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Subject: RE: DOCBOOK: Markup for personal names
I notice your comment -- correct in my experience -- that librarians and archivists do not attempt to decompose the name and/because it is difficult to do so. This is precisely why I think a usable markup model for this information is desirable -- the author may be able to supply this information. Because of this, though, I think we need to support both <personalname><givenname>Mark</givenname><secondname>B.</secondname><surname >Wroth</surname><lineal>Jr</lineal></personalname> and <personalname>Mark B. Wroth Jr</personalname> In the contexts I use them, a name can contain given name: a personal name by which the individual is indentified within his/her own family. This is the "first" or "Christian" name in common usage. other names: secondary personal names that may be given, but are not necessarily common with other family members. The "middle" name common in the US is an example. Onomastically, such a name may be a "given name" or a "surname" (my middle name, for example, is my mothers maiden surname). nickname: a personal name, usually bestowed by others. In some cases it is used in place of, and in others in addition to, the given name. Usually informal. surname: a name common to all members of a particular family, passed from generation to generation without alteration. Onomastically may have resulted from other classes of names (locatives, occupational bynames, and patronymics are all common). locative: a name element indicating a place of origin or residence. Can be viewed as a form of nickname, but is almost always used in addition to a personal name of some sort. patronymic (or matronymic): a name indicating who one's parent is. It may serve the function of a surname (e.g. Icelandic practice) or it may be used as a nickname (e.g. Russian practice). lineal marker: a particle added to distinguish between members of the same lineage with the same name (e.g. "junior/senior"). honorific: a spoken form used in address (e.g. "Mr.", "Dr", "the Honorable") title: a reference to rank held by the individual. This may be a form of address (e.g. most military ranks), but need not be: there are a number of ranks where the form of address used is not obviously related to the rank itself). Obviously, there are a lot of possibilities here, and I'm not a naming expert, so I've probably missed some. Here are my thoughts on the markup to capture this reasonably: common attribute: position (shows the place in the name order the word normally appears) Element given attributes: role (e.g. baptismal, nickname, locative ...) Element surname May contain itself (e.g. <surname><surname>Vega</surname> y <surname>Asturias</surname></surname> Element lineal Element title attribute: title|spoken (I want to leave role available for further description, while distinguishing between forms of address and titles) With a content model that allows a person's name to be marked as such without further description, I think I could live with this description. I suspect the real challenge is finding a markup that is flexible enough to be ignored, used at a minimal level, and used to capture details about the name. -----Original Message----- From: Norman Walsh [mailto:ndw@nwalsh.com] Sent: Thursday, June 21, 2001 1:09 PM To: docbook@lists.oasis-open.org Subject: DOCBOOK: Markup for personal names I've had a long standing action item to write a new proposal for "names and addresses". So I've been thinking about personal names. Right now we have author, editor, etc. but there's clearly a desire to markup other sorts of personal names (other sorts of contributors) and to cleanup the association of names and addresses. Rather than reinvent the wheel from scratch, I wonder if there are any sources we could borrow from. Does anyone know of a good name markup schema? In the meantime, there are a few high-level issues we can discuss. Our current design was influenced by the fact that we originally viewed bibliographic markup as "raw" with the expectation that a processor would generate all of the markup. We now have have "cooked" forms that allow authors to put in the markup. So one top-level question we could ask is, do we want <person><firstname>Norman</firstname><surname>Walsh</surname></person> or something like <person>Norman Walsh</person> I note that the latter form is the one that professional librarians actually use because there are too many cultural traditions for a reliable decomposition to be possible. If we want the former form, how many of these forms do we want to be able to support: Norman Walsh Norman ("Norm") Walsh Norm Mr. Walsh Norman D. Walsh and from what markup? Be seeing you, norm -- Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com> | No matter how cynical I get, I http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/ | find I just can't keep up.--Lily Chair, DocBook Technical Committee | Tomlin
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