On 04/11/2014 09:38, "Finn Årup Nielsen" fn@imm.dtu.dk wrote:
On 11/03/2014 06:03 PM, Daniel Kinzler wrote:
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/
Perhaps it is better to call it "family name" rather than surname to accommodate Asian ordering of given name and family name. Familienname and nom de famille are "correct" in that sense.
If this is about sorting names in lists, then I am a big fan of the MusicBrainz approach of a Sort Name field - this is a field than can be used for sorting but doesn't typically get displayed - this makes it very flexible and compatible with all kinds of different naming conventions from around the world:
http://wiki.musicbrainz.org/Style/Artist/Sort_Name
Examples: Humfrey, Nicholas Beatles, The Connick Jr., Harry
nick.