xml-dev - Re: onomastical

[John Cowan <jcowan@reutershealth.com>]

Lou Burnard wrote:

> |Separate first-name and last-name elements are not good internationalization,
> |because some people don't have identifiable first names and last names,
> |or if they do, they may not mean what you expect; e.g. Hungarian, Japanese,
> |and Chinese names have the family name first.
> 
> I would argue that au contraire separating first and last name
> elements *is* good internationalization

Separating surnames/sortnames is useful.  What I was actually criticizing
was the terms "first name" and "last name" themselves.  Some people have the
family name first, some last, and for some there is no identifiable
"family name", as Icelanders and some Arabs.  Furthermore, having a
content model (first-name, last-name) makes it hard to distinguish
George Bush from George W. Bush.

> Or maybe
> <persName><surname>Murata</surname><givenName>Makoto</givenName></persName>

Fine, but what about "David Oddson" (Prime Minister of Iceland), where
"David" is a given name, "Oddson" is a patronymic, and the appropriate
sort key is "David"?  Your markup either won't handle this or won't
do what you want.  I represent it as <name><cname>David Oddson</cname>
<sname>David</sname></name>.
 
> (http://www.hcu.ox.ac.uk/TEI/Guidelines/ND.htm)

This hideously rococo structure comes with a disclaimer that it won't
even handle all cases.  This may be adequate for mere document markup,
but for processing (document or otherwise), we need to be able to
handle every case somehow.

-- 

Schlingt dreifach einen Kreis um dies! || John Cowan <jcowan@reutershealth.com>
Schliesst euer Aug vor heiliger Schau,  || http://www.reutershealth.com
Denn er genoss vom Honig-Tau,           || http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
Und trank die Milch vom Paradies.            -- Coleridge (tr. Politzer)

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