The Names system represents human personal names in a culturally aware way, suitable for use in any application capturing names for individuals (CRM, HR, Etc.). Naming conventions vary world-wide. Assumptions based on Western English-speaking culture often results in insensitive mangling of names.
The system provides a set of ISO639 locale-specific views of the underlying name. Each database view provides versions of a name for different applications, such as name to use in conversation, form of address in a business letter, familiar form for chat or other less-formal communication, and pronunciation guidance for all of them.
La Monte Henry Piggy Yarroll, Oluwaseyi Olufemi Durosinmi-Etti, Patrick Le, Christopher Murphy
The team members have personal experience with electronic systems that mangle their names. Programmers make lazy assumptions about handling names that can lead to malnaming, inappropriate usage and incorrect pronounciation of names which causes alienation and mistrust.
Names are complicated:
- people have more than one name
- atomic names can have spaces in them
- people can have multiple family names
- people's names change over time, and sometimes you need the old name
- inapproprate use of gendered pronouns can cause real hurt
- people may use different names depending on their location and language
The solution leverages the location and language preferences (locale) of each individual name, together with naming preferences communicated by a person, to display names with respect to cultural and traditional norms and name formatting conventions.
The names rendered by the database system are then referenced by stakeholders to assist in various customer relationship management activities:
- formally addressing the individual verbally
- leveraging informal/familiar verbal address when preferred
- properly pronouncing a name with the assistance of international phonetic alphabet instructions
- leveraging the appropriate formal/informal address in various written communications & marketing materials
- Leveraging the appropriate formal/informal address in business documents (quotes, contracts, service agreements, etc.).
We'd love to open a wider conversation about huming naming in technological systems. There is a dirth of solutions and a plethora of opportunities to improve equitiy and inclusivity.