On family/given/first/last names

[Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com>]

Our decision not to deal with the apparently insensitive use of
firstname/surname rather than givenname/familyname (or something like
that) in DocBook V5.0 is one of the few areas where I feel like I wish
we'd done a little more.

Maybe I don't have to: 

  http://blog.jclark.com/2007/12/thai-personal-names.html

In particular, 

   "(I have to say that this has led me to question what I perceive to
   be the i18n orthodoxy that it's more i18n-ly correct to talk of
   given name/family name than first name/last name. Why does it
   matter whether a name is a family name or a given name? Surely what
   matters is the cultural role that the name plays.)"

                                        Be seeing you,
                                          norm

-- 
Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com>      | In the life of saints, technically
http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/ | so called, the spiritual
Chair, DocBook Technical Committee | facilities are strong, but what
                                   | gives the impression of
                                   | extravagance proves usually on
                                   | examination to be a relative
                                   | deficiency of intellect.--William
                                   | James

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