Cyrus,
Even the notion of "First Name" and "Last Name" is specific to a certain group
of cultures. "Family Name" and "Given Name" don't always go in the same order,
and it is not always the case that people are called by their given name in
informal situations, as you can see in the drafts on Chinese Names. In some
cultures, people have more than one surname, and in others, people may only
have one name.
Here is a nice article, for instance, on how/why people in Spanish cultures
have two last names. There are a lot of subtleties here, like which one to use
in formal address, and how to address a family where both parents have two last
names…:
http://perez.cs.vt.edu/twolastnames
In my opinion, it would be better to ask for what you actually want, rather
than trying to infer what to do from other fields. For instance, you could ask
for "Full Name" and "Display Name" or "Badge Name". Or "Full Name" and
"Informal Name", if what you want is to know how to address them informally.
Or, "Full Name" and "Short Name", if what you are looking for is something
shorter than the full name for use in a UI.
Margaret
On Jul 11, 2013, at 10:34 AM, Cyrus Daboo <cyrus(_at_)daboo(_dot_)name> wrote:
Hi Simon,
--On July 11, 2013 at 4:28:05 PM +0200 Simon Perreault
<simon(_dot_)perreault(_at_)viagenie(_dot_)ca> wrote:
So, from a technical standpoint, it seems better to always represent
user names using components (last, first, middle)? vCard does have an
"N" property where individual components of a name can be broken out.
I'm nowhere near an expert on this topic, but I distinctly remember
during the vCard 4 effort some participants saying that some cultures
just don't separate names into parts. In those cultures, you would just
have *a name*. Like an opaque, atomic blob I guess.
True. And in the iCalendar world attendees can also be non-human entities
like rooms or resources, which typically do not have separate components for
their names (e.g., "Conference Room 1", "HD Projector", etc). But that case
can be handled by simply specifying the full name in the "LAST-NAME" field
and leave the others blank.
--
Cyrus Daboo