Format
A U Thor <[email protected]>
simply mean that you should specify
FirstName MiddleName LastName <[email protected]>
Looks like middle and last names are optional (maybe the part before email doesn't have a strict format at all). Try, for example, this:
git commit --author="John <[email protected]>" -m "some fix"
As the docs say:
--author=<author>
Override the commit author. Specify an explicit author using the standard
A U Thor <[email protected]> format. Otherwise <author> is assumed to
be a pattern and is used to search for an existing commit by that author
(i.e. rev-list --all -i --author=<author>); the commit author is then copied
from the first such commit found.
if you don't use this format, git treats provided string as a pattern and tries to find matching name among the authors of other commits.