Yaay! Starting 2006 with a WHS rather than a WTF. An auspicious sign. OK, OK, the original does not actually mention XML, but it's very relevant. Via Bill de hÓra a good summary of why modeling people's names and related constructs is always trickier than you think.
In Thinking XML #31 I discussed this matter in the third section "Naming names", jumping off from a comment from John Cowan on the OpenDocument mailing list.
IMHO (and I've worked on the problem for some years), all attempts to structure names so that they work correctly across cultures (and with scholarship being international now, the problem comes up repeatedly) just don't work....
via Copia