Multiple forenames?

[Gasman]

Hi all,

How do you handle multiple forenames in your systems?

Initially I thought I could get away with ForeName1, ForeName2, ForeName3, but then there would be someone with four names.

In school we had one guy with David William Stanley Paul, and his given name was Paul. I myself do not use my first name, but my second forename.

I was thinking of a field for given name and then just a field for all the forenames.

So in the above case I would have
"Paul" and "David William Stanley Paul" and if there were more than 4, I could handle that as well.

I think a 1 to many relationship for fornames is a little over the top, but would really like to know how the experts handle this problem?

TIA

 

[plog]

Not to get all semantically, but someone really only has one forename (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/forename). But I understand the actual issue you are facing.

There's 2 ways to handle this. In both instances you use a MiddleName field. Let's use David William Stanley Paul Jones and Jim Smith as examples:

1. Cram all extra into middle name:

FirstName, MiddleName, LastName
David, William Stanley Paul, Jones
Jim, , Smith

2. Used a PreferedFirstName field:

PreferredFirstName, FirstName, MiddleName, LastName
Paul, David, William Stanley Paul, Jones
Jim, Jim, , Smith

 

[gemma-the-husky]

the idea of a middle name is so embedded in the US, they tend to have a NMN - no middle name - for those who don't have one.

I think I would tend to have just

forenames and surname (and maybe a known as)

given a forename with multiple names you can easily strip out the first name (or intials) for presentation.

Jones, John Paul => John Jones.
or
Jones, John Paul => John P Jones.

 

[Galaxiom]

See post 13 of this thread for extreme normalization of names.

 

[Gasman]

Plog,

Thank you, so I was almost there

Dave,

Again, pretty much what I was thinking.

Galaxiom,

Yes, pretty much what I was trying to avoid.

Thank you all for the replies.

I've yet to start creating the database, just thinking ahead at the moment.