Human names (was: Elements order:)

[John Cowan <cowan@mercury.ccil.org>]

Christopher R. Maden scripsit:

> I disagree there - I like to be able to encode Asian and western names in 
> their proper cultural order but still know which is the given and which is 
> the family name.

The best way to handle this particular modeling situation is to store
the full name, in culturally correct order, in one element, and the
sorting name in another:

<name><commonName>John Cowan</commonName><sortName>Cowan, John</sortName></name>

This is close to what X.500 does with its commonName and surname fields.
In this way we can handle different cases:

English/French/German: order is personal name, surname; sort by surname
Magyar/Chinese/Japanese: order is surname, personal name: sort by surname
Icelandic: order is personal name, patronymic: sort by personal name
Hispanic: order is personal name, surname, mother's surname: sort by surname
Russian: order is personal name, patronymic, surname: sort by surname
Arabic: ???

As usual with i18n, It's Harder Than You Think, even after applying this rule.
:-)

-- 
John Cowan           http://www.ccil.org/~cowan              cowan@ccil.org
Please leave your values        |       Check your assumptions.  In fact,
   at the front desk.           |          check your assumptions at the door.
     --sign in Paris hotel      |            --Miles Vorkosigan