- From: Robin Berjon <robin@berjon.com>
- Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2011 15:10:25 +0200
- To: public-i18n-core@w3.org
- Cc: public-device-apis@w3.org
Dear I18N WG, this is just a personal comment. On Jul 4, 2011, at 21:59 , Internationalization Core Working Group Issue Tracker wrote: > In a number of cultures, multiple family names can appear in an individual's name. See, for example [1]. Because there is only one familyName field, it is unclear how to support multiple family names. For example, in some cultures, the family name appears in the middle of the name string: the well-known writer "Gabriel García Márquez" has two familial names--"García" and "Márquez". The former name is considered his surname. > > Please provide guidance on handling multiple family names. Would it be acceptable to indicate simply that multiple last names can be represented simply as a string using whichever convention is applicable in the relevant culture (in the above example, concatenation with a space)? This would avoid two things: a data model that does not match the existing interchange formats and a requirement on user agents to know how to implement the |formatted| field based on a specific cultural convention that it doesn't know. For instance, in France, some families have traditionally used multiple last names concatenated with a space (of Spanish descent or supposedly "old" families), some have used a single dash (people deciding to give their children both their names and settling on something everyone understands), and some have been forced to use a double dash (which is what happens when you have a moronic government that believes it needs to legislate every last typographical convention). As a result I think it's simpler to indicate that conventions are to be captured directly. -- Robin Berjon - http://berjon.com/ - @robinberjon
Received on Tuesday, 5 July 2011 13:10:48 UTC