biblatex: Abbreviated author names?

Loading biblatex with the package option giveninits=true will just print the initial of the author's first name.

Note that this will not work in somewhat old versions, and you must use (the now-deprecated) firstinits=true option instead, which accomplishes the same thing.

While this is way to late, it might still help someone:

If you are actually looking for emulating the abbrv style, then there is this simple solution of adding style=trad-abbrv to the package options (before any other).