4 Name (xNL) overview

4.1 Basic person name (xNL-basic)

The basic person name entity represents the simplest form of a name of an individual. The name may be broken down into a number of elements [Refer to8,Data quality for more details on elements and attributes.] as illustrated in Figure 1. The PersonName structure can be used singly or reused by other, more complex structures.

This structure can store any name of an individual regardless of its origin. However, the names may only be represented in ways that are customary in New Zealand.

4.2 Basic organisation name (xNL-basic)

The basic organisation name entity is the simplest form of the name of an organisation. The name can be broken down into a number of elements as illustrated in Figure 2.

The OrganisationName structure may be used singly or be reused by other, more complex structures.

This structure can store any name of an organisation regardless of its origin. However, the names may only be represented in ways that are customary in New Zealand.

The OrganisationName structure can represent organisation subdivisions, such as departments, labs, or units. The SubdivisionName element may be nested infinitely providing an option for complex organisational hierarchies in names.

4.3 Complex person name (xNL)

Some applications require extended information about a person's name.

Common examples of the extended information include former names, nicknames, aliases, or pseudonyms. Former names are placed in the FormerName element and all the other names in the KnownAs element.

This structure reuses the basic person name construct, but the PersonName element belongs to the local namespace (the xNL namespace).

4.4 Complex joint person name

In some cases, more than one individual may act as an entity. For example Ann and John Benson hold a shared account, so the customer has a joint name consisting of two individual names. The JointPersonName element can combine names of different individuals into one joint name with some additional metadata about them acting as one entity. Element PersonName is reused from the local namespace (see 9, Applying namespaces, elements, and attributes).

4.5 Complex organisation name

Some use cases require extended information about an organisation name.

Common examples of the extended information include former organisation names, trading as, aliases, or brand names. Former organisation names are placed in the FormerName element and all the other names in the KnownAs element.

This structure reuses the basic organisation name construct, but the OrganisationName element belongs to the local namespace.

4.6 Containerising the name entities

The entities previously described in this document may be placed under a container element called NameDetails. There can be any number of NameDetails elements under the root element called xNL (see Figure 6).