[eml-dev] givenName element uses

[Matt Jones]

Hi Inigo,

We started out with:
  (givenName?,middleName?,surName)
as the model for earlier versions of EML.  Some people complained that this
does not accomodate people who wish to represent multiple family names in
some languages, for example "Juan Luis Mercedes Gomez".  So we generalized
the model to:
  (givenName?,middleName*,surName)
Then people were confused about whether any particular sequence of names
should go in multiple middleName elements or in one givenName and one
middleName element. Someone challenged us to define the difference between
givenName and middleName elements.  We decided that there wasn't any
difference, and that really one or more middle names were simply more
givenNames.  So we ended up with the model:
  (givenName*, surName)

where the first givenName would be someone's first name, the second
givenName would be their middleName, and third and subsequent givenName
elements would be additional middle or family names. The only reason we
wanted to differentiate the components of the name at all was so that
automated parsers could translate EML documents into other standards that
used this level of granualrity and so that automated processors could
properly convert names into abbreviated versions of the name for e.g.,
bibliographic citations that want only initials for given names.  For that
we needed to differentiate the surName from all of the other names, and
tokenize all of the  names.

Could you explain the problems you are having with this model in terms of
matching subjects and migration to DBs so that we can figure out if there
are automated processing tasks that the current model does not address?

Thanks,
Matt

On Thu, Sep 18, 2008 at 4:49 PM, inigo san gil <isangil at lternet.edu> wrote:

>
> for the sake of proper granularity, and in an attempt to disambiguate the
> interpretation of the contents of <givenName>, would eml-dev consider
> reducing the cardinality of the element to 0 to 1, and adding a middleName
> optional element?  of course, if middleName sounds to straightforward you
> can use some other semantical contortion to refer to such concept - say
> saddleName :)
>
> the ambiguity causes trouble when matching subjects, migration to DBs, etc.
> inigo
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> Eml-dev at ecoinformatics.org
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>



-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Matthew B. Jones
Director of Informatics Research and Development
National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS)
UC Santa Barbara
jones at nceas.ucsb.edu Ph: 1-907-523-1960
http://www.nceas.ucsb.edu/ecoinfo
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