Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote: > In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, John > Machin wrote: > > >>Two problems so far: >>(1) If you then assume that you should print the phone directory in >>order of family name, that's not appropriate in some places e.g. >>Iceland; neither is addressing Jon Jonsson as "Mr Jonsson", and BTW it >>can be their mother's name e.g. if she has more fame or recognition >>than their father. > > > Your bringing up the phone directory is a good point. That's probably the > most widely-consulted list of people's names around, so it's worthwhile > following whatever conventions are laid out in each country/region's phone > books. (There's also the electoral roll, I suppose, but I would assume that > follows the same sorts of conventions as the phone book.) > > >>(2) Arabic names: you may or may not have their father's name. You >>might not even have the [usually only one] given name. For example: the >>person who was known as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi: this means "father of >>Musab, the man from Zarqa [a city in Jordan]". You may have the family >>name as well as the father's and grandfather's given name. You can have >>the occupation, honorifics, nicknames. For a brief overview, read this: >>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_names > > > The question for me is: which part of his name would he share in common with > his brothers and sisters? That's the part I would call the "family name". > > One might raise the issue of using names to trace genealogies, origins etc, > but that's not my concern here. I'm just trying to come up with a way to > represent names of individuals, in such a way that they can easily be found > (as in, for example, the local phone book). > > >>>I wonder if we need another "middle" field for holding the "bin/binte" >>>part (could also hold, e.g. "Van" for those names that use this). >> >>Not a good idea, IMHO. Consider "Nguyen Van Tran" vs 'Rembrandt van >>Rijn". Would you peel the Da off Da Costa but not the D' off >>D'Oliveiro? What do you do with the bod who fills in a form as Dermot >>O'Sullivan one month and Diarmaid Ó Súilleabháin the next? > > > The obvious question is, what does the local phone book do? How do the Dutch > phone books deal with all the "vans", and the Irish ones with all the "O" > or "O'"s? Do they put them under V and O respectively, or do they ignore > that part and look at the rest of the family name (which would make mor > sense to me)? > Don't forget the UK, where the scots are accommodated by filing Mc before Mac everywhere except the 'phone book, where IIRC they are treated as equivalent.
regards Steve -- Steve Holden +44 150 684 7255 +1 800 494 3119 Holden Web LLC/Ltd http://www.holdenweb.com Skype: holdenweb http://holdenweb.blogspot.com Recent Ramblings http://del.icio.us/steve.holden -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list