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Sadly, it isn't always up to the people who design the schemas. For example, Iceland has very restrictive naming laws: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naming_la
by msla 5y ago
Sadly, it isn't always up to the people who design the schemas.
For example, Iceland has very restrictive naming laws:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naming_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naming_law
> Parents are limited to choosing children's names from the Personal Names Register, which as of 2013 approved 1800 names for each gender.[20] Since 2019 given names are no longer restricted by gender.[21] The Icelandic Naming Committee maintains the list and hears requests for exceptions.
Israel apparently demands first and last names:
> According to a law from 1956, a person should have a first name (more than one is permitted) and surname (a double-barrelled name is permitted).
Finland is, apparently, worse than Iceland:
> The Names Act of 1985 requires that all Finnish citizens and residents have at least one and at the most four first names. Persons who do not have a first name are obligated to adopt one when they are entered into the Finnish national population database. Parents of new-born children must name their child and inform the population registry within two months of the child's birth. The name may be chosen freely, but it must not be
> a name used primarily by persons of the other sex
> a name foreign to the naming tradition in Finland
> a surname, except a patronymic as last given name
> a name already used by a sibling, if this is to be the only given name.
- half-kh-hacker 5y agoSo systems in these countries should just be built without any regard for foreign names? There isn't really a working excuse for a broken schema. Just have a blanket 'name' field. The name someone wants to be called and their legal name isn't necessarily the same, either. If you're writing normal software, you shouldn't really care about these legal provisions. I guess you'd want a 'Billing Name' too in most cases.
- msla 5y ago> So systems in these countries should just be built without any regard for foreign names? I never said anything about "should" and I think this conflation of "what this person knows the world is" with "what this person thinks the world should be" is detrimental to discourse. I've seen it in multiple places, especially online, and it leads to arguments where both people actually agree on what should be, but one of them is talking about what is and the other person can't or won't tell the difference between the two.
- Hackbraten 5y agoWhich of the restrictions you listed would be any more difficult to comply with if your software has a single full name field?
- mulmen 5y agoPhilosophically a database schema should reflect reality to the extent necessary to achieve your goals. In the case of a population registry database codifying the laws of the country in the database schema is a feature, not a bug. The problem in that case is the laws, not the schema.
- mjevans 5y agoLaw is something decided by judges, possibly in Iceland too. The database should reflect the reality that humans are messy and not try to out-think / hardcode patterns.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- xena 5y agoWhy does your software need to enforce icelandic law?
- msla 5y agoIt would were I writing software for the Icelandic government. Why do you think I'd have any choice in the matter?
- joshka 5y agoI think the question still remains - is codifying law in a database schema the right place for that. It seems like it would be rather brittle compared to making this an application level concern.
- mulmen 5y agoThese laws are fascinating. I wonder, what was the motivation for creating them?
- brandmeyer 5y agoIceland is a somewhat special case. As a tiny culture of < 400k people, it has to work hard to maintain cultural distinctiveness in an interconnected world. They don't just have a restrictive naming law, they also have dedicated teams which are focused on maintaining and preserving a distinctive definition of their language. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%81rni_Magn%C3%BAsson_Institute_for_Icelandic_Studies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%81rni_Magn%C3%BAsson_Insti...