Re: [docbook] On family/given/first/last names

[Markus Hoenicka <markus.hoenicka@mhoenicka.de>]

Quoting Geraint North <geraint@transitive.com>:

> I guess the basis of my argument is that the only solution that would
> ensure that the i18n requirements were effectively dealt with would be
> to ask the person how _they_ want their name displayed and searched
> for.  This would mean that the journals wouldn't get their consistency,
> but as an author or reader, it would seem more important to me that a
> particular person was consistent _across_ different publications,
> rather than the list of authors be consistent _within_ a single
> publication.
>

Another thing: one purpose of writing names like "Last, First M."  
(besides being different from competing journals by all means) is to  
allow easy browsing of a reference listing sorted by author names. If  
you just tell the publisher how you would like to read your name e.g.  
on a book cover, this is clearly not enough to get useful reference  
listings. You'll have to add hints as to how your name should be  
sorted (remember the odd cases like "Van Zandt, Steven" in the "V"  
section vs. "van Beethoven, Ludwig" in the "B" section). Even if you  
provide the sorting hint, the listing is still hardly usable if it  
lists names as provided, e.g. it is hard to find the start of the "N"  
as in "North" section if the line starts with "Geraint". So I'm afraid  
there has to be some concept like last name to allow useful reference  
lists sorted by author names.

regards,
Markus


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Markus Hoenicka
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