Re: pervasiveness of surrogate (also called synthetic) keys

On Tue, May 03, 2011 at 10:52:23AM +0800, Craig Ringer wrote:

> ... and that's before we get into the horror of "what is someone's
> name". Which name? Which spelling? Do they even have a single canonical
> name?

- people have, at least over time, several compound names
- they have, at any one time, one active compound name
- additional spellings can be tracked as additional names
of that individual

> Is their canonical name - if any - expressable in the character
> set used by the service? Is it even covered by Unicode?!?

- I haven't seen evidence to the contrary.
- But then, I haven't had a need to store a Klingon name.
- Yes, it's been difficult to come up with something sensible
to store Spock's first name in the GNUmed database.

> Does it make
> any sense to split their name up into the traditional
> english-speaking-recent-western "family" and "given" name parts?

- any compound names I have come across work like this:

- group name
- individual name
- nicknames (pseudonyms, warrior names, actor names, ...)

The day-to-day usage of each part varies, though.

> Is there a single consistent way to do so for their name even if it does? etc.

Even in Japan, where the group is a lot more than the
individual, can you clearly split into group name and
individual name.

Karsten
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