Personal Names
An excellent post (seen on Planet Gnome) on designing data models and forms for internationally-diverse personal name traditions. The author concludes by suggesting:
If designing a form or database that will accept names from people with a variety of backgrounds, you should ask yourself whether you really need to have separate fields for given name and family name.
He seems to be suggesting that it’s better to model names based on context rather than breaking them into pieces, something along the lines of what Ian Davis suggested for FOAF awhile back. Such an approach has the advantage that it’s really simple, and really flexible.
