Validating International Names

[André Schappo]

When programming one has to consider edge cases. I am currently writing another internationalised programming challenge ➜ jsfiddle.net/coas/4djhso1y

I give 2 examples of validating international names: native Chinese names (written with Chinese characters) and Chinese names written in pinyin (romanised chinese characters). When considering edge cases I realised that a Chinese name written in pinyin could be "Ee E" or "E E".

Now I can imagine that in the case of "E E" most English speakers would think that the person has only entered their initials instead of their full name. In fact I can imagine people who are responsible for the webpage form where people enter their names, having a meeting to discuss how to make the webpage form clearer so that people enter their full names instead of just initials😀

A Chinese student has just emailed me the Chinese family name 鄂 which written in pinyin is e. There are more such family names on bjx.mingba.cn For Chinese given names there are many more characters which written in pinyin is e

I do not know if there are any Chinese people with names which when written in pinyin is "Ee E" or "E E" but it is totally feasible.

This again illustrates how native script names are more accurate than romanised names and why it is important, in English speaking countries, to store and use both native script names and romanised names.

André Schappo

[André Schappo]

If any of you would like to give me people naming rules for other countries/cultures/languages I will code the rules and incorporate into jsfiddle.net/coas/4djhso1y

André Schappo

[André Schappo]

I have written a followup blog article which contains some additional information ➜ schappo.blogspot.co.uk/2018/03/computer-science-internationalization_10.html

André Schappo