Falsehoods programmers believe about names – with examples (2018)

Falsehoods programmers believe about names – with examples (2018)
shinesolutions.com

A person can have multiple names, playing roles, such as LEGAL, MARITAL, MAIDEN, PREFERRED, SOBRIQUET, PSEUDONYM, etc. You might have business rules, such as "a person can only have one legal name at a time, but multiple pseudonyms at a time".

Some examples:

    names: [
      {
        type:"POLYNYM",
        role:"LEGAL",
        given:"George",
        middle:"Herman",
        moniker:"Babe",
        surname:"Ruth",
        generation:"JUNIOR"
      },
      {
        type:"MONONYM",
        role:"SOBRIQUET",
        mononym:"The Bambino" /* mononyms can be more than one word, but only one component */
      },
      {
        type:"MONONYM",
        role:"SOBRIQUET",
        mononym:"The Sultan of Swat"
      }
    ]

    names: [
      {
        type:"POLYNYM",
        role:"PREFERRED",
        given:"Malcolm",
        surname:"X"
      },
      {
        type:"POLYNYM",
        role:"BIRTH",
        given:"Malcolm",
        surname:"Little"
      },
      {
        type:"POLYNYM",
        role:"LEGAL",
        given:"Malik",
        surname:"El-Shabazz"
      }
    ]

    names:[
      {
        type:"POLYNYM",
        role:"LEGAL",
        given:"Prince",
        middle:"Rogers",
        surname:"Nelson"
      },
      {
        type:"MONONYM",
        role:"SOBRIQUET",
        mononym:"Prince"
      },
      {
        type:"PICTONYM",
        role:"LEGAL",
        url:"http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/af/Prince_logo.svg/130px-Prince_logo.svg.png"
      }
    ]

    names:[
      {
        type:"POLYNYM",
        role:"LEGAL",
        given:"Juan Pablo",
        surname:"Fernández de Calderón",
        secondarySurname:"García-Iglesias" /* hispanic people often have two surnames. it can be impolite to use the wrong one. Portuguese and Spaniards differ as to which surname is important */
      }
    ]

  [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_(musician)

Compromises are unavoidable in web development.

Not contend with simply filling in Jack, bureaucrats would simply come up with a last name for them. Or - if they felt so inclined - ask the person to come up with one themselves. They would often chose their occupation. Americans know that a lot of modern family name spellings in the US are the result of careless bureaucrats at Ellis Island.

Back then, family names, house names, last names and surnames weren't necessarily the same thing. One might have more than one. You may be of one House, but your last name was Jackson (son of Jack). Also somewhat inconvenient for these bureaucrats with few fields on their forms. And also, stop changing last name from generation to generation.

Though, fortunately for these bureaucrats, unlike modern programmers, when the map did not fit the terrain, they could simply alter the terrain.