How do we parse Natasha Gregson Wagner?

I've done some research - Wikipedia (and various other sources) reports: "Natasha's birth surname is Gregson, though Robert Wagner raised her after Natalie Wood's death by drowning in 1981." I encountered a contribution citing this in order to change the parsing to Natasha//Gregson Wagner - is that correct? Or not? The same Wikipedia-article refers to her as "Wagner" too...

Psst, Marcel, Natasha is an American not a European. So I think applying Euro culture is ummmm incorrect.

I think the various references in the wiki article to Ms. Wagner, NOT Ms. Gregson Wagner says it all.

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Quoting marcelb7:

Quote:
There is a cultural and semantic difference of the phrase "maiden name". In Europe, a woman's maiden name is part of the last name, either with or without a hyphen. And in the US, it's considered a middle name.
For people who sort their cast and crew by "last name first name", the various parsings of maiden names can be confusing.

Personally, I would use Natasha//Gregson Wagner, but then again, I'm European 

You shouldn't make that assumption when it comes to the US as it is, in fact, wrong.  While some women will replace their middle name with their maiden name, it certainly isn't the norm.

The norm, at least the last time I checked the statistics, was to drop the maiden name completely.

Natasha Gregson Wagner presents an unusual problem.

Natasha Gregson was born to Natalie Wood (American) and Richard Gregson (Brit?).  When her mother married Robert Wagner for the second time (with Gregson in between), Robert Wagner adopted Natasha, thereby giving her the name Wagner.  So this isn't exactly the same thing as with the standard "maiden name" argument.  While I suppose technically "Gregson" could be considered her "maiden" name, since she added her step-father's surname an argument COULD be made that "Gregson Wagner" is now her surname.  It's not as if Natasha Gregson married someone named Wagner -- she inherited "Wagner" when her step-father adopted her.  She evidently chooses to respect her two fathers by using both names in credits.

I've lived in the US for 25 years and have barely heard of replacing the middle name with the maiden name. The norm is to drop it. If retained, it is invariably part of the last name.

Ace:

You don't get out enough.   I can tell you FACTUALLY that it happens from my own family and from many people I have known over the years both in and out of Hollywood.

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nope... I actually know a few women that dropped their middle name and legally changed their maiden name to their middle name. And know of (friends of friends and such) several others that has done so.

I also heard of women that don't drop their middle... but legally change their names so they have 2 middle names.

Nope, Ace wrong again. I speak from personal experience and knowledge, I don't even use Wikipedia. The only way we can KNOW without any investigation is if a hyphen is used this applies to first names as well. Should it be Mary Jane// or Mary/Jane/ BOTH can be correct, if we see Mary-Jane then we know but without the hyphen we know nothing. So we start at Mary/Jane/, if you can document Mary Jane// cool, I won't argue. But if you are going to just say it should be Mary Jane// because you have never seen a Mary/Jane, well then guess what.... We'll do ST IV allover again. I am less concerned about getting the name CORRECT as opposed to it appearing as it does On Screen, I am not sure what value is added to digging up someone's birth and Marriage records and perhaps even other Legal documents so we can get the name CORRECT. And each movie credit stands on its own, just because we might see a NG-W and a NGW does not mean that the name is NG-W, a person can al;ways go to court and get the name changed from NG-W to NGW. Now if we see a sequence of films that was MG-W, NGW and then another NG-W then we can build a prima facie case that the name IS N//GW. I have used myself as an example before Ace, my own name can be listed at least 25 different ways and you would have absolutely no way of knowing which one i might consider the most correct and in such a case what you THINK is not relevant, it is MY name and I will tell YOU what the name IS, Contacting these people is impractical at best, impossible at worst, so we have to start SOMEWHERE, absent a hyphen or some sort of documentation I will always say use the default 1/2/3, at least the data appears as it does On Screen, which seems to me to be the miost important issue from a Profiler POV. Is the target going to get offended, hardly. My last name is so frequently misspelled that unless it is a legal document I don't even worry about it anymore.

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