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Duplicate Face Names

Mac OS 10.15.4

Mac Mini w/8gb RAM

Photos 5.0


My photo library has over 15k of photos, many of which have their faces identified. Recently, when I've added face names of people to a photo either imported or as I view older photos, I get duplicate names.


For example, a photo of me that was just imported. When clicking the circle around my face, I start typing my name. A dropdown menu appears showing my full name, Neal Watzman. I select that name, what appears in the box at the bottom of the circle is my first name only. This occurs with many of the people whose faces I identify.


Now, when I go to People, there are two occurrences there. One, entitled Neal Watzman containing most of my photos over time. A second occurrence now appears, identified by first name only, Neal in this case, containing those photos from the process above, the ones where only the first name appears in the box below the circle.


Apparently there is something amiss in the People process. Anyone out there have solutions?


Thanks for the help.


Neal

MacBook Pro 15", macOS 10.13

Posted on May 6, 2020 8:29 AM

Reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on May 6, 2020 9:07 AM

To combine the two just drag the name you don't want to use onto the one you do and it will merge the two.


3 replies

May 6, 2020 10:49 AM in response to Watzman

Photos is using the "first name only" for all people, where you assign the name using the suggested names from your Contacts and there is not yet another person with this first name. You cannot prevent this, if you want to link the named people to the Contacts, so Siri can find your photos. When I want to be sure, that the names will not be reduced to first names I am breaking the connection to the Contacts by replacing the space characters in the names by underscores. This way Photos cannot recognise the first names and I can see the full name in the People album. I have to do this for the Photos Library I am using at work. It is not very professional to address each and every professional contact by the first name only.


The duplicate entries in the People album are created, when you name people by typimg a name into the name field below the faces circle and do not pick the same suggestion from the list of suggested names as before. If there are several names for the person in the list of suggested names, it is easy to pick a different name, and that will create the duplicate. When I create a new person in the album, I will immediately pick a distinctive key photo, so I can easily recognise the correct name in the list.





Duplicate Face Names

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