[derek73]

Closes #999.

Maj (Major written short) is also a Scandinavian given name, and parse() read it as a title wherever it opened a name. It is now a title only inside a title phrase (rules/H9, the title phrase), as Dean, Prince and King are.

"Maj Sjöwall"           before: title='Maj'        now: given='Maj'   (title-or-name reported)
"Mr Maj Zura"           before: title='Mr Maj'     now: title='Mr', given='Maj'
"Maj Gen John Smith"    title='Maj Gen'            unchanged ('maj' attaches to 'gen', 'general')
"Sgt Maj John Smith"    title='Sgt Maj'            unchanged ('sgt', 'sergeant' attach to 'maj')
"Major Gen John Smith"  before: given='Major'      now: title='Major Gen'
"Maj. John Smith"       title='Maj.'               unchanged (H2's shape)
"SMITH, JOHN B. MAJ."   title='MAJ.'               unchanged (H5, below)
"MAJ Ian Stewart, MD"   before: title='MAJ'        now: given='MAJ'   (accepted cost)

The trailing rank: H5 reads a title written short

FEC writes the rank last (SMITH, JOHN B. MAJ.). H5 (the trailing title run) reads only TITLES, and a gated word isn't in it, so the gate alone would have moved 73 FEC rows to middle B. MAJ.. The chain now also takes a gated title whose title reading is marked written short. The mark is a new behavioral title property, abbreviation = true, compiled into a private TITLE_ABBREVIATIONS set; today only maj carries it.

The scope is narrow on purpose. Widening it to every period-marked gated title moved no corpus row, but it would have reversed the trailing reading phase 2j recorded for 28 other words (John Karimi Mahdi. → family Mahdi.). A period on a word written short marks the word as cut short; on a full word it is no such sign. This was decided narrow, recorded in decisions/H5.

P5's bound-given join now declines the word as it declines Prof. (Smith, abdul Maj. → title Maj.); the comma-shape sweep found this.

Measured

Against master 95475304, over every local-corpus text holding maj or a gated title (30,367, distinct within each corpus). 65 texts move, all of them maj texts:

• 47 given names fixed (orcid 21, jrc 13, patentsview 6, ctgov 5, psc 2).
• 16 bare ranks now read as given names (ctgov 8, fec 3, jrc 3, orcid 1, psc 1). This is rules/H9's new Accepted bullet; a capitals signal to keep ctgov's MAJ ranks was declined.
• 2 unclear.

FEC's 73 trailing MAJ. rows do not move.

measure.py --base gives the same per-corpus moves. CLDR, GND and cz-candidates agreement don't move. Box agreement: orcid 19 progress and 3 changed, patentsview 6 progress, psc 2 progress and 1 regression. JRC spelling consistency: 1 person now alike, 0 apart.

The committed snapshot moves only by the new rules examples.

Docs

• Rules: rules/H5 gains a Precedence bullet. Its signal stays H5's own: period-marked title vocabulary, now one property of it. rules/H9 gains examples, a Precedence bullet pointing to H5, and an Accepted bullet. Both rules grow in rules_budget.json; the Accepted bullet reads no new signal and declines the capitals one.
• Decisions: decisions/H5 and decisions/H9 get Standing lines and dated entries with the recompute recipe.
• Other files: the vocab README gets the property, AGENTS.md gets the set, and the release log gets a bullet. nameparser/vocab/AGENTS.md records the check the review found missing: list the phrases other words make with a gated title, as sgt makes with maj.

Review

Two design-docs review rounds, on the change and on its fixes. Everything they found is fixed in the later commits.

A third round (code, test-coverage and comment reviews) found three more things, all fixed in the last two commits:

• _pieces._weighed asked H5's question without the mark, so Freiherr Mc Maj. V reported suffix-or-name.
• The maiden take's candidate read and a caller's abbreviation= had no test that fails when they break; the candidate grid now holds Maj., and the dropped-mark mutation fails it.
• Comments the change had made stale are corrected.

Checks run: full suite, -m serial benchmarks, the suite on 3.15, mypy, ruff, the Sphinx doctests, build.py --check, and the comma-shape and name-order sweep.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code