For many surnames there are list articles or disambiguation items that can be used as the target for this property
but not, I think, in this case.

Joe

On 3 Nov 2014 17:04, "Daniel Kinzler" <daniel.kinzler@wikimedia.de> wrote:
Am 03.11.2014 17:31, schrieb Lydia Pintscher:
> On Mon, Nov 3, 2014 at 2:55 PM, Jean-Baptiste Pressac
> <Jean-Baptiste.Pressac@univ-brest.fr> wrote:
>>
>> Hello,
>> Claims with surname properties are sometimes impossible. For instance, I tried to add the surname of René Grivart, but as I typed "Grivart" in the property value, the "save" link stays unclickable. Should we systematically create an item associated with the surname ?
>
> That's how the community set it up, yes. The property has type item.
> This means it can only link to existing items.

I think the idea is to use this property only if the surename itself is of
interested, and thus has a data item. The same is true for the corresponding
"given name" property. In many instances, this would not be the case.

Having a separate field for the surname in general doesn't seem to useful to me,
and could even be misleading. The concept of a "surname" as such is a western
concept, and doesn't translate well to other culures. In fact, there isn't much
we can assume about names at all, see
http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/

Generally, there's just "the name", which would be given as the item's label (or
an alias). IF that isn't sufficient, perhaps P1448 ("official name") could be
used: that's a (monolingual) text property.


--
Daniel Kinzler
Senior Software Developer

Wikimedia Deutschland
Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e.V.

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