Indeed. I think James' post provides a very interesting perspective that
most of us are not typically as aware of. I encourage folks to read the
full blog post!
There just isn't an easy way to deal with names because of the
multi-cultural aspects. Perhaps that's why there is such a proliferation
of name/address standards and not much alignment betwixt them...
Best regards,
--Scott
Norman Walsh wrote:
> Our decision not to deal with the apparently insensitive use of
> firstname/surname rather than givenname/familyname (or something like
> that) in DocBook V5.0 is one of the few areas where I feel like I wish
> we'd done a little more.
>
> Maybe I don't have to:
>
> http://blog.jclark.com/2007/12/thai-personal-names.html
>
> In particular,
>
> "(I have to say that this has led me to question what I perceive to
> be the i18n orthodoxy that it's more i18n-ly correct to talk of
> given name/family name than first name/last name. Why does it
> matter whether a name is a family name or a given name? Surely what
> matters is the cultural role that the name plays.)"
>
> Be seeing you,
> norm
>
