People's names (was Re: sqlite3 error)

[Roel Schroeven]

Hendrik van Rooyen schreef:
> "Lawrence D'Oliveiro" <ldo at geek-central.gen.new_zealand> wrote:
> 
> 
>> In message <mailman.93.1160373988.11739.python-list at python.org>, Hendrik van
>> Rooyen wrote:
>>
>>> "Lawrence D'Oliveiro" <ldo at geek-central.gen.new_zealand> wrote:
>>>
>>> 8<--------------------------------------------------------
>>>
>>>> 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).
>>> NOOOOO! - I think of my surname as "van Rooyen" - its only a string with a
>>> space in it - and its peculiar in that the first letter is not
>>> capitalised....
>>>
>>> And I am sure that the people called "von Kardorff" would not agree
>>> either...
>> So do the Dutch phone books have a lot of entries under V, then?
>>
>> It just seems less efficient to me, that's all.
> 
> Don't know about what happens in Holland - my ancestors came over here to South
> Africa a long time ago -
> a mixed up kid I am - Dutch and French from the time of the revocation of the
> edict of Nantes...
> And yes, here the phone books are sorted that way - the "van Rensburg"s precede
> the "van Rooyen"s. And what is worse, there are a lot of "van der"s too - two
> spaces in the string like "van der Merwe" who are preceded by "van der Bank"  -
> "van" basically means "from" - like the German "von" - but in Germany its an
> appellation applied to the nobility - and in my name it makes no sense as
> "Rooyen" is not a place - its a strange archaic derivative of the colour red -
> "rooij' in Dutch, spelt "rooi" in Afrikaans - and the "der" is an archaic form
> of "the" - (and modern "the" in German, if yer male) ...

It's the same here in Belgium. Except that our Van is with a capital V 
in most cases; if it's a lower v it either indicates nobility or a Dutch 
name.

I don't see it as a problem. I prefer having Van Straeten and Van 
Stralen next to each other than having them mixed up with names without 
Van like this:
Straeten, Van
Straetmans
Stralen, Van

For me the string as a whole is the name; the parts separated don't have 
much meaning.

-- 
If I have been able to see further, it was only because I stood
on the shoulders of giants.  -- Isaac Newton

Roel Schroeven