Can a person have multiple names?

[trieloff]

https://github.com/adobe/xdm/blob/6c40ac494389b79f99c6770c9bdf6c7411dc7671/schemas/context/person.schema.json#L19

With #227 we will have multi-language support for names.

We should make sure people can have multiple names, in order to avoid the top four https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/

1. People have exactly one canonical full name.
2. People have exactly one full name which they go by.
3. People have, at this point in time, exactly one canonical full name.
4. People have, at this point in time, one full name which they go by.

[cdegroot-adobe]

I look at this in a different way. So my answer is maybe one day, but definitely not now because it is not a burning issue and we will need to give this a lot of research and thought that needs to be resourced to come up with a solution that will stand the test of time.

The schema we have today (with the latest merge) supports the central case which is recording the way a person has decided they want to be addressed by the entity that they are giving their personal details to. And this is sufficient for the current requirements.

Given time I think this is a great project for a research team, and likely with a mandate to drive that thinking in other standards to gain wide spread adoption.

[trieloff]

The problem with this view is that there is not a single point of contact, and there is not a single set of facts. Much of the information that we see as factual in a profile become less simple as soon as we merge data from multiple sources. The way we handle name, address, phone numbers, etc. is working on an unrealistic assumption of clean and simple data and unable to reflect the true complexities of data that is originating in multiple systems and used in multiple contexts.