> There are no fixed patterns for names or naming conventions. > There are many societies where there are no 'Family' names at > all. Some have Tribe names in lieu, some with father's or > village name as 'names' somewhere wedged in the name string. > Some with just unique names with nothing else. To add to this > confusion you would then have to find sub-components for nick > names and aliases. Yes, the whole gamut :-)
In GnuMed we deal with it like this: person: title name: lastnames firstnames preferred Eg. a person can have any number of name records. Only one of them can be active, eg the "valid" one at any one time, eg the one being displayed in the EMR after the patient is called up. Each name record consists of lastnames, firstnames and preferred name. Lastnames is akin to "major name", eg a "group identifier" (family, tribe, village, you name it). Firstnames is a collection of "minor names" all in one string, eg the identifier within the group. Preferred is a name the person wants to go by such as a nickname, warrior name, etc. Notice that title is a property of person, not of name ! Karsten -- GPG key ID E4071346 @ wwwkeys.pgp.net E167 67FD A291 2BEA 73BD 4537 78B9 A9F9 E407 1346 - If you have any questions about using this list, please send a message to d.lloyd at openehr.org
