NYCPHP Meetup

[David Mintz]

On Fri, Sep 23, 2011 at 10:58 AM, Chris Snyder <chsnyder at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Fri, Sep 23, 2011 at 9:54 AM, David Mintz <david at davidmintz.org> wrote:
> >
> > I'm trying to require users to input proper names with capitalization
> that
> > conforms to convention.
>
> The subtle cases exist more often than you think. Just ask Sarah
> O'Malley-van Dorf.
>
> I know, you know that, and it seems right to normalize. But it's so
> much easier to just let people spell their own names however they want
> to.
>
> See also
> http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/
> _______________________________________________
>


LOL. Disclosure:  I didn't read your link yet. But here's the thing, this
isn't for people to enter their own names, but someone else's:  the names of
defendants who require interpreters in criminal cases in federal court. Even
the anglo idea of "first" and "last" names breaks down when you run up
against cultures where last is first and vice-versa, meaning "last" and
"first" is the wrong way to think about it.

Accurately typing strange names in strange languages is so hard, it's no
wonder there was once a study that found that 80% of the files in the US
Immigration service had errors of one sort or another.

A little OT digression about the hyphen. Many of you know that in the
Spanish-speaking world people conventionally use two surnames, the paternal
and maternal, in that order. Try explaining that to US law enforcement and
corrections:  they can't get their minds around it. So everyone has to get
hyphenated. Makes me crazy. But there are occasional legitimate hyphen-jobs
as well, so.... let it go, or talk to your therapist about it.

-- 
David Mintz
http://davidmintz.org/
It ain't over:
http://www.healthcare-now.org/
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