Summary: there has been longstanding discussion about the use (or not) of <cite> to markup names of speakers. From original intent of <cite>, to references to the Chicago Manual of Style, to the practicality of it just being an alias for <i>.
I (and others) have done a bunch of research and documentation of additional examples, discussions, and follow-ups regarding the use of <cite> for marking up names of speakers, including follow-ups to common counter-arguments. Please (re)consider explicitly allowing marking up speaker names with <cite> More details, use-cases, research here: http://wiki.whatwg.org/wiki/Cite_element#Speaker I encourage fellow web authors and browser implementers to add their opinions/comments to that wiki page section, *INSTEAD OF* in an email thread - as I couldn't even find previous email threads on this topic. Thanks! Tantek -- http://tantek.com/ - I made an HTML5 tutorial! http://tantek.com/html5