Internationalisation of People Names Submitted to the UNIVERSITY of LIMERICK for the degree of MASTER of SCIENCE Gary Lefman Supervised by Dr. Richard Sutcliffe COLLEGE of INFORMATICS and ELECTRONICS Department of Computer Science and Information Systems September 2013 This page is intentionally blank Abstract Title: Internationalisation of People Names Author: Gary Lefman If a system does not possess the ability to capture, store, and retrieve people names, according to their cultural requirements, it is less likely to be acceptable on the international market. Internationalisation of people names could reduce the probability of a person’s name being lost in a system, avoiding frustration, saving time, and possibly money. This study attempts to determine the extent to which the human name can be internationalised, based upon published anthroponymic data for 148 locales, by categorising them into eleven distinctly autonomous parts: definite article, common title, honorific title, nickname, by-name, particle, forename, patronymic or matronymic, surname, community name, and generational marker. This paper provides an evaluation of the effectiveness of internationalising people names; examining the challenges of terminology conflicts, the impact of subjectivity whilst pigeonholing personyms, and the consequences of decisions made. It has demonstrated that the cultural variety of human names can be expressed with the Locale Data Mark-up Language for 74% of the world’s countries. This study, which spans 1,919 anthroponymic syntactic structures, has also established, through the use of a unique form of encoding, that the extent to which the human name can be internationalised is 96.31% of the data published by Plassard (1996) and Interpol (2006). Software developers, localisation engineers, and database administrators may benefit from this paper, through recognition of this problem and understanding the potential gains from accurately handling people names within a system. The outcome of this study opens up opportunities for future research into cultural name mapping that may further enhance the Common Locale Data Repository. Keywords: internationalisation, i18n, internationalization, localisation, l10n, localization, culture, personal name, anthroponym, cldr i This page is intentionally blank ii Declaration I hereby certify that this dissertation, Internationalisation of People Names is entirely my own work and has not been submitted to any other University or higher education institution, or for any other academic award in this University. Where use has been made of the work of other people it has been fully acknowledged and fully referenced. Gary Lefman iii This page is intentionally blank iv *-onym A name that I go by. v This page is intentionally blank vi Acknowledgements First and foremost I would like to acknowledge the guidance and support of my dissertation supervisor, Dr Richard Sutcliffe, whose seemingly limitless experience in writing academic papers and knowledge of computational linguistics has helped me to focus on what matters most. A special nod goes to Mark Hellaby for his inspiring knowledge in simulation, and I am eternally grateful to dissertation veterans Emma Knibbs and Hannah White for their relentless support on every step of my journey. Finally, I owe my deepest appreciation to Martin Güttinger, localisation industry extraordinaire, for leading the way and making this all possible for me. vii This page is intentionally blank viii Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................ i Declaration ..................................................................................................... iii Acknowledgements ....................................................................................... vii List of Figures ................................................................................................ xi Chapter 1 Introduction .................................................................................. 1 Chapter 2 Literature Review ........................................................................ 5 2.1 Introduction .......................................................................................... 5 2.1.1 Source of Literature ............................................................................... 5 2.1.2 Expectations .......................................................................................... 5 2.2 Classification of Anthroponymic Parts ................................................ 6 2.2.1 Dionyms and Trionyms ......................................................................... 8 2.2.2 Forenames ............................................................................................. 9 2.2.3 Surnames ............................................................................................. 10 2.2.4 Title Names ......................................................................................... 12 2.2.5 Parental Names and Generational Suffix ............................................ 13 2.2.6 Generational Suffixes .......................................................................... 15 2.2.7 By-names ............................................................................................ 15 2.2.8 Mononyms .......................................................................................... 18 2.2.9 Leftover Name Parts ........................................................................... 18 2.2.10 Summary of Anthroponymic Parts Found .......................................... 19 2.2.11 Syntactic and Lexical Structure of Anthroponymic Parts ................... 20 2.2.12 Syntax .................................................................................................. 20 2.2.13 Styles ................................................................................................... 27 2.3 Conclusions ........................................................................................ 29 Chapter 3 Method ........................................................................................ 32 3.1 Perceived Challenges ......................................................................... 32 3.2 Approach ............................................................................................ 33 3.2.1 Phase 1: Defining the Terminology of Anthroponymic Parts ............. 33 3.2.2 Phase 2: Defining the Encoding of Anthroponymic Parts .................. 33 3.2.3 Phase 3: Data Mining .......................................................................... 34 3.2.4 Phase 4: Prepare Data for the Common Locale Data Repository ....... 35 ix 3.3 How Does the Method Help to Answer the Research Question? ...... 36 Chapter 4 Application of the Method ......................................................... 37 4.1 Phase 1: Defining the Terminology of Anthroponymic Parts ............ 37 4.2 Phase 2: Defining the Encoding of Anthroponymic Parts ................. 42 4.3 Phase 3: Data Mining ......................................................................... 44 4.4 Phase 4: Prepare Data for the Common Locale Data Repository ...... 50 Chapter 5 Evaluation ................................................................................... 55 5.1 Anthroponymic Part Compilation ...................................................... 55 5.2 Anthroponymic Part Encoding ........................................................... 59 5.2.1 Order .................................................................................................... 59 5.2.2 Directionality ....................................................................................... 59 5.2.3 Multiplicity .......................................................................................... 60 5.2.4 Encapsulation Markers ........................................................................ 60 5.3 Data Mining ........................................................................................ 60 5.4 Product ............................................................................................... 61 5.4.1 Document Type Definition .................................................................. 61 5.4.2 Locale Data Mark-up Language Files ................................................. 62 5.5 Summary ............................................................................................ 63 5.5.1 Concerns .............................................................................................. 64 5.5.2 Future Development and Research ...................................................... 66 Chapter 6 Conclusion ................................................................................... 68 Glossary ......................................................................................................... 70 References ..................................................................................................... 74 Appendix A – Extrapolated Anthroponymic Data ............................... A – 1 Appendix B – Document Type Definition ............................................. B – 1 Appendix C – Sample Locale Data Mark-up Language File .............. C – 1 x List of Figures Figure 1 shows an example of name misrepresentation in a user interface ..... 2 Figure 2 shows a list of 39 anthroponymic terms .......................................... 19 Figure 3 shows the 39 unfiltered terms used for anthroponymic parts .........