Marcusjmdict
commented
3 years ago I'm all for including more people, both Japanese and foreign. (GG5 has barely any Japanese people, maybe none even, just foreign ones). You can assume I'm always going to say "let's do it" in regards to any proposal that involves moving more things over from jmnedict to jmdict.
This issue has been triggered by the discussion on the ナイチンゲール entry - see: https://www.edrdg.org/jmdictdb/cgi-bin/entr.py?svc=jmdict&sid=&q=1089750 but I have been meaning to raise it for some time. Our current policy for names of people in JMdict (https://www.edrdg.org/wiki/index.php/Editorial_policy#Proper_Names) states that we include:
To a certain extent we can avoid putting too many names in JMdict as they can and should be in JMnedict. That's fine as far as it goes but not all dictionary clients and apps check both places. (WWWJDIC does.)
I think there is scope for expanding the coverage of person names without overloading the dictionary. The Wikimedia list at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_articles_every_Wikipedia_should_have#Biography which Robin linked in the ナイチンゲール entry comments has about 200 names, and they are quite a good set to cover (many are there already.) Many of the names in GG5 probably warrant inclusion.
As for the format something like: チャーチル (n) Churchill, Winston (1874-1965) should suffice. We should probably include the [person] tag in such name entries too (a few have it already). I also think the Japanese part should only record surname/family name as far as possible.
Another issue is multiple names associated with the one Japanese form. For タイラー GG5 has four names: 1 Theiler, Max (1899-1972; 南アフリカ生まれの米国の細菌学者). 2 Tyler, Anne (1941- ; 米国の小説家). 3 Tyler, Wat (d． 1381; 英国の反乱指導者). 4 Tylor, Edward Burnett (1832-1917; 英国の人類学者).
I think we need to aggregate such names in a single entry according to the Japanese form, with each name in a separate sense.
[I also have some suggestions for person name entries in JMnedict but I'll put them in another issue.]