People's names (was Re: sqlite3 error)

[Hendrik van Rooyen]

"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) ...

And that lot completely ignores other animals like the "Janse van Rensburg"s,
who go in amongst the "J"s...

HTH - Hendrik