RE: a guy with 5 first names, from I18N comments on P3P, for vCard/RDF

Hi,
To add to the confusion: the 'van' is a separate word in Dutch names, but
not in Belgian (Flemish) names. There you have names like VanderBroecken,
under 'V' in the phonebook. In Tne Netherlands he/she would have a name "van
der Broecken", under 'B'.
Middle name is typical for the US I think. I don't have one (and don't miss
it either). In Holland people with more than two names are usually Roman
Catholic -:)
Hans

-----Original Message-----
From: semantic-web-request@w3.org [mailto:semantic-web-request@w3.org] On
Behalf Of Ivan Herman
Sent: Friday, November 17, 2006 12:10
To: Dan Connolly
Cc: semantic-web@w3.org; Steven Pemberton
Subject: Re: a guy with 5 first names, from I18N comments on P3P, for
vCard/RDF

[I copy this to Steven Pemberton. He might know more about this than I do]

Dan Connolly wrote:
> On Fri, 2006-11-17 at 11:08 +0100, Ivan Herman wrote:
> 
>>Indeed, and van Mierlo's name was by no means unusual by Dutch 
>>standards. Although I might consider A.F.M.O. as middle names; I am 
>>not really sure what 'middle name' means...
> 
> 
> The term in the vCard spec isn't 'middle name' but 'additional name'; 
> who knows if that's any clearer...
> 

Alan Kotok would say: clear, like mud:-)


> Is there software that Dutch people commonly use to manage their 
> contacts? Does it read/write vCard format?
> Does it exploit anything beyond
> the fullname field? After all, this isn't a philosophical excercise; 
> it's software engineering.
> 

Not being Dutch, I am not necessarily the best person to ask, but people use
the same tools as everybody else. I have not seen any specifically 'Dutch'
software.

I would assume people add those other names as additional names and that
does make sense. Yes, lots of Dutch people have 5-6 of those names, but all
of them use, in fact, only one of those, so additional name sounds all
right.

There are much more problems with the 'van', 'ter', 'ten', etc, again very
widespread in Dutch (or Belgian) names. It also happens in other languages,
think of Christian de Sainte Marie...

The Dutch phonebook alphabetized under the last name, ie, 'M' for 'Mierlo'
in this case and not 'v' for 'van'. And I know that this creates all kinds
of problems in software. For example, I have a colleague whose name is
Robert van Liere; in my address list on my PDA/Phone I could use 'Robert
van' as first name, and 'Liere' as last name, or (this is what I do) 'van'
as an additional name. If I put it as part of the family name, then the
order will go wrong.

B.t.w., just to add to the mess. The term 'first name' and 'last name'
is always very disturbing for me. In Hungarian, the order is the opposite as
in, say, English. Ie, in Hungarian, my name is Herman Iván.
So what is my last name? Iván? :-(

Ivan

> I didn't put the "van" prefix in any of the n sub-fields.
> Is there one that it belongs in? Does this name get alphabetized under 
> 'v' or under 'M' in the phonebook?
> 
> 
>>> -- http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/grddl-wg/td/card5n.html
>>>
>>> -- http://www.w3.org/2002/12/cal/rfc2426#sec3.1.2
> 
> 

-- 

Ivan Herman, W3C Semantic Web Activity Lead
URL: http://www.w3.org/People/Ivan/
PGP Key: http://www.cwi.nl/%7Eivan/AboutMe/pgpkey.html
FOAF: http://www.ivan-herman.net/foaf.rdf


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Received on Friday, 17 November 2006 13:31:04 UTC