Karl Eichwalder wrote:
The (western) concept of first and surname is just one
system and
[...]
The surname often changes - tell me the surname of Ludwig Tieck's sister
This problem is bigger than Wikipedia's category system. Personal
names, especially in older times, are both ambigious and have
different versions of spelling, leading to the need for disambiguation
pages (where one name leads to many people) and redirects (where many
names lead to one person). I'd be interested in learning about any
wiki that uses a different approach (than Wikipedia's) to this.
One approach could be to assign unique numbers to each person, e.g.
Winston Churchill = [[person 17]], Napoleon = [[person 18]], and
always to link to these, e.g. [[person 17 | Winston Churchill]],
[[person 17 | Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill]] or
[[person 18 | Bonaparte]]. This approach would not be user friendly,
but it would be free from ambiguity. I don't know any wiki that uses
this particular approach. Do you?
--
Lars Aronsson (lars(a)aronsson.se)
Aronsson Datateknik -
http://aronsson.se/