[rdfweb-dev] Proposal: Names in FoaF

[Morten Frederiksen]

"Jim Ley" <jim at jibbering.com> wrote:
>><foaf:Person>
>>  <foaf:name>Dan Brickley</foaf:name>
>>  <foaf:sortName rdf:parseType="Resource">
>>    <rdf:li><foaf:FamilyName rdf:value="Brickley"/></rdf:li>
>>    <rdf:li>
>>      <foaf:GivenName rdf:value="Daniel">
>>        <foaf:shortName rdf:value="Dan"/>
>This all gives no indication of what should be used to address Dan, one of
>the most important uses of names, what to call Dan when you meet him is an
>important thing (Consider a Rep for a brewery or similar, recording details
>of his contacts, contact management is tough - you're expected to know the
>right name to use, but of course that's not the name on the address.)
But that's not the point of the foaf:sortName property - use the
foaf:name property for that.

>>Other than that, I'm quite open to suggestions on how to model those kinds
>>of nick names (which I feel should be seperate from IRC nicks, even though
>>they sometimes overlap).
>They're not nicknames... well at least I don't consider Jim to be a
>nickname, although my passport etc. don't name me as it.
I realize we're deep into semantics of the "names" of names, but here's
how I see it:

A family name is a (part of a) name that's derived from your family,
i.e. you share this with the rest of your family (or a substantial
fraction thereof).
A given name is a (part of a) name that was given to you sometime after
birth. Whether it's a first name or a middle name is secondary.
A nick name (feel free to call it something else, how would you refer
to "Jim"?) is usually a short version of some given name, or a derived
version (e.g. Bill from William, Jim from James etc.).

>Sorry to just be finding problems with modelling names, but I do think
>they're too complicated to be answered in a global single vocab whilst still
>being useful [...]
Please continue finding problems, that's what this discussion is for!
:-)

That said, I modelled the different name parts in a way that should
cover 99.9% of names - each person is free to use only the parts that
apply - as in, not everyone may have a family name, some may instead
have a patronym or something similar.

>foaf:name - string used for your "full name"
>foaf:shortName - abbreviated name
>foaf:friendsCall   etc...
That would be possible, but what is the use case?

>I think that's easier, I don't believe the multiple givenName etc. approach
>solves my problem of "what do I call the person with mbox danbri at w3.org ?"
Try foaf:name.


Regards,
Morten Frederiksen
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