What's in a Name

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What's in a Name

Analysis of Name Properties in DBpedia.

Note: this page was first edited it in emacs orgmode, then converted with

pandoc prop-names.org -w mediawiki >prop-names.mw

--VladimirAlexiev 18:49, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

Believe ot or not, DBO has 86 properties called "name". Isn't that a bit too much? Yes it is, and we need to fix this situation to avoid confusion.

If you ponder on the prop names below without reading my explanations, you'll appreciate the importance of documenting every property and class. I don't mean something complicated: just explain the purpose and when it's used.x

Name Forms and Lifecycle

People's names change during their lifetime. Eg Cranach was born Lucas Maler (after the profession of his father), was renamed Lucas Cranach when he became famous (after his birthplace Cronach), then art historians stated calling him Lucas Cranach the Elder after his son (also Lucas Cranach) became an artist.

In some cultural heritage documentation systems (eg CIDOC CRM), name allocation and usage across time and space can be tracked with separate nodes. In DBpedia the situation is simpler, but we still need several name properties. But not as many as we find here! Actually this list is relatively short but is crucially important, since these props are used numerous times (everything has a name, right)?

foaf:name Use for Person & Organisation ok
dbo:name Use for everything except Person & Organisation check
dbo:names Bug, came from some Greek Astronomy props #7

Birth, previous, original, historical, former, old:

dbo:birthName TODO
dbo:formerName TODO
dbo:historicalName TODO
dbo:oldName TODO
dbo:originalName TODO
dbo:previousName TODO
dbo:sameName TODO
dbo:presentName Duplicate of name ?

Other names

dbo:officialName
dbo:alternativeName
dbo:otherName
dbo:longName
dbo:commonName Eg "cat"
dbo:scientificName Eg "Felix catus" (biology)

Language-specific Names

There are thousands upon thousands of languages in the world. IANA has defined lang tags for a lot of them, following ISO2 and ISO3 codes, extending, and allowing custom extensions).

Rather than making up a new property for each language in the world, we must use one property, with proper lang tag.

Eg instead of

dbr_fr:belgrade name "Belgrade"; cyrilliqueName "Белград".

We should make this:

dbr_fr:belgrade name "Belgrade"@fr, "Белград"@sr-Cyrl.

The Template:PropertyMapping has a parameter "language" just for that purpose. See eg Getty LOD documentation for lang tag examples, and a script to fetch the IANA registry to a table.

We have to investigate the use of these of each case below. Eg:

  • germanName should be fixed but alemmanicName might have some cultural significance
  • algerianName should be fixed but algerianSettlementName should be investigated
  • frenchName should be fixed to "name" but frenchNickname might become otherName@fr or something like this
  • some of them might map to originalName (plus language), depending on how they're used

All these are tracked under #15

dbo:alemmanicName ??
dbo:algerianName #15
dbo:algerianSettlementName ??
dbo:arabicName #15 fixed
dbo:arberishtName
dbo:calabrianName
dbo:chaouiName
dbo:cornishName
dbo:cyrilliqueName #15 fixed
dbo:dutchName
dbo:englishName
dbo:finnishName
dbo:frenchName
dbo:frenchNickname
dbo:frioulanName
dbo:gaelicName
dbo:germanName
dbo:greekName
dbo:irishName
dbo:italianName
dbo:japanName
dbo:kabyleName
dbo:kanjiName
dbo:ladinName Mapping fr:Infobox Commune d'Italie nom ladin, see [Ladin language]
dbo:luxembourgishName
dbo:manxName
dbo:maoriName
dbo:messierName
dbo:moldavianName
dbo:mozabiteName
dbo:occitanName
dbo:sardinianName
dbo:scotishName
dbo:scotsName
dbo:scottishName
dbo:sicilianName
dbo:tamazightName
dbo:tamazightSettlementName
dbo:touaregName
dbo:touaregSettlementName
dbo:welshName

To Investigate

dbo:colonialName
dbo:informationName
dbo:leaderName
dbo:legislativePeriodName
dbo:meshName
dbo:municipalityRenamedTo Anything can be renamed, why "municipality". Is that the current name?
dbo:namedByLanguage
dbo:personName
dbo:phonePrefixName Say again?
dbo:policeName
dbo:reignName
dbo:sharingOutName dc:type of a part Place ref
dbo:sharingOutPopulationName
dbo:signName
dbo:statName
dbo:subdivisionName

Is Ok

dbo:nameAsOf Date when "name" was first assigned
dbo:filename Filename of a Sound see #19
dbo:iupacName IUPAC name of a Chemical
dbo:ngcName NGC name of a CelestialBody
dbo:fuelTypeName fuelType of PowerStation as literal
dbo:peopleName Name for the people of a certain place, eg Bulgaria->Bulgarian
dbo:spouseName Spouse of someone as literal
dbo:teamName Name of a School's athletic teams
dbo:nameDay Name-day of a saint (a xsd:gMonthDay)
dbo:namedAfter Person after whom something is named (eg School, Disease, Theorem etc)
dbo:colourName The colors of a party, school, taxon(?)

Not Ok

dbo:genereviewsname Bad capitalization (camelCase) #18
dbo:circuitName replace with raceTrack bug