People's names (was Re: sqlite3 error)

[Steve Holden]

Theerasak Photha wrote:
> On 10/7/06, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo at geek-central.gen.new_zealand> wrote:
> 
> 
>>Just because most Western designers of databases do it wrong doesn't mean
>>that a) you should do it wrong, or b) they will continue to do it wrong
>>into the future, as increasing numbers of those designers come from Asian
>>and other non-Western backgrounds.
> 
> 
> Family name comes last in some Asian countries as well. :)
> 
> It might also be prudent to consider that, e.g,, some Tamils only have
> a last name for legal purposes and traditionally go by a single name.
> Lots of possibilities to consider.
> 
> 
>>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).
> 
> 
> Also 'da' for Portuguese, which means roughly same as
> Nederlands/Vlaams. Maybe. As usual: IANAE.
> 
> 
>>There would also need to be a flag field to indicate the canonical ordering
>>for writing out the full name: e.g. family-name-first, given-names-first.
>>Do we need something else for the Vietnamese case?
> 
> 
> Good question, but IIRC, family name comes first followed by any other
> given names, just as in a literary index written in English: e.g.,
> Truman, Harry S
> 
> What if you're Ho Chi Minh? Do you get to list aliases indefinitely? LOL
> 
It seems like some sort of free text search on a "full name" field looks 
like the only realistic globally-acceptable (?) option.

regards
  Steve
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