Should Hebrew initials written without a space read as initials? (א.ב. כהן gives given 'א.ב.', where א. ב. כהן gives given 'א.', middle 'ב.') #1381

Hebrew writes initials with a full stop, as an author's name on a book cover does. Written with spaces they read as initials; written as one run they stay a single word, and a letter is lost.

The name match follows the parse: אברהם בנימין כהן is consistent with א. ב. כהן and conflicts with א.ב. כהן.

The cause is the test rules/T7 uses: a run is parted where it is "written in capitals or in a name written wholly in lower case". A word in a script with no case is neither, so the rule never fires. Georgian passes only because Unicode counts its letters as lower case (#1256).

Proposal, in rule shape

• When: a word is a run of two or more single Hebrew letters, each followed by a full stop.
• Then: it is parted into initials, as a run in capitals is.
• Because: the script writes initials, and the run is the same convention written without spaces.
• Open: how often the run is written. The corpora held cannot say: JRC-Names stores no full stops, and the Knesset list holds no initials. A source that keeps its punctuation is needed first (a library catalogue or a bibliography in Hebrew).
• Open: the run in the suffix slot. דוד כהן א.ב. reads suffix 'א.ב.' today, reported as suffix-or-name. Does that stay?
• Open: whether the answer belongs in the script-property table (Which scripts have case, and which write initials? (ჯეკ MA, ကြည် ကြည် ဌေး, एम. एस. वर्मा) #1256) as "writes initials, has no case", so Hebrew is decided the way Georgian was and Arabic is asked in Should د. and the Iraqi academic abbreviations read as titles? (د. أحمد علي حسن gives given 'د.') #1149.

A second shape, possibly its own issue

Hebrew also abbreviates two given names with the gershayim. ש"י כהן and ש״י כהן read given 'ש"י' as one word, with initials() 'ש. כ.'. Titles written that way (ד"ר, עו"ד) are listed vocabulary and read right; a given-name abbreviation is not.