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Willowwood Comments

$\"Gravatar\"$ This is NOT a waste of time! It is a challenge - and one I happily accept....ah, but probably not until next week...because there are all kinds of true time wasters already on the list for the next several days. You know, mulching the garden,dealing with THE DOOR, cooking, storing the last of the winter clothes (although maybe I should be storing the summer stuff and getting the winter clothes back out!), keeping up with my favorite time waster web site: www.gofugyourself.com, and reading my latest book: World War Z:An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks ( the son of Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft). Let the games begin!!
Linda
Linda | 8 Jun 2009 - 9:51 am | #

$\"Gravatar\"$ Jason Alexander Pope John Philip Sousa... O.K I've hit a technical problem, this (and I realize that the Pope John part might be bending the rules a tad) pretty much came to me all at once in the middle of the night. I was trying to think how to extend the left end, the name that comes to mind is the Greek mythological character: Jason - but how to use it? If I write \"Jason Jason Alexander Pope John Philip Sousa\" then it looks like I'm referring to someone named Jason Jason. I don't think I have the ability to add superscript or subscript numerals so, in a pathetic attempt to be sure I get full credit I'll do it like this when indicating a person with only one name: Jason(2) Alexander Pope John Philip Sousa. There, now I can go back to bed and await the ruling of the moderator.
Linda | 18 Jun 2009 - 3:20 am | #

$\"Gravatar\"$ Linda, your creative insomnia has brought us a name chain that raises several issues.

First, I'm inclined to be quite liberal about what qualifies as a name, so I think \"Pope John\" is just fine. Similarly, I'd feel free to use \"Queen Victoria\" or \"Alexander the Great\", or whatever string of words a person is known by.

This leads to the question of what to do about names with suffixes, such as \"Pope John XXIII\". Simply omitting such numeric suffixes (or others, such as \"Jr.\" or \"Sr.\") works well enough, though it often leaves ambiguity about who is meant (but we accept ambiguity anyway, since many names are not unique). I don't yet have a better method, but I'm open to suggestions. And I'd be flexible here too, so if you want to connect to someone whose first name is \"Junior\" or \"XIV\" a suffix could be helpful.

Regarding people with just a single name, I have, until now, dismissed these cases as hopeless (along with the very many two-part names that are quite unlikely to connect). But your suggestion of marking such names seems like a reasonable one. Even a simple asterisk could do the job, since it doesn't seem important to claim any particular number of interpretations. An asterisk could then serve to say, \"this name by itself identifies someone I wish to include.\" (On the other hand, a great many common names could plausibly be so marked, and I myself would not be inclined to mark all such cases.)

Another issue also surfaces in your example: the handling of middle names. These are often quite important in identifying certain people, such as John Philip Sousa, but they leave the chain open to misinterpretation, as this example is indistinguishable from chaining \"John Philip\" with \"Philip Sousa\". The intent may be clear enough when a name is well known, but this won't always be the case. My suggestion here is to enclose middle names in parentheses: \"Pope John (Philip) Sousa\".

Thanks for this contribution - and try not to lose too much more sleep over name chains!
Jim | Homepage | 18 Jun 2009 - 2:48 pm | #

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