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Should a two-word given name like María José or Min Ho fill given, instead of given + middle? #704
Description
Today the parser calls the first given-name word the given name and puts the rest in middle. That's the English-language convention (John Quincy Adams). Several naming traditions treat a multi-word given name as one unit instead: Spanish María José and Juan Antonio, Portuguese Maria do Carmo, Arabic Muhammad Salim, Korean Min Ho, CLDR's own given field (Cornelia Margarita).
Measured by the report-only view added in #703 (cldr_agreement.py --split): 265 CLDR renderings and 3 rows of the conventions corpus split given and middle differently from what the source states. Most of the 265 come from this convention, not a defect: Cornelia Margarita (given) + Sofia Aletta (given2), where the parser reads given Cornelia, middle Margarita Sofia Aletta. GND and Wikidata record every given name in one field, so they don't state the split and aren't scored on it.
Options:
| Option | middle means |
Effect |
|---|---|---|
| (a) keep today's convention | every given-name word after the first | the 265 are recorded as accepted differences and the split can be ratcheted now |
| (b) one given unit | only an explicitly secondary name | breaks what callers expect from middle in English names |
| (c) per language | (a) by default; a language pack declares compound given names (es, pt, ar, ko) |
the default stays as it is; packs get it right for their culture |
Open questions:
- If (c): what does a pack declare: a list of compound given names, a rule (
María+ one more word), or both? - Where do a Sikh religious name (
Kaur) and an English given name beside a Chinese one (Lim Mei Ling Jessica) go? Neither is a middle name. - The conventions corpus states a few rows with a stopgap
given2(Tran Thi Mai,Harpreet Kaur Dhillon,Lim Mei Ling Jessica). Restate them once this is decided.
Replaces the open questions in #702. The split view is in #703.
Activity
Keep a patronymic given name from completing under rules/O7
Keep a patronymic given name from completing under rules/O7
Add Policy.two_given_names, the compound given name as a rule kind (3…
derek73 commentedon Oct 31, 2026
Status after 3.0's sub-phase 4g (#954): option (c) shipped.
Policy(two_given_names=True)(rules/O7) reads a two-word given name as onegiven, off by default and available to a pack's[rules].Parser(policy=Policy(two_given_names=True)).parse("Juan Carlos Pérez")gives givenJuan Carlos. With #961, a word O6's given-name list leaves out of the family is O7's to take.locales.ESkeeps O7 off: on PSC it moved Spanish filers from 31.8% to 15.7%, because they type the second given name into the middle box.Still open here, and cited as such by
docs/design/decisions/O7-two-given-names.md: which particle phrases complete a given name (Maria do Carmo Silva), and whether that is a reading on the word or a list the rule kind holds. Also still open from the issue: whereKaurand an English given name beside a Chinese one belong.