FamilySearch/gedcomx — Issue #155: Name form should include a Style or Order
Author: daveyse
Created: 2012-03-06 23:09:53+00:00
State: open

Because different cultures, regions, etc. order their names differently, supplying a name is typically insufficient to identify the correct name parts, as well as the interpretation of the "natural" order for that name.
For example, "Li Chen" could refer to someone whose given name is "Li" if in the United States, but if in the far east "Li"
is most likely the family name.
When data is transliterated from a culture's native script to Roman, this ambiguity becomes even more prevalent.
Name orderings can be categorized as Surname-First (Sinotypic), Surname-Last (Eurotypic), and No-Surname (Monotypic).

Caveats:
These categories may still not be granular enough unless other metadata is provided. For instance, should a name phrase (such as De La Costa, or Maria De La Cruz) be separated into its atomic parts or left as a phrase? lt may also be required to distinguish between Spanish and Portuguese, where the Mother's Family Name and Father's Family Name create a double-surname, yet the order of these two are not the same.