Recording accurately a person's name

[William_J_G Overington]

There was recently a Public Review.

434 CLDR Person Name Formatting

I sent in a response. My response and the result of reviewing by the 
subcommittee is available as follows.

https://unicode-org.atlassian.net/browse/CLDR-15263

However, it appears, from the response, that many of the issues that I 
mentioned are for implementers of software that use the standard.

The issue of some (though not all) people and organizations deciding to 
only use the first two initials of someone's given names, so, for 
example, with a name with three initials before the surname deciding to 
only use the first two when typing a letter from a longhand draft or 
replying to a letter goes back to before the widespread use of computers 
that exists today.

So, I write here, to a mailing list that is read by many people who 
implement software systems that include Unicode in some way, to ask 
please that when it comes to designing software that the widespread 
concept of only allowing for one "middle initial" is discontinued so 
that people with more than two given names are listed according to their 
name and not by some edited version of it that may, in fact, be the name 
of another person.

It seems to me that an application program needs a field that will 
accept more than one letter.

Also, when producing an address label, or an insurance certificate, or 
whatever, to not assume or action that only the first character of the 
given2 field is needed to be printed.

Also, a related issue, please allow for Name on Card for credit card and 
debit card transactions to be entered manually rather than deducing it 
from name data and presenting it in a "greyed-out cannot be altered" 
field, because Name on Card may or may not have a honorific and may have 
a combination of names in full and initials that is not congruently 
deducible from the data.

With this new standard being produced, the opportunity to get away from 
the widespread name truncation practice exists, please take the 
opportunity to do so.

Thank you.

William J. G. Overington

Monday 14 February 2022