Annoying case one: hyphenated given names. If you break them up into multiple <namePart> elements, where does the hyphen go? <mads ID="chang.f-l.f"> <authority> <name type="personal"> <namePart type="family">Chang</namePart> <namePart type="given">F.-L. F.</namePart> </name> </authority> </mads> Annoyng case two: Ideographic names that are a single character. <mads ID="kamegaki.h"> <authority> <name type="personal"> <namePart type="family"> 垣</namePart> <namePart type="given">一</namePart> </name> </authority> <refs> <ref variantType="translation"> <name transliteration="iso3602"> <namePart type="family">kamegaki</namePart> <namePart type="given">hazime</namePart> </name> </ref> </refs> <note type="sort order">カメガキ ハジメ</note> </mads> Annoying case three (no example because it's not something you can see): the initial is a base character followed by one or more combining characters. Annoying case four (I had an example but couldn't find it): the name is a single Latin letter. Annoying case five: the former name of the artist currently known as Prince (all right, we can just ignore this one). >>> [log in to unmask] 2004-06-11 10:33:43 >>> OK, I was playing with a solution to initialized names earlier. Logic is: All given names have their own nameParts. If such namePart only contains one character, it is understood to be initialized. If not, it is not initialized. Is that generalizable? Bruce