Q: People/faces ID in Sierra Photos pulling up non-functional names

I have the same issue. When I want to manually add an unnamed face/person, I get very often 2 proposals:

(1) the requested person with profile photo, first name and last name. If a photo is shown, it means that I already assigned photos to this person.

(2) the same person, with or without profile photo, with first name, last name and mail. This proposal seems to be coming from my contacts, as it shows the same profile photo and mail address that I have for that person in my contacts.

If I add the photo to the person from contacts, the person is added as a person in Photos. But only with the first name, not the last name, which is a bit silly especially when you are systematically adding persons and having many with the same first name.

I have to merge both to get again 1 single "person" in photos, with full name (first and last).

So somehow Photos is not able to match the "persons" in photos to person in my contact list. Even when you merged both and told Photos this way that they should be matched.

In Sierra, though, the list includes new semi-non-functional names based on email addresses that are causing issues with my library.

Since OS X El Capitan there is a Preference in the Contacts app, that allows any contact found in a mail to be added to the Contacts (http://osxdaily.com/2016/02/04/turn-off-contacts-found-in-mail-mac-os-x/)

Disable this, if you only want the contacts you create manually.

Quit Mail, then open Contacts:

Disable the Contacts > Preference > General: Show Contacts Found In Apps

This will weed out your contacts.  But you cannot remove suggestions from the suggested faces, that have been created by misspelled names you entered manually.

Photos will show the key photo in the suggestions, when you select a key photo for the persons you already named.

When I name a face of a person, I take great care not to use a suggestion from a Contact card but look for the key photos I assigned. This ensures, that the name will not be abbreviated.

For casual acquaintances I prefix the name I am using in Photos with a short prefix. This will avoid that the Contacts card comes up.

Thank you for your advice, Léonie.

I tried now the contact preferences. But it does not solve the issue. In fact, I am not bothered by display of the "found contacts" proposals. I still get 2 proposals: the person a managed in/by Photos, and the same person from my contact list. So the only way seems to be as you described: be very careful not to choose the person from the contact list, but the other one. Your prefix suggestion is clever, but I think I won't use it as it means that I would have to rename all existing persons. I will wait a bit and hope that Photos will be able to match its own persons with people from my contact list.

I use the prefix to the name also to structure the list of persons. Related persons will have the same prefix and be grouped together. This helps, because I have to scroll through several screens of Person thumbnails.

I will wait a bit and hope that Photos will be able to match its own persons with people from my contact list.

Waiting is a good idea. There will probably soon the first updates with bug fixes.

But only with the first name, not the last name, which is a bit silly especially when you are systematically adding persons and having many with the same first name.

I think this is a feature and not a bug. Photos is able to keep two persons with exactly the same name separate, so you no longer have to modify the name of one them. You can have two persons with the same name and tell them apart by the picture on the thumbnail.

Yes it would be very nice if we could group Persons, e.g. family, work etc.

Today it is not very important for me, as my list of Persons is still small. But it is growing. So I will also wait a bit regarding this issue, before investing time in using prefixes for relationships.

I used Picasa some time ago, and am still in the process of migrating the photos and especially the faces...

Instead of the Person relationship issue, I would love to be able to link photos to events in my calendar, to be able to find photos by events. Instead of creating albums and naming them as the event.

But this getting off topic, regarding the initial question.

Instead of the Person relationship issue, I would love to be able to link photos to events in my calendar, to be able to find photos by events. Instead of creating albums and naming them as the event.

This will be partly accomplished by the new Memory feature. Ocasionally I am finding new memories in my library, named "On this day", and they are grouping photos from an event that happened on the same date, but a few years ago. Today I am seeing photos from Sept. 21, 2009 taken on the Galapagos Islands and from September 2008, taken in Tanzania. Photos is scanning your library automatically, to find events to create memories from.

Hmm, I will look into this later. it is difficult to change habits, especially when you have already invested some time in your personal way of organizing your stuff. Not sure if the memories are useful to me, but at least they are amusing as they are surfacing unexpected combinations of photos

Well, it's a bug to me. I have never known anyone with the exact same name, first and last, as someone else, that wasn't identified by "Jr." or "Sr.".

It can happen - I had two classmates with exactly the same first name and last name, and the two persons were not even related.