear,citestyle=authoryear-comp]{biblatex}

Now when I do a \textcite I sometimes get the following output:

Smit and John Doe, 2011

And in the bibliography

Smit, Peter and John Doe (May 2011). “Using

I find this ugly. How can I get the citation to be:

Smit and Doe, 2011

And the bibliography to be

Smit, Peter and Doe, John (May 2011). “Using

Answer 1

It is possible that \textcite will result in citations like Smit and John Doe, 2011 (including Does first name) because biblatex since v1.4 will fully disambiguate individual author names and name lists. Just see my example.

The Month appearing in addition to the year is actually a built-in feature of biblatex. Just use the date field instead of year, and conform to the required format. (Details may be found in section 2.3.8 of the documentation.)

For the reordering of names, I prefer the form \DeclareNameAlias{sortname}{last-first}. See Guidelines for customizing biblatex styles ("Bibliography -- order of first names and last names") for details.

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[style=authoryear-comp,backend=biber]{biblatex}

\DeclareNameAlias{sortname}{last-first}

\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
@misc{S11x,
  author = {Smit, Peter and Doe, Jane},
  date = {2011},
  title = {Me and Jane},
}
@misc{S11y,
  author = {Smit, Peter and Doe, John},
  date = {2011},
  title = {Me and John},
}
@misc{S11z,
  author = {Smit, Peter and McGee, Bobby},
  date = {2011-05},
  title = {Me and Bobby McGee},
}
\end{filecontents}

\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}

\nocite{*}

\begin{document}

\textcite{S11x}

\textcite{S11y}

\textcite{S11z}

\printbibliography

\end{document}

EDIT: Name disambiguation only works with biber as backend. Replace biber with bibtex8 in my example and see what happens. ;-)

Answer 2

You don't need to use multiple bibstyle and citestyle commands if you are using the same format for both. So your command to load biblatex should be:

\usepackage[backend=biber,style=authoryear-comp]{biblatex}

(Since the authoryear-comp and authoryear bbx files are the same, there's no need to have separate bibstyle and citestyle specifications in this case.)

Your citations should show up as you request with the standard authoryear-comp format. If only certain items show up incorrectly, then this is likely a problem with how the .bib record itself is entered. If after comparing a .bib file record that works with one that doesn't, you are still having problems with this, you should edit your question showing the actual record from your .bib file that causes the problem.

With respect to the ordering of names, add the following to your preamble:

\DeclareNameAlias{last-first/first-last}{last-first}

With respect to having the Month appear in the date field in the bibliography, this is quite unorthodox. Are you sure you want to do this? I'm sure it's possible, but it might require some work.