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> In practice our schema fragment works great with forms that
> have slots for firstname, middlename, lastname
>
Both my parents are generally known by their second Christian name (my
father is English, my mother German, so this is not peculiar to one
culture). Many IT systems - especially health systems - can't cope with
this, and regularly address them by their first Christian name, which is
not only impolite, it can create the risk that they don't get the right
medication. Before you assert that your schema fragment "works great",
you need to ask the victims of your IT system whether they agree.
(And when I say "Christian name" rather than "given name", I mean it.
You might call it a given name, but they don't.)
I had a colleague who was generally known by his third Christian name
(A. P. Graham Brown). Most US-based IT systems (and government forms)
fall in a heap on that one.
Under UK Data Protection legislation, if a data subject tells you that
your data on them is inaccurate, you are obliged to correct it. If your
data model can't represent the information accurately, that's no excuse.
Michael Kay
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