- From: Patrick Garies <pgaries@fastmail.us>
- Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2008 15:36:29 -0600
- To: "Philip Taylor (Webmaster)" <P.Taylor@Rhul.Ac.Uk>
- CC: public-html@w3.org
Philip Taylor (Webmaster) wrote: > Hmmm, I would want to argue against the inclusion of either > "firstName" or "surname" on the grounds that their semantics are > ill-defined (cultural differences ascribe different semantics); > "familyname" and "givenname" I regard as unexceptionable. I can understand objections to “firstName” (which I didn’t propose, of course) since name order is language dependent. I don’t know why you would propose “familyname” instead of “surname” though. According to http://www.m-w.com/ [1], the term family name is a synonym of the term surname; the definition of the term surname is “an added name derived from occupation or other circumstance”, which seems pretty generic to me [2]. I don’t know which languages/cultures “surname” would be inapplicable to. [1] <http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/family%20name> [2] <http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/surname> (definition 1) — Patrick Garies
Received on Monday, 14 January 2008 21:36:46 UTC