Personal names around the world

w3.org

19 points·mxhold··5 comments

"How do people's names differ around the world, and what are the implications of those differences on the design of forms, databases, ontologies, etc. for the Web?"

This has basically convinced me that you should only ever have a single (long) "Name" text input.

Except as pointed out that's generally not sufficient for Japanese since given their kanji based name you'll have no idea how to pronounce or sort it without them also telling you in a separate field how it's pronounced.

There's also the issue of interacting with other systems. You may want just one field but some credit card processor might want 2 etc....

Except in this case your "Dear <insert full name here>" e-mails might not sound very friendly or appropriate.

This is always a difficult task to tackle, especially when dealing with data sources like Active Directory that want a surname and given name, which may not always be the case for everyone.

Admittedly the best answer is to get a "Family Name" and a "Nick Name" (not to be confused with a user name). The big problem is convincing the management they don't need to collect first name, last name, greeting...etc

I was thinking about this- maybe one could have a "formal name", "familiar name", and "honorific" field?

I think the problem is drawing the distinction between the questions "what is your canonical identity?" and "how should we address you?"

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