Indexing Personal Names: Cultural & Linguistic Conventions
Personal Names across Cultures
How a name is indexed can affect the usefulness of the index as well as the frustration of a reader searching for somebody specific. When it comes to personal names, there are many factors that can come into play, such as name changes, alternate versions, pseudonyms, honorifics, or titles. To keep things interesting, cultural and linguistic naming conventions vary from place to place as well as from one language to another.
Each language and culture has its own naming practices, such as how many names a person has and the order in which they appear.
Some cultures, like Hungarian or Japanese, commonly refer to people by the family name first. Other cultures, such as Indonesian, may use only a single, given name. Tibetan and Burmese cultures do not typically use family names.*
In addition to at least one given name, Spanish traditional names use two last names: the father’s and mother’s (in that order), so do Portuguese (but with the father’s name last), and Russian names often use patronymics that don’t count as surnames but can cause confusion to an unwitting indexer.
Names might also include articles or other elements such as ibn (Arabic for “son of”). Indexers need to be aware of these name elements and have the resources to deal with them appropriately, and should not be shy about consulting an expert for tricky cases.
Change over Time
Not only do languages themselves change over time, but so do naming conventions. A relatively recent example is Turkey, where a law requiring people to adopt family names went into effect in June of 1934.
The Indexer’s Role
The indexer’s job in any project is not to interpret the author’s message, but to provide the appropriate access points and alternate terms that readers can use to locate information in the text.
While general knowledge is certainly helpful in any project, indexers do not need to be experts in the subject area or cultures/languages that are discussed in the text. Indexers should, however, have enough knowledge going in so they can recognize topics — and names — that readers will search for.
Some preliminary research may be called for to ensure that the client receives the highest quality index possible.
Tools for Indexers
There are a number of resources, in addition to dictionaries and encyclopedias, to help indexers with foreign-language names…
The American Society for Indexing (ASI) hosts regular webinars on a wide variety of topics, including indexing names.
Relevant ASI webinars have discussed issues with indexing Arabic, Russian, and Spanish names.
The Chicago Manual of Style has a whole chapter (16) on indexing, and within that chapter, sections 16.75-16.87 are dedicated solely to non-English personal names.
Knowledge of common transliteration systems is useful for those names that come from languages with different alphabets.
Publishers may have their own house stylistic preferences for the treatment of names, so communication between indexer and client on this topic is crucial.
Last but Not Least
The index should always reflect the text, so personal names preferred in the index should be indicative of what is found in the body of the book — this includes transliteration and spelling, as well as the structure of the name which could affect sort order as well as readability of the index. How a personal name is indexed — Murakami, Haruki vs. Murakami Haruki — will depend on whether the person follows Western naming conventions as well as the nature of the document and its target audience.
*Unless a link is provided, all information about naming conventions was either obtained or verified in the Chicago Manual of Style, 17th ed., or an ASI webinar on the subject.
