[rdfweb-dev] Re: rdfweb-dev Digest, Vol 3, Issue 9

[Tim Mansfield]

Morten Frederiksen said:
> An alternative suggestion:
> Keep foaf:name (and foaf:nick), add a literal foaf:sortableName (or
> something like that, e.g. "Brickley, Dan") and drop the rest, leaving
> the detailed modelling to another vocabulary (and namespace), perhaps
> one that could build on my first proposal.

> This would solve the sorting issues and not force everyone into a
> western style (or feel left out).

Modulo Bill's concerns about sorting order, this makes a lot of sense to me. In most cultures I'm aware of people have a long string of names each of which may or may not have a semantics associated with genealogy, gender and/or family position (literally, it's not uncommon to find people in Korea or Vietnam who are called "three" or "five" - their place in the family), but then a familiar name by which they're called.

If we just model those two levels: essentially "full name" and "what are you called", that should catch an awful lot of cases.

[The following bit is just be being a name wonk - it doesn't bear heavily on the discussion, it's just cool]

The only qualm I have then is that in many cultures familiarity isn't the simple bi-level affair that it is for most of us English-speaking folk. Thais (of whom probably less than a million use the Net) have a family name, a formal given name and an informal given name. The formal given name is used by strangers to cite the person, usually with an honorific. The informal given name is used by friends and family. But the family name is just about never used except for official documentation.

As an example:

A person whose passport reads: "Thongrob Chulalongkorn"
might also have the informal name: "Lek" - this is not usually recorded officially.

He would be called "Khun Thongrob" (khun means something similar to "san" in Japanese, mr/ms/mrs/miss) by a stranger being polite.

He would universally be called "Lek" by friends, who may not know his other names at all.

It's not clear to me which name such a person would choose for "what are you called" (above), but I guess as long as we make that their decision, we've done OK.

So, anyway, yeah. SortableFullName plus WhatAreYouCalledName is probably not so bad. The in-group/out-group and social status distinctions that make it important to know who is doing the calling rarely survive the transit to the Net anyway currently.

Sorry. That was a ramble.

Tim