Alphabetizing CDs -- Articles in Foreign Languages

Cafe Society
1

When you alphabetize your CDs (or records, or whatever) by artist at home, how do you treat articles in foreign languages?

For example, The Beatles is alphabetized under “B” and The Rolling Stones is alphabetized under “R” – to alphabetize them both under “T” would be madness.

But how would you alphabetize the following?

Los Lobos
Los Campesinos
Le Tigre
Les Savy Fav

Under the first word or the second? Record stores seem to prefer the first, but I suspect that’s due to keep from having to answer questions about how to find them. How do you do it at home? Or, if you don’t have any of these, how would you?

I currently alphabetize by the second word, to be consistent with how I alphabetize English language artists, but it seems, I don’t know, inelegant somehow.

Thanks!

2

I don’t include the definite article (would you include “The” when alphabetizing in English?). The fun part is figuring how to alphabetize my CDs in Cyrillic. :stuck_out_tongue: (I usually do it according to how they would be spelled if transliterated according to the Library of Congress system.)