Cyrus, Even the notion of "First Name" and "Last Name" is specific to a certain group of cultures. "Family Name" and "Given Name" don't always go in the same order, and it is not always the case that people are called by their given name in informal situations, as you can see in the drafts on Chinese Names. In some cultures, people have more than one surname, and in others, people may only have one name.
Here is a nice article, for instance, on how/why people in Spanish cultures have two last names. There are a lot of subtleties here, like which one to use in formal address, and how to address a family where both parents have two last names…: http://perez.cs.vt.edu/twolastnames In my opinion, it would be better to ask for what you actually want, rather than trying to infer what to do from other fields. For instance, you could ask for "Full Name" and "Display Name" or "Badge Name". Or "Full Name" and "Informal Name", if what you want is to know how to address them informally. Or, "Full Name" and "Short Name", if what you are looking for is something shorter than the full name for use in a UI. Margaret On Jul 11, 2013, at 10:34 AM, Cyrus Daboo <cy...@daboo.name> wrote: > Hi Simon, > > --On July 11, 2013 at 4:28:05 PM +0200 Simon Perreault > <simon.perrea...@viagenie.ca> wrote: > >>> So, from a technical standpoint, it seems better to always represent >>> user names using components (last, first, middle)? vCard does have an >>> "N" property where individual components of a name can be broken out. >> >> I'm nowhere near an expert on this topic, but I distinctly remember >> during the vCard 4 effort some participants saying that some cultures >> just don't separate names into parts. In those cultures, you would just >> have *a name*. Like an opaque, atomic blob I guess. > > True. And in the iCalendar world attendees can also be non-human entities > like rooms or resources, which typically do not have separate components for > their names (e.g., "Conference Room 1", "HD Projector", etc). But that case > can be handled by simply specifying the full name in the "LAST-NAME" field > and leave the others blank. > > -- > Cyrus Daboo >
