Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uflorida!rex!samsung!usc!orion.oac.uci.edu!uci-ics!gateway
From: SOLOMON%CS.WISC.EDU@cunyvm.cuny.EDU
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.iso.x400
Subject: Re: Dutch names in X.400 and/or RFC 1148
Message-ID: <9006121922.aa00015@ICS.UCI.EDU>
Date: 13 Jun 90 02:32:37 GMT
Lines: 34
Approved: usenet@PARIS.ICS.UCI.EDU
Comments: +++ Changed X.430-Header: +++                                  x
 *** GATEWAY INFO: "ADMVM at DFNGATE" was the real originator of this note.
 TO:         <XBR1Y055@DDATHD21.BITNET>                                        x
 FROM:       "Marvin Solomon"<SOLOMON@CS.WISC.EDU>                             x
 27:          ;<9006111102.AA14796@gjetost.cs.wisc.edu>                        x
 CC:         <VCERF@NRI.RESTON.VA.US>                                          x
             <MHSNEWS@ICS.UCI.EDU>                                             x
             <RARE-WG1@SWITCH.CH>                                              x
 30: ;<9006110754.AA02686@jerry.inria.fr>; from "Christian Huitema" at Jun 11,
 SENSITIVITY: NORMAL                                                           x
 IMPORTANCE:  NORMAL                                                           x
 BODY TYPE: IA5TEXT

>X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.2 PL10]

The whole "common name" syntax of X.400 always struct me as cultural
imperialism of the worst kind. The vast majority of people in this world
do not have a concept of "surname", "given name" (at least they didn't call
it "Christian name" :-), "generational qualifier", etc. I'm reminded of
an anecdote by a friend of mine from southern India. In that part of India,
a person normally has one name that serves the functions of both the
European given name and surname: It is individually assigned (not inherited),
it is used as the common form of address, it is used formally, and it
is used as the primary key for indexing. One also has several other
names derived from the names of ones parents, ones village, etc., which are
almost always abbreviated to intials, as in "Mr. A.B.C. Ramanujan".
(As Dr. Satyanarayanan of CMU once put it, "My name is Satya. The rest is a
checksum.")

My friend was married by a justice of the peace in a small town in central
Pennsylvania. The poor justice of the peace struggled for some time trying
to pronounce all the names ("Do you, mummble mumble take mumble mumble...").
As my friend tells the story, "By the end of the ceremony, her grandfather
had married my village."

The framers of X.400 would have done much better to define a Common Name
as simply a SEQUENCE OF PrintableString, together with some comments to
the effect that the most significant name should go first.
Thus we'd have
	{ "Solomon", "Marvin", "H" },
	{ "Porter", "Joseph", "KCB", "Sir" },
	{ "Steen", "van", "der", "Piet" },
	{ "Mao", "Tse", "Tung" },
	{ "Ramanujan", "A", "B", "C" },
etc. Of course, that still imposes an English bias by insisting on an
unadorned subset of the Latin alphabet, but to do otherwise would introduce
a host of much more serious technological problems.