And don't forget that other national traditions you can have more confusion. For example: For Hungarian names, the preferred order is [Family name] [Given name] So that in the main text of PG#19433 the author's name is given as: Balazs Bela, with the understanding that the first name that appears is the one we alphbetize by. And in Icelandic names, what looks to us as a "last name" is not actually a family name, but a patrynomic. It is incorrect to alphabetize by that, so the given name is used instead. --Andrew On Fri, 18 Sep 2009, Jon Richfield wrote:
Without due respect for the dead hand of history, or the dead heads of aesthetes trying to impose attractive schemes devoid of logic or practicality, it would be nice if we could agree on some scheme to sequence our author indexes. It won't happen of course, and I am not silly enough to think that this brief note contains anything conclusive, but give it a thunk, anyone interested. Anyone uninterested is sternly forbidden to consider the matter or read this remark (it hardly hopes to attain the dignity of a suggestion.)
Let us assume that we have authors such as the famous
Johanna Kakebeenwania van der Merwe O'Brien, Jolien Gertina van der Poel O'Mally, Paulette Marmorella Bridhedia Paul-Ewen Truupsvor Theooseov Swizarminife Neville McSnurtle Quentin Urtel Xavier Ypres Zulrich Ürtur Aspoestertjie Sinnerella Katrina van Aswagen Gehardus Johannes Katwimpers Janse van Vuuren van den Heever Johannes Gehardus du Toit van der Vyfer Jakobus Johannes Joumoerus Vandaaigoed Lelie Belladonna Nerina Vanderker Otto Werther von und zu Bismarkharing
The problem is notionally to sequence them according to a comprehensible and totally unambiguous scheme, with the least sensitivity to uncertain spellling and concentrations of initial letters etc. The best approach is to write each name, as much as desired in normal internal sequence as above, then split each name immediately after the last non-alphabetic character (including spaces). The bit at the end is what you sequence by, NOT the full name, NOT necessarily the full surname, and without consideration of case or diacritical signs.
In our by no means random, but hardly unrealistic example,several questions arise, including the role of various non-alphabetic characters, and the artificial concentration of surnames under the initial letters of prefixes such as de, der, du, van, van der, von den, and no end of etcs. By sorting by the terminal alphabetic string, we remove ambiguity and even out the spread of names through the alphabet. In simple information theory this optimises search time and sort efficiency. The above example becomes:
Aswagen Aspoestertjie Sinnerella Katrina van
Bismarkharing Otto Werther von und zu
Brien Johanna Kakebeenwania van der Merwe O'
Ewen Paulette Marmorella Bridhedia Paul-
Heever Gehardus Johannes Katwimpers Janse van Vuuren van den
Mally Jolien Gertina van der Poel O'
Swizarminife Truupsvor Theooseov
Urtel Neville McSnurtle Quentin
Ürtur Xavier Ypres Zulrich
Vandaaigoed Jakobus Johannes Joumoerus
Vanderker Lelie Belladonna Nerina
Vyfer Johannes Gehardus du Toit van der
The head benefit is in the de tailing.
Not that anyone asked.
Cheers,
Jon
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