davidf wrote: ↑18 Jun 2022 08:03...
I think we would need to briefly consider whether handling Surname-Prefix and Surname is sufficient to handle the variety of naming patterns outside the Given Name/Surname pattern much of the English speaking world knows. ...
Perhaps others can outline how their native naming conventions fit to the GEDCOM restrictions of NAME = GIVN+SPFX+SURN. This must be documented somewhere - Rootstech?
...
There is no "must be documented", I'm afraid... I know from not-too-distant dialog in FamilySearch forums that FamilySearch FamilyTree are a long way from agreeing ways to handle even the sort of European names that end up in FamilySearch.
To throw in one instance that may or may not be remotely relevant to this thread - patronymics. Should they be entered into the "family name" (or whatever we want to call it)? One correspondent was adamant that she wasn't putting Welsh patronymics into the "family name" / "surname" part of a FamilySearch name. On the other hand, to me, this seemed a perfectly sensible place to put a name consisting of a list of family members. As an aside, it was far from clear to me that Welsh patronymics were particularly similar to Scandinavian patronymics because they were liable to accumulate (e.g. "ap Rhys ap Meredudd") - how does that repeat get analysed and encoded?
Somewhere I read about the collating sequences used by librarians and telephone directories, etc., and I'm fairly certain that in some countries "van Gogh" will get sorted with the "v" names and in others with the "G" names - and no, it wasn't blatant ignorance but probably did have a lot to do with frequency of occurance.
Which brings me to a concern I have with this thread.
What are the end user requirements? Access to Surname-prefixes and all the rest of that isn't a
requirement - it's a
solution (which,
in FH, may or may not satisify the requirements). If anyone feels their concerns are being dismissed by that statement, I apologise - but I have been burned by this confusion myself.
It seems to me that sorting is an important aspect of the
requirements - does Vincent need to be sorted with "van" or with "Gogh"? Do spelling variations need to be sorted separately or together - and what is a spelling variation anyway?
How do names need to be presented in reports and charts? - that's another important
requirement.
Another potential requirement - Is it important that children default to a certain "family name" when created in FH? (Currently the offspring of John Doe and Mary Roe default to a family name of Doe - not helpful if patronymics are involved)
It's perfectly logical that requirements may be satisfied in
other software by access to the prefix and suffix items, etc. It's also perfectly possible that some aspect of FH may sabotage charting, sorting and reporting because it uses prefix, suffix, etc, differently. But we might not realise that without understanding the
requirements.
Again, I apologise if this sounds like a critical review, but I feel it's important to bring out what isn't necessarily clear.
By the way, I doubt that there's any chance of an all-embracing requirement - but we might deduce requirements for a few cultures.