Re: [geolang-comment] First proposals for ISO 639 and 3166 available

[John Cowan <jcowan@reutershealth.com>]

Lars Marius Garshol scripsit:

> Basically whether the strings in question are human-oriented names or
> labels for the subjects[1]. In my opinion these strings are clearly
> occurrences rather than names. The country at the south tip of Africa
> has names like 'South Africa' and 'Afrique du Sud', but not like 'ZA',
> 'ZAF', or '710'. 

Fair enough, but I still feel uncomfortable with saying that the string
"710" is an *occurrence* of the country denoted by "South Africa",
in the same sense that http://www.law.indiana.edu/uslawdocs/declaration.html
is an occurrence of the (U.S.) Declaration of Independence.
I may be misled by the use of the term "occurrence" here, though.

OTOH, "710" does name (within a suitably restricted scope) that country,
in the sense of being a unique label for it.  The most central sense of "name",
namely personal name, is not a basename in an XTM sense: there are other
John Cowans within any non-arbitrary scope (there is another within
Reuters, e.g., and we sometimes get each other's mail).


-- 
John Cowan        http://www.ccil.org/~cowan          jcowan@reutershealth.com
Please leave your values        |       Check your assumptions.  In fact,
   at the front desk.           |          check your assumptions at the door.
     --sign in Paris hotel      |            --Miles Vorkosigan