4 ms·

If you work for a very specific market, provide a canonical way to input the names, but be very very lenient to omissions or extra information. For example, in

If you work for a very specific market, provide a canonical way to input the names, but be very very lenient to omissions or extra information. For example, in official Russian documents it's Surname-Name-Patronimic. Which will of course break for immigrants, asylum seekers, foreigners etc. But you can still provide (and store) the names in that order, but let people omit any/all of the fields (and make sure they accept ridiculously long names as well). Outside of government/finanical forms there's rarely a need to worry about 100% correct sorting of names. So go just for one text field, and let people fill it out however they want.

Muromec 6y ago
>For example, in official Russian documents it's Surname-Name-Patronimic. Which will of course break for immigrants, asylum seekers, foreigners etc How does it break? Wouldn't government just form patronimic from fathers name and call it a day?
- dmitriid 6y ago
  That's how it's usually solved, and it's a very awkward workaround: - there are cases when the father isn't known. Or even the surname isn't known (people dealing with asylum seekers run into these issues all the time) - Foreign names are not easily converted to patronymics. Russian has adapted Russian names to this scheme: Ivan —> Ivánovich, Vasily -> Vasilevich, Ilya -> Ilyich (note the suffixes -[ov]ich, -[ev]ich, -[]ich). Once you get foreign names, this becomes weird even with European names, and they are often related to a degree to Russian names. Asian names become weird to the extreme, especially with names like Hui which are a cuss word in Russian [1] John -> Johnovich may work, but Huich will not :) - People born to/raised by two mothers will not have a patronymic. There are cases even now when people give their kids a matronymic, but that is a battle against bureaucracy. - And this goes beyond just patronymics. There will be people who don't have a surname. Or the name/surname will include numbers which are not allowed in Russian, but are common in English (John Smith the Third etc.). But by no I'm just reiterating the falsehoods :) [1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/хуй https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/хуй
  - Muromec 6y ago
    >Once you get foreign names, this becomes weird even with European names, and they are often related to a degree to Russian names. Asian names become weird to the extreme, especially with names like Hui which are a cuss word in Russian [1] John -> Johnovich may work, but Huich will not :) In this case registry official simply starts writing random shit into the system and it becomes your problem. At least that's how it was with "not so Russian names" in USSR times -- just write whatever Russian name that starts with same letter.
  - Uberphallus 6y ago
    > Once you get foreign names, this becomes weird even with European names Wait until you think about multi-heritage names. My son is Spanish AND Ukrainian. Ukrainian naming customs are like Russian, then in Spanish you have two last names. This breaks down as follows: in Spanish the second last name is that of the mom, but in slavic naming customs it changes according to the gender. So in Spain he won't have the last name of the mother, and in Ukraine his last name doesn't match mine. So he's finally name+last name+second last name for Spain, name + ugly patronymic + long ass, unique in the world last name for Ukraine. And in both cases, the name is invariably pronounced wrong, as Spanish doesn't have the Ukrainian и sound, and Ukrainian doesn't have the Spanish z sound. Even for us the parents it doesn't come naturally to pronounce it, so it's not like we can get offended by that.
    - Muromec 6y ago
      >So he's finally name+last name+second last name for Spain, name + ugly patronymic + long ass, unique in the world last name for Ukraine. Oh, dealing with authorities should be fun. Last time I had been there reissuing passport for my son, ДМС officials suddenly realized, that his patronymic is somehow present in a demographic registry without being present in any primary records (birth cert, translations, applications etc). Then they spent solid 30 minutes trying to find nonexistent number of said birth certificate.
      - Uberphallus 6y ago
        Yeah, on top he was born in France, and the consular services of either country basically say, "he'll have the name French authorities let you write"; plus patronymic, if wanted, in case of Ukraine. Luckily we had a public servant that was familiar with naming conventions of both countries and his name is the one his mom and I agreed respected both naming conventions the most.

Muromec 6y ago

>For example, in official Russian documents it's Surname-Name-Patronimic. Which will of course break for immigrants, asylum seekers, foreigners etc How does it break? Wouldn't government just form patronimic from fathers name and call it a day?

dmitriid 6y ago
That's how it's usually solved, and it's a very awkward workaround: - there are cases when the father isn't known. Or even the surname isn't known (people dealing with asylum seekers run into these issues all the time) - Foreign names are not easily converted to patronymics. Russian has adapted Russian names to this scheme: Ivan —> Ivánovich, Vasily -> Vasilevich, Ilya -> Ilyich (note the suffixes -[ov]ich, -[ev]ich, -[]ich). Once you get foreign names, this becomes weird even with European names, and they are often related to a degree to Russian names. Asian names become weird to the extreme, especially with names like Hui which are a cuss word in Russian [1] John -> Johnovich may work, but Huich will not :) - People born to/raised by two mothers will not have a patronymic. There are cases even now when people give their kids a matronymic, but that is a battle against bureaucracy. - And this goes beyond just patronymics. There will be people who don't have a surname. Or the name/surname will include numbers which are not allowed in Russian, but are common in English (John Smith the Third etc.). But by no I'm just reiterating the falsehoods :) [1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/хуй https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/хуй
- Muromec 6y ago
  >Once you get foreign names, this becomes weird even with European names, and they are often related to a degree to Russian names. Asian names become weird to the extreme, especially with names like Hui which are a cuss word in Russian [1] John -> Johnovich may work, but Huich will not :) In this case registry official simply starts writing random shit into the system and it becomes your problem. At least that's how it was with "not so Russian names" in USSR times -- just write whatever Russian name that starts with same letter.
- Uberphallus 6y ago
  > Once you get foreign names, this becomes weird even with European names Wait until you think about multi-heritage names. My son is Spanish AND Ukrainian. Ukrainian naming customs are like Russian, then in Spanish you have two last names. This breaks down as follows: in Spanish the second last name is that of the mom, but in slavic naming customs it changes according to the gender. So in Spain he won't have the last name of the mother, and in Ukraine his last name doesn't match mine. So he's finally name+last name+second last name for Spain, name + ugly patronymic + long ass, unique in the world last name for Ukraine. And in both cases, the name is invariably pronounced wrong, as Spanish doesn't have the Ukrainian и sound, and Ukrainian doesn't have the Spanish z sound. Even for us the parents it doesn't come naturally to pronounce it, so it's not like we can get offended by that.
  - Muromec 6y ago
    >So he's finally name+last name+second last name for Spain, name + ugly patronymic + long ass, unique in the world last name for Ukraine. Oh, dealing with authorities should be fun. Last time I had been there reissuing passport for my son, ДМС officials suddenly realized, that his patronymic is somehow present in a demographic registry without being present in any primary records (birth cert, translations, applications etc). Then they spent solid 30 minutes trying to find nonexistent number of said birth certificate.
    - Uberphallus 6y ago
      Yeah, on top he was born in France, and the consular services of either country basically say, "he'll have the name French authorities let you write"; plus patronymic, if wanted, in case of Ukraine. Luckily we had a public servant that was familiar with naming conventions of both countries and his name is the one his mom and I agreed respected both naming conventions the most.