[tei-council] regularizing names

[Julia Flanders]

Here's what Perry and I have come up with concerning the 
regularization of names.

We propose, tentatively, that in P5 we handle the regularization of 
names as follows:

Name elements (<name> and the other "primary" name elements including 
<persName>, <placeName>, <orgName>, <geogName>) may carry a reg= 
attribute, which points to a <regName> element which contains 
information on regularization. This element might live in the TEI 
header or in some other convenient place. The datatype for reg= would 
be tei.data.code. The element name (<regName> as against <reg>) is 
chosen to help distinguish the function of this regularization 
structure from other kinds of regularization in the document.

The nested naming elements such as <foreName>, <surname>, etc.--i.e. 
those which cannot occur on their own but must be nested inside a 
primary naming element--would not carry the reg= attribute and cannot 
be regularized independently. We considered a mechanism for doing 
this and if any Council members think it would be a good idea we can 
add this bit.

The <regName> element may either contain a regularized version of the 
name as its content, or it may carry a pointer to an external 
resource (either locally maintained or an authority file external to 
the project, such as Library of Congress Name Authority files). It 
could also do both, and we don't see a need to police this choice 
(e.g. by making these options exclusive).

The <regName> element would carry three attributes:
--authority=  indicates what authority, if any, is being used as the 
source of the regularization, with values such as "NACO", other 
possibilities
--url= (or target=) points to an external resource
--xml:id= allows the element to be pointed to from the naming element 
in the text.

Example:

<regName authority="NACO" xml:id="rn17">Clinton, William J.</regName>
<regName authority="NACO" xml:id="rn18">Aldrin, Edwin Eugene, Jr.</regName>

<!-- above <regName> elements may be somewhere in <teiHeader> or <hyperDiv>,
            and may be part of a new prosopographic element -->
<!-- ... -->
<name reg="#rn17">Bill Clinton</name>
<persName reg="#rn18">Buzz Aldrin</persName>

We are still concerned about how this use of reg= and <regName> will 
fit in with other forms of regularization (e.g. spelling). However, 
since all other uses of reg= will probably now be addressed as child 
elements, the possibility of confusion is diminished.

Comments welcome--

Julia