Not sure if/how Metaweb is handling this but I think it's a great idea. This will be especially useful for biblographic import/export down the road. A suggestion is to create a "Person name" type composed of machine readable string properties and then writing a script to populate the properties from words between spaces of Topic names of "Person". There isn't a formal standard that I've seen but most Western people are listed as PersonalName MiddleName (if available or MiddleInitial) SurName. Contingencies would need to be made for "Dr.", "Van", etc. and a validation system could probably be set up using Typewriter. This suggestion is similar to "Scientific name" of "Organism classification".<br>
<br>-Ed<br><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Mar 4, 2009 at 12:18 PM, Raymond Yee <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:raymond.yee@gmail.com">raymond.yee@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
I would like to be able to sort topics of /people/person (e.g.,<br>
<a href="http://www.freebase.com/view/people/person" target="_blank">http://www.freebase.com/view/people/person</a>) by the person's surname but<br>
don't see any generic properties for a person's surname and given name.<br>
Am I missing something here or is there no such field in the commons.<br>
<br>
I realize that modeling personal names is non-trivial (see<br>
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_name" target="_blank">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_name</a> for example) -- but having a<br>
way to indicate surnames+first names would be very helpful for many topics.<br>
<br>
I looked around on the data-modeling list archives but couldn't find any<br>
discussion around this issue.<br>
<br>
What should I do to have sorting on surnames?<br>
<br>
-Raymond<br>
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</blockquote></div><br>