This is the second genealogy standards proposal I am submitting to the FHISO Call For Papers. This current document was started back in August after submitting my last proposal (Asynchronous Collaboration), but life intervened and I didn’t finish the last 10% of the document until today.

The basic premise of this proposal is that names are very complicated and current genealogical standards are woefully inadequate in covering all naming conventions. The name of a single person might have over a dozen fields, and might evolve over time depending on where the person moves, or what titles the person acquires. If the person moves to a new country, the order of their name could change, or they might translate their name to adapt to the new country. Understanding all of these possibilities and being able to document them in such a way that they can be displayed properly and transferred between disparate applications and services is very important. The full proposal is attached in PDF format. I appreciate any feedback on the proposal in the comments below.