Should Indonesian degrees written like paired initials be credentials after a comma? (Ganjar Pranowo, S.H., M.H. gives given 'S.H.', family 'Ganjar Pranowo') #1204

Indonesian degrees (gelar) follow the name after a comma, often two or three of them. Those written as two single letters have the shape C5 (paired initials after the comma) reads as the given name, so the comma becomes a family comma and the whole name lands in family (measured on master 5f22996):

S.H. is Sarjana Hukum (bachelor of law), M.H. Magister Hukum, S.T. Sarjana Teknik, S.P. Sarjana Pertanian, S.S. Sarjana Sastra and M.E. Magister Ekonomi. The listed S.E. and the degrees written in longer chunks (S.Kom., M.Kes., read by S3, credentials written in joined chunks) are fine. #998 is the same family of degrees with no comma.

A second group keeps the name right but puts the degree in title, so the default rendering writes it first:

M.Pd. and S.Pd. are the education degrees (Magister and Sarjana Pendidikan), Lc. the Licence of Al-Azhar and the Middle East, and Sp.PD the internal-medicine specialist. pd (German Priv.-Doz., de.toml) and st (Saint) are listed titles.

Measured (2026-11-08):

• A grid of 57 common degrees, each in Ganjar Pranowo, X and Ganjar Pranowo, X, M.Si.: 40 read as suffixes, 10 as the given name (S.H., S.T., S.P., S.S., M.H., M.E., SH, MH, SKom, MSi), and 7 in title (S.Pd., S.Pd.I., S.Sn., M.Pd., Sp.PD, Lc., ST).
• ORCID's 20,000 Indonesian records: 95 hold a comma in a box, nearly always the person's whole name with degrees typed into one box. Read alone, 41 of those 95 read the first word after the comma into the name, most of them a degree (a few are journal titles typed into the box). M.Pd. (18) and S.H. (12) are the commonest degrees there.
• The two-letter pairs across all of ORCID: written after a comma in a box, SH 12, ST 8, MH 7, SP 2, SS 1 and ME 1 times, 28 of those 31 from Indonesia. As a person's own initials (a given box holding just the pair): SH 11, MH 10, ST 8, SP 7, SS 4, ME 1, of which 5 (ST) Indonesian.
• The parliament lists checked for Indonesia (OpenSanctions id_dpr, id_dpd, id_regional_2018) drop degrees, so they don't measure this.

Why the shape can't decide it

The same three-part shape is the Western surname-first form with a credential: García Márquez, G.J., PhD reads given G.J., family García Márquez, as it should, and Ganjar Pranowo, S.H., Ph.D. reads the same way. Only the words tell them apart.

Simulated as credentials on everywhere (add("sh", kind="credential", acronym=True) and the same for mh):

The last two rows show the cost: someone whose initials are S.H., written surname first, loses them to the suffix. ORCID's two boxes barely see either side (config_diff.py score over sh, mh, sp and ss: Indonesia 2 fixed, 1 broken; Malaysia 0/0).

Proposal

When: the parse is under a choice of id, and S.H., M.H., S.T., S.P., S.S. or M.E. (dotted or as two capitals) stands after the name.

Then: it is a credential, a default = false reading in id.toml, so C5 doesn't read it as the given name.

Because: under that choice the competing reading, a person's own initials after a family comma, is the rare one: 5 Indonesian ORCID records give a pair as their initials against 28 that write one as a degree.

Questions

• Should the second group (M.Pd., S.Pd., S.Pd.I., S.Sn., Sp.PD, Lc.) be listed credentials by default? None of them looks like a name, and today they read as titles after the name.
• S.T. (Sarjana Teknik) meets st's Saint, given and generation readings. Does it need its own look?
• Is id the right choice, or would Malaysian data (which writes some of these degrees) want them too?