I propose that we add Style Guidelines for how to store sort names for Releases and Release Groups using Aliases. This is closely connected to storing translations for Releases and Release Groups using Aliases.

The Sort name for a Release, in that Release's locale, is based on the Release's Title, modifying it if necessary according to locale-specific rules so that the result is a title which gives better results when sorting with other Release titles in the same locale. 

The Sort name for a Release, in that Release's locale,  is stored as an Alias of that Release, with the following requirements:

• The alias is of type Release Name
• The Name field of the alias is the same the Release's Title
• The Sort Name field of the alias is the Title, modified as necessary by locale-specific rules
• The Locale of the alias is the same as the Release's Language
• The alias shall be marked as the "primary alias for this locale" (or if there are multiple Sort Name aliases, one shall be marked as the "primary alias").
• The other fields of the Alias (begin date, end date) are typically not applicable to a Sort Name alias, and so are left empty.

Aliases can also be used to give a translation of a Release's Title into a different Locale (language). This kind of alias can itself contain a sort name of the translated title, based on the locale-specific rules of the translation locale. Such aliases follow a modified form of the rules above:

• The alias is of type Release Name
• The Name field of the alias is the translation of the Release's Title
• The Sort Name field of the alias is the translated Title, modified as necessary by locale-specific rules
• The Locale of the alias is the locale of the translation
• The alias shall be marked as the "primary alias for this locale" (or if there are multiple translation and Sort Name aliases, one shall be marked as the "primary alias").
• The other fields of the Alias (begin date, end date) are typically not applicable to a Sort Name alias, and so are left empty.

The locale-specific rules should be defined in new sections of the respective Style / Language / <locale> entries, e.g. English, German. 

The content of the locale-specific rules should perhaps be developed in separate Style issues. 

There are many sources for initial drafts of the rules:

• Style/Artist/Sort Name, but generalised for Releases
  • (And I disagree with Guideline 3; every language should have sort names in its own language)
• For English, the well-known rules are that definite and indefinite articles (e.g. "The", "A", "An") and name suffixes (e.g. "Jr.") get moved to the end.
• For Japanese, the well-known rule is to provide the phonetic spelling of the title string using kana. 
• Library of Congress >> MARC >> Bibliographic >> Appendix F " - Initial Definite and Indefinite Articles" has rules for moving prefixes to the end for 44 languages or dialects, from Afrikaans to Yiddish.
• The MusicBrainz Server code behind the Artist Sort Name "Guess Case" button: The GuessCaseHandler and related code.

There is interest in storing data which might be common to multiple Releases, e.g. Release Sort Names, at the Release Group level, where it can be shared across Releases which for example have identical Titles and so can have identical Release Sort Names for a given locale. I believe that this is less important than it might seem. Less than 5% of Release Groups have three or more Releases in them; less than 1% have six or more. There are complexities, especially when one Release Group includes Releases with different, translated titles in different market languages. But it is possible to define something simple.

Release Sort Names may be stored as Aliases of the Release's Release Group. Such Release Group aliases apply to all Releases of that Release Group, with the following requirements:

• The alias is of type Release Group Name
• The Name field of the Release Group Alias is the same the Release's Title
• The Sort Name field of the alias is the Title, modified as necessary by locale-specific rules
• The Locale of the Release Group Alias is the same as the Release's Language
• The alias shall be marked as the "primary alias for this locale" (or if there are multiple Sort Name aliases, one shall be marked as the "primary alias").
• The other fields of the Alias (begin date, end date) are typically not applicable to a Sort Name alias, and so are left empty.

The Style language should be added as follows:

1. https://musicbrainz.org/doc/Style/Aliases#Sort_name should be extended to include Releases and Release Groups
2. New "Sort name" section in https://musicbrainz.org/doc/Style/Release
3. New "Sort name" section in https://musicbrainz.org/doc/Style/Release_Group
4. New "Sort name" sections in at least https://musicbrainz.org/doc/Style/Language/English, maybe in other languages also
5. Perhaps add wording to https://beta.musicbrainz.org/doc/Style/Artist/Sort_Name which says these guidelines apply to Release sort names as well.

Background:

• Forum, Sort names style for Releases? (Sept-Oct 2025)
• Forum, Some sort_name statistics for Releases and Release groups (Nov 2025)
• Forum, Release Title sort name style? (July 2022)

This proposal obviously touches a lot of pieces, but I think that its core it is not that complex. It will probably require discussion and review of drafts before adopting it.