5 ms·

Instead of complicated schemes that attempt to be locale aware, it seems simpler to use a general scheme that will apply regardless. Collect two values: 1. Wh

Instead of complicated schemes that attempt to be locale aware, it seems simpler to use a general scheme that will apply regardless. Collect two values: 1. What do you want to be called? e.g. if we send you an email we'll say Hello {name} 2. What is your legally recognised name i.e. what's on your passport and official documents. #2 is only relevant in some domains, in many cases #1 alone is sufficient.

Aaargh20318 3y ago
> What is your legally recognised name i.e. what's on your passport and official documents. 1) People can have multiple passports with different names. 2) a single passport can contain multiple names for the same person.
- bob778 3y ago
  What standard allows multiple aliases on one passport? AFAIK, the MRZ and chip don’t support alias fields?
  - torstenvl 3y ago
    Russian passports contain a transliterated Latinized version, which also (usually?) omits the patronymic.
    - jasonpeacock 3y ago
      And now we need a "Falsehoods developers believe about passports" doc...
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - Aaargh20318 3y ago
    ICAO 9303, part 10, section 4.7.11, data group 11 allows for a list of other names.
- AndrewOMartin 3y ago
  You're making the parent's point. Why bother trying to model the entire concept of a "name"? Just have something to display on the screen (get the user to type it in and they can't complain when you display it back) and something to put on legal documents.
hunter2_ 3y ago
As mentioned at the tail end of TFA: 3. A string that will never be displayed, but will result in proper sorting. It's not simply a concatenation of all name parts, though. Omitting spaces and punctuation is also critical for a nice sort, so that apostrophes and the like don't shunt things to the top or bottom. But don't just filter to Latin letters, keep all [0] letters! [0] https://stackoverflow.com/a/3617818 https://stackoverflow.com/a/3617818
spookthesunset 3y ago
Which is very cool until you have to interface with systems expecting first/last name :-( When my last company did phone numbers we just let it be free text…
- esperent 3y ago
  I'm always surprised there's no (widely used) international standard here. It seems like we have international standards for nearly everything. But for some reason we still use the western first-middle-last naming structure as a de-facto standard and as soon as you have to accommodate people from one of the many cultures that don't use this, you're in trouble. I've even run into trouble occasionally as a Western person with fairly normal first and last but no middle name. More than once I've been confronted with online forms that require a middle name (not for many years though, thankfully).
  - spookthesunset 3y ago
    We basically had three fields. First and last, but that was because we had to interface with tons of internal and external entities that required it. And we had a freetext “spoken name” that would be used all over the site. Good times. There is an ISO standard for phone numbers, actually. There are even libraries to parse phone numbers into the format. That being said, for “non machine readable” phone numbers (say for a contacts app) some say you should keep it free text because people plug all kinds of shit into the field and if you aren’t using it to send messages/voice/whatever just let the user do whatever…
  - HeavyStorm 3y ago
    Please don't call it "western". Most Latin languages, the majority of the western culture, don't have just two names. This is exclusively Anglo-Saxon (or something), not "western"
    - esperent 3y ago
      I stated three names in my comment: first-middle-last. It's also common to put more than one name, or hyphenated names, in any of those fields so this format suits anywhere more than two names, as long as they roughly follow the format first ... nth ... last. I think this covers all western names. If not, please give me examples. The problem arises when the order is reversed (e.g Vietnamese), or when there's only one name and the form requires at least two names. And probably for other name formats saying around the world that I'm not aware of.

Aaargh20318 3y ago

> What is your legally recognised name i.e. what's on your passport and official documents. 1) People can have multiple passports with different names. 2) a single passport can contain multiple names for the same person.

bob778 3y ago
What standard allows multiple aliases on one passport? AFAIK, the MRZ and chip don’t support alias fields?
- torstenvl 3y ago
  Russian passports contain a transliterated Latinized version, which also (usually?) omits the patronymic.
  - jasonpeacock 3y ago
    And now we need a "Falsehoods developers believe about passports" doc...
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- Aaargh20318 3y ago
  ICAO 9303, part 10, section 4.7.11, data group 11 allows for a list of other names.
AndrewOMartin 3y ago
You're making the parent's point. Why bother trying to model the entire concept of a "name"? Just have something to display on the screen (get the user to type it in and they can't complain when you display it back) and something to put on legal documents.

hunter2_ 3y ago

As mentioned at the tail end of TFA: 3. A string that will never be displayed, but will result in proper sorting. It's not simply a concatenation of all name parts, though. Omitting spaces and punctuation is also critical for a nice sort, so that apostrophes and the like don't shunt things to the top or bottom. But don't just filter to Latin letters, keep all [0] letters! [0] https://stackoverflow.com/a/3617818 https://stackoverflow.com/a/3617818

spookthesunset 3y ago

Which is very cool until you have to interface with systems expecting first/last name :-( When my last company did phone numbers we just let it be free text…

esperent 3y ago
I'm always surprised there's no (widely used) international standard here. It seems like we have international standards for nearly everything. But for some reason we still use the western first-middle-last naming structure as a de-facto standard and as soon as you have to accommodate people from one of the many cultures that don't use this, you're in trouble. I've even run into trouble occasionally as a Western person with fairly normal first and last but no middle name. More than once I've been confronted with online forms that require a middle name (not for many years though, thankfully).
- spookthesunset 3y ago
  We basically had three fields. First and last, but that was because we had to interface with tons of internal and external entities that required it. And we had a freetext “spoken name” that would be used all over the site. Good times. There is an ISO standard for phone numbers, actually. There are even libraries to parse phone numbers into the format. That being said, for “non machine readable” phone numbers (say for a contacts app) some say you should keep it free text because people plug all kinds of shit into the field and if you aren’t using it to send messages/voice/whatever just let the user do whatever…
- HeavyStorm 3y ago
  Please don't call it "western". Most Latin languages, the majority of the western culture, don't have just two names. This is exclusively Anglo-Saxon (or something), not "western"
  - esperent 3y ago
    I stated three names in my comment: first-middle-last. It's also common to put more than one name, or hyphenated names, in any of those fields so this format suits anywhere more than two names, as long as they roughly follow the format first ... nth ... last. I think this covers all western names. If not, please give me examples. The problem arises when the order is reversed (e.g Vietnamese), or when there's only one name and the form requires at least two names. And probably for other name formats saying around the world that I'm not aware of.