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Falsehoods programmers believe about names – with examples (2018)

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Re: Falsehoods programmers believe about names – with examples (2018)

#21

Post by R0b0t1 »

user-the-name wrote: post #18
elchief wrote: post #3

A personal name is either a Polynym (a name with multiple sortable components), a Mononym (a name with only one component), or a Pictonym (a name represented by a picture - this exists due to people like [Prince][1]). 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…

You can very easily have multiple legal names, as "legal" is a national concept and you can have multiple citizenships, each one with a different legal system and thus potentially a different legal name.

There are other examples where an individual can have no name. If you do not complete your test of manhood in the cultures that have one you may not be assigned a name.

Looks like GP didn't read the list.

Re: Falsehoods programmers believe about names – with examples (2018)

#23

Post by isbvhodnvemrwvn »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #15

In some countries, women have different last names than men do. Eg. in macedonia, traditionally a person would get their fathers name as their surname (so if the fathers name was "Petar", and the son was Dragan, the lastname would be roughly translated to "Dragan of Peter"). Because there are different forms for feminine and masculine words, The son would be named "Dragan Petrovski", and the daughter (Eg Marija) woul…

In old Polish there was also a special form of name for unmarried women, so for example:

Jan Kowalski has a daughter, Anna Kowalska.

When she is young, she is called Anna Kowalszczonka, Kowaliczka or Kowalówna depending on who you asked (and you can't reliably reverse these forms into the original name)

When she is grown up, she is called Anna Kowalska.

As it happens, the country was part of the Russian empire, so she's also called Анна Ковалска or Aнна Kовалская, depending on who you asked.

When she marries Jan Kowal, she is called Anna Kowalowa or Anna Kowal.

When Jan Kowal dies and she marries Wawrzyniec Słowacki, she is called Anna Słowacka. But her husband is from Austria-Hungary, so he's also called Laurentius Slowacki somewhere in his documents, even though he never uses this name for anything.

Their son Stefan moves to Lithuania, but even though he's ethnically Polish, Lithuanian government requires him to have "Steponas Slovackis" printed on his documents.

Re: Falsehoods programmers believe about names – with examples (2018)

#24

Post by elchief »

user-the-name wrote: post #18
elchief wrote: post #3

A personal name is either a Polynym (a name with multiple sortable components), a Mononym (a name with only one component), or a Pictonym (a name represented by a picture - this exists due to people like [Prince][1]). 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…

You can very easily have multiple legal names, as "legal" is a national concept and you can have multiple citizenships, each one with a different legal system and thus potentially a different legal name.

Which is exactly what I said

Re: Falsehoods programmers believe about names – with examples (2018)

#25

Post by kgeist »

R0b0t1 wrote: post #20
kgeist wrote: post #13

A few years ago we were required to pass Microsoft's certification exams, one of the options was to do it online. Their requirement was that the name/surname in the application form had to be identical to what's in your ID (you also had to attach scans of your ID). The problem is, we're from Russia, and the form didn't allow Cyrillic letters, and there's only Cyrillic letters in a Russian ID. We had to fly all the wa…

They refused to accept a romanization? If so that's doubly bad. Excusing technical deficiencies is one thing, but preventing people from working around them is indicative of a high level organizational failure.

Yes, it had to be identical. The problem with romanization of Cyrillic is that there's no commonly accepted standard, and I suspect the employees who process the applications were very unlikely to be Russian, so they would have no idea how to match our romanized variant to what's found on the ID scans. At least if they allowed Cyrillic in the submit form, they could have compared it visually as a set of pictograms, no need to know Cyrillic by heart. And it wasn't some US-only application thing we ran into by mistake, it talked about providing identification documents "of your country". But for some reason, they excluded all countries which don't use Latin alphabet.

Re: Falsehoods programmers believe about names – with examples (2018)

#26

Post by vanous »

number6 wrote: post #14
notum wrote: post #5

Gotcha. Un-validated unicode text boxes for names in forms from now on. After all, someone could be named like the contents of a 64MB binary blob. Compromises are unavoidable in web development.

Oj yes litten QmFieSBUYWJsZXM=, we call him.

Qk9CQlkgVEFCTEVT

Re: Falsehoods programmers believe about names – with examples (2018)

#27

Post by DonaldFisk »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #15

In some countries, women have different last names than men do. Eg. in macedonia, traditionally a person would get their fathers name as their surname (so if the fathers name was "Petar", and the son was Dragan, the lastname would be roughly translated to "Dragan of Peter"). Because there are different forms for feminine and masculine words, The son would be named "Dragan Petrovski", and the daughter (Eg Marija) woul…

Also in other Slavic countries, e.g. Poland (-ski/-ska), Iceland (-son/-dottir), and sometimes in Scotland (Mac-/Nic-) and Ireland (Mac-, Ni-).

Re: Falsehoods programmers believe about names – with examples (2018)

#29

Post by eesmith »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #15

In some countries, women have different last names than men do. Eg. in macedonia, traditionally a person would get their fathers name as their surname (so if the fathers name was "Petar", and the son was Dragan, the lastname would be roughly translated to "Dragan of Peter"). Because there are different forms for feminine and masculine words, The son would be named "Dragan Petrovski", and the daughter (Eg Marija) woul…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_name gives an Icelandic example of Stefán Gunnarsson with children named Harpa Stefánsdóttir and Róbert Stefánsson.

Björk's name is Björk Guðmundsdóttir, daughter of Guðmundur Gunnarsson and Hildur Rúna Hauksdóttir.

These use the genitive -s followed by either -dóttir for girls or -son for boys.

In Iceland, matching parents and their kids by their last names doesn't work that well.

Re: Falsehoods programmers believe about names – with examples (2018)

#30

Post by jazzyjackson »

R0b0t1 wrote: post #21
user-the-name wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can very easily have multiple legal names, as "legal" is a national concept and you can have multiple citizenships, each one with a different legal system and thus potentially a different legal name.

There are other examples where an individual can have no name. If you do not complete your test of manhood in the cultures that have one you may not be assigned a name. Looks like GP didn't read the list.

An empty array might then suffice, but surely this outcast has a sobriquet, like "that loser without a name"
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