Hi Steven and Bruce,

Thanks very much for your advice, it has been most helpful. I think we will use a combination of both suggestions.

For our purposes, finer granularity is preferred, so I think we will use <displayForm> to show: Hoover, J. Edgar, and perhaps use repeating "given" namePart types for "J." and "Edgar", and ensure they are ordered correctly.

Thanks again,
Cristina

-----Original Message-----
From: Metadata Object Description Schema List [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Bruce D'Arcus
Sent: 14 February 2012 19:45
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [MODS] Initials and middle names in MODS

On Tue, Feb 14, 2012 at 7:25 AM, Cristina Ritchie <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

...

> Many of the people mentioned on the pages (authors, editors, etc) have middle names and initials, and I do not know how to fit that in with "family" and "given" name types. Is there a current convention for this?

I don't see this as a limitation.

The problem is names are complex, and the notion of "middle name"
fairly idiosyncratic, and culturally-specific. It doesn't even work for well for a lot of Western names (consider "J. Edgar Hoover").

Since XML is ordered, I'd either include the names in the given name, and split them into separate given elements.

Bruce