Should a bare 'И' parse as an initial or the conjunction 'and'? (e.g. 'Хосе И Мария Сантос')

[derek73]

The initial regex is ^(\w\.|[A-Z])?$ (nameparser/config/regexes.py). The dotted branch is Unicode-aware (\w), so И. is recognized as an initial — but the bare-letter branch is ASCII [A-Z], so bare E is an initial while bare И is not.

With default constants this has no visible effect. It surfaces as soon as non-Latin conjunctions are configured (see the non-Latin constants proposal), because is_an_initial() is the veto that stops a single capital letter from being treated as a conjunction:

>>> from nameparser import HumanName
>>> from nameparser.config import Constants

>>> HumanName("Jose E Maria Santos").first   # 'e' is a built-in conjunction;
'Jose'                                        # bare 'E' vetoed as initial -> middle 'E Maria'

>>> C = Constants()
>>> C.conjunctions.add('и')                   # Cyrillic 'and'
>>> HumanName("Хосе И Мария Сантос", constants=C).first
'Хосе И Мария'                                # bare 'И' NOT an initial -> conjunction joins

The open question is which behavior is right. The bare-capital-initial convention ("John F Kennedy") is largely an English/Latin habit; Russian typography virtually always writes initials with periods (И. С. Петров), so treating a bare И as a conjunction is arguably correct for Cyrillic. Options:

1. Change the default: make the bare-letter branch Unicode-uppercase-aware so the initial veto is consistent across scripts. Downside: blocks single-letter non-Latin conjunctions by default, and bare initials without periods are rare outside English anyway.

2. Keep the default and document the override. regexes.initial is editable config like everything else; users who want Latin-style veto behavior for Cyrillic can use:

   C.regexes.initial = re.compile(r'^(\w\.|[A-ZА-ЯЁ])?$')

   Note the override must be script-targeted — widening the bare branch to any Unicode letter would also match lowercase e and silently disable the built-in Latin conjunction.

Verified on v1.3.0. Related: the non-Latin constants proposal #269, #265, #266.

[l1asis]

Treating the bare letter as a conjunction is definitely the correct approach for Cyrillic.

In Russian, it is и and in Ukrainian, it is either і or й. A bare и or і or й is almost always a conjunction. Standard Cyrillic typography strictly requires periods for initials (e.g., И. Иванов, І. Франко).

Great real-world examples of this are:

• Russian: "А. П. и Е. Н. Ивановы"
• Ukrainian: "Олесь і Олена Коваленки"

In these examples:

• и and і are conjunctions.
• A. П., Е. Н. are correctly punctuated initials.
• Олесь, Олена are first names.
• Ивановы and Коваленки are plural family names. The correct singular base forms for the individuals would be Иванов (m) and Иванова (f) or Коваленко (m+f).

[derek73]

Thanks for the reply. v2.0 of the parser behaves this way by default. Just wanted someone to verify that it was the right call. Thanks!

>>> parse("Хосе И Мария Сантос")
<ParsedName: [
    given: 'Хосе И Мария'
    family: 'Сантос'
]>