People's names (was Re: sqlite3 error)

[Theerasak Photha]

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

-- Theerasak