Skip to content

Should an Arabic compound given name keep the article that completes it? (Nour El Houda Haddou gives family 'El Houda Haddou') #1378

Open

Description

@derek73

Since #1257 el is read by default as al is, an article that may be a given name. Algeria is the one population measured where that breaks more names than it fixes: ORCID's Algerian researchers 37 fixed to 135 broken, PSC's Algerian filers 3 to 10 (config_diff.py score, 2026-11-12, against Morocco's 2,002 to 26, Egypt's 286 to 20 and Lebanon's 432 to 6). Every Algerian break is the article inside a compound given name, which the particle join takes into the family. #1257 recorded this as an accepted cost under rules/P2; this issue would lift it. The same shape costs Hebrew-script אל about 6 JRC-Names spellings, and Latin abd before El:

Input today the given name
Nour El Houda Haddou given 'Nour', family 'El Houda Haddou' given 'Nour El Houda'
Seif El Islam Haddou given 'Seif', family 'El Islam Haddou' given 'Seif El Islam'
Mohamed El Amine Haddou given 'Mohamed', family 'El Amine Haddou' given 'Mohamed El Amine'
Abd El Kader Haddou given 'Abd', family 'El Kader Haddou' given 'Abd El Kader'
עבד אל עזיז כהן given 'עבד', family 'אל עזיז כהן' given 'עבד אל עזיז'

Proposal (vocabulary only, no new rule)

  1. The second halves as rules/P10 words (after_particle on their given readings): houda, hoda, amine, islam, islem, din, dine, zahraa, zahra, batoul, imen, bachir, habib…
    • When: a one-word given name, the article, a listed word, then a family name.
    • Then: the article and the word are a middle name (as María del Carmen García reads); two-given-name handling (rules/O7) takes it into the given name.
    • Because: the word after the article is a given name's second half.
    • Accepted: a family name opening with the same word reads as the given name's half, the cost P10 already accepts for Carmen.
    • Open: P10's threshold (75% of moved names landing in the filers' boxes, ten or more) per word, pooled or by country; on by default or under an Arabic choice only.
  2. abd, abdel and Hebrew-script עבד with rules/P12's completed_by for the names after the article (El Kader, El Aziz; אל עזיז, אל חלים, אל כרים, אללה), joined as one given name.
    • Open: which names; whether Latin abd takes the same list as Arabic عبد.
  3. Arabic-script ايت and ولد (Should Ait, Nait and Ould be family-name particles? (Youssef Ait Taleb gives middle 'Ait', family 'Taleb') #1249's last question): the spellings of ait and ould, 5 and 4 names among 394 + 117 Moroccan parliamentarians. Is ben/bin/בן a particle, a patronymic marker, or a given name? (Karim Ben Salah, בן כספית, Youssef Ait Taleb) #1257's rule 1 would decide them; ولد is also the noun "boy" and needs its bearer check.

Questions

  • Does (1) lift Algeria enough to drop the Accepted line from rules/P2?
  • Is it on by default or under an Arabic choice only?

Activity

  1. added this to the 3.1 milestone on Nov 13, 2026
  2. self-assigned this
    on Nov 13, 2026
  3. added
    vocabularyFixed by a word-list entry: per-word vocabulary and language packs
    particlesParticles and surname prefixes (rules/P)
    on Nov 13, 2026
  4. added a commit that references this issue on Nov 13, 2026
  5. derek73 commented on Nov 13, 2026

    @derek73
    OwnerAuthor

    Two additions from the review of #1373, both the same shapes as above:

  6. added 2 commits that reference this issue on Nov 13, 2026
Sign up for free to join this conversation on GitHub. Already have an account? Sign in to comment

Metadata

Metadata

Assignees

Labels

particlesParticles and surname prefixes (rules/P)vocabularyFixed by a word-list entry: per-word vocabulary and language packs

Projects

No projects

    Relationships

    None yet

    Development

    No branches or pull requests

    Issue actions