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

Hans Teijgeler wrote:
> 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. 

Interesting. I must admit I did not know that!

And what about the Germans? Ludwig van Beethoven (I know Beethoven came
from a Flamish family, in fact...). Or von Weizecker (the former
president of Germany)?

>                              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 -:)

Yeah... but I do not think we should add 'religion' to the vCard
ontology:-) [In some countries, like France, it might be illegal to ask
for this information:-)]

Internationalization is fun, but we should be careful. If we want to
solve all possible problems in vCard, we may spend a LOOONG time on
that. We may have to finalzie what we have today and forget about these
issues for now...

Ivan

> 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