What’s in a Name?

So, I was dialing up some Tchaikovsky on the iPod the other day...... Or is it Tschaikovsky?

Seems that he shows up both ways… Now, this isn’t some typo by me, it’s straight from CCDB lookup.  And a glance at any place that sells music shows it both ways:

With an S  ...  Or without the S

Why would I care?? Well, it mucks up my ability to find stuff, or to program in to listen to all songs by that artist… So I need to change to something consistent. Next question: which is “right”? Well, my first thought was TS…. Which probably carries over from any number of old Deutsche Gammophon recordings.  But biography.com cops out by listing both. . It does seem the shorter “no-S” version does is much more common / popular. For example, looking at Google:

Tchaikovsky = 27,700,000 results
Tschaikovsky = 434,000 results, and the dreaded “Did you mean Tchaikovsky?”

Similar results are found on Youtube searches.

Now, while I don’t generally defer to Google as the arbiter of all knowledge, it’s good enough for this particular situation. So Tchaikovsky it will be.