More on names

[naath]

So, you want someone to tell you their name... what kind of thing SHOULD you do if you don't want be the target of IRE and RUDE EMAILS :-p

(this is just my opinion, of course)

Two main things:
*Think about what you are going to use their name for, and ask them in a way that makes that clear; if for more than one thing, ask more than once.
*Accept any string the user can type; if you do need to make rules about what can not be in this string, or about the length of it, then say "sorry, our system can not handle your name" rather than "that's not a name" - it might be someone being silly, but it might be that a person really has a name that's too long or too obscure-unicode or whatever. Take a single string - not a drop-down title + string or "firstname" an "lastname" separately.

In general try to avoid assuming things about their name, or how they want you to use their name: some people want you to use a title (or more than one) as part of their name or instead of their name, others do not use any title (a full list of every title people might use would be very long); some people want you to use their first name or their last name or (one of) their middle name(s); some people want you to realise that their last name has a space in it but is one name and please use both parts (sim. for first and other names); some people use their initials (CJ Cregg off the West Wing comes to mind as an example); some use a shortened form of one of their names; others use a nickname; for some people the title(s) come first, for others last (are their in-fix titles?). Would it not be so much easier to ASK than to try to guess whether you are meant to say and risk getting the formality-level wrong?

I am actually reminded of this by my mother complaining to me (yet again) about annoying hotel staff who use "Firstname" to address her rather than "Mrs Surname". Whilst many people (like me) are happy to always use our personal names, many other people (like Mum) prefer to use a more formal form of address. And this is with a common British name, in a British hotel!

Comments

[rmc28]

Have you seen this from the W3C: Personal names around the world ?

[naath]

No I had not, that is a very useful document. Thank you.

Possibly more people involved in creating stuff that uses names could do with reading it :-p

I especially like the "what should we call you" field.

[hoiho.livejournal.com]

are their in-fix titles?

Alfred Lord Tennyson comes to mind.

[naath.livejournal.com]

good point, well made.

[fanf]

This article has agrees with your suggestions, and adds some refinements. http://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-personal-names

[naath.livejournal.com]

Heh, Rachel commented on DW to tell me just that ;-p it is a very good article.

[koryne-is-me.livejournal.com]

It was amusing to read that article and then reflect on the ways in which it directly contradicted my current Open University courses on Java Systems and databases, which highly encourage seperate fields for 'title' 'first name' 'surname'.

[naath.livejournal.com]

Yes, well, a lot of people think names come it 'title' (from a short list) 'first name', 'last name' meaning the "obvious" Western things. But a lot of people would disagree. So the OU is on this point quite simply wrong.

Most people will admit to having a name, at least one by which you may address them even if not everyone is going to use the same name to address them. Beyond that... well, beyond that almost ANYTHING goes.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

I had to cite a paper with one author who was Indonesian and had only one name. My PhD examiners pointed this out as a typo until I explained that the guy had written his name clearly at the top of the paper and there was only one word in it. BibTeX on the other hand didn't even blink.

[naath.livejournal.com]

Wow, your examiners really fine-combed your Thesis... but apparently not to the extent of FOLLOWING the references.

And yay BibTeX.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

To be fair, there were more than 200 of said references.

[sidheag.livejournal.com]

Accept any string the user can type; if you do need to make rules about what can not be in this string,
but do be careful what you will do with it (http://xkcd.com/327/)!

[naath.livejournal.com]

Well, yes, naturally :-p

[ghoti.livejournal.com]

There's also the fact that names don't always begin with a capital letter. One of the surnames I might have ended up with is van Well. Two words, no initial capital, one name. A lot of people can cope with the two words bit but not the capitalisation.

[naath.livejournal.com]

That's interesting, I didn't know that could happen.

[sath.livejournal.com]

that reminds me of another thing that G+ doesnt like; capitals in the middle of a 'name'. So all these scottish clans McSomething are right out. lol.

[randeknight.livejournal.com]

Language is the for purpose of communication. So long as the intent is clear, communication has happened.
Hence I don't mind what people call me so long as there isn't any malign intent.
eg, I'll accept my school nickname of 'Ching', but have been known to bang someone's head against a wall for 'Ching Wing Wong Wang' - the first, people may not know better, but the latter he was clearly making the effort to insult.

Sometimes the intent is clearer than the actual meaning of the words. eg. "Police, Stop!" doesn't mean for the police to stop.

[sath.livejournal.com]

in the end it doesn't matter how it's explained, because G+ went against their own terms, which clearly state 'use the name that you normally go by', and then they proceed to act completely different to that. so.. thinking up better ways seems arbitrary really, because G+ can't even stand by what their guidlines say anyway.. boring really.

[alitalf.livejournal.com]

Ages ago I had to write some Perl to split up freeform names into sections that would allow addressing to "Ms J Smith", We had to accept that there wasn't a way to do it that could be relied on to be correct in all cases. I think, in the end, the answer was to ask people to type in how they should be addressed on snailmail labels.