Encounter: Personal names around the world (W3C i18n)

How do people’s names differ around the world, and what are the implications of those differences on the design of forms, databases, ontologies, etc. for the Web?

1. Question
2. Scenarios
3. Examples of differences
   1. Given name and patronymic
   2. Different order of parts
   3. Multiple family names
   4. Variant word forms
   5. Middle initials
   6. Inheritance of names
   7. Mixing it up
   8. Ambiguity in written forms
   9. Further information
4. Implications for field design
   1. To split or not to split?
   2. Strategies for splitting up names
   3. Other things
5. Implications for character support
6. By the way
   1. A note on sorting
   2. Formality and honorifics
7. Further reading