Should initials written after a given name stay together as the family name? (Lakshmi R S gives middle 'R', family 'S') #1163

parse("Lakshmi R S") gives given 'Lakshmi', middle 'R', family 'S'. In South India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, initials written after the given name stand for the father's name or the family's place of origin, and the bearer treats them as their family name. Today the parser keeps them together only when they're written as one word:

• Lakshmi RS gives family 'RS'
• Ram Bahadur B.K. gives family 'B.K.' (Should Ram Bahadur B.K. keep B.K. as its family name? #864)
• spaced, they split: Lakshmi R S, Lakshmi R. S., Ram Bahadur B K

Measured 2026-11-07 on ORCID's agreement sample: records written as one or more name words followed by two or more single letters, checked against the holder's own family box.

The default parse reads all 316 Indian records wrong. The "other" rows mostly put a word in front of the initials into the family box too (Raja S K, family box 'Raja S K').

How it relates to #1137: that issue asks whether Armitage JO, one word plus initials, should read surname first, and found surname first was the 2:1 majority. With two or more spaced letters after a full given name, no record anywhere put the word before them in the family box. So the spacing seems to separate the two conventions: a byline glues or dots the letters (Armitage JO, Armitage J.O.), while this convention spaces them.

Questions:

• Should a trailing run of two or more single letters, spaced, read as one family unit, as Should Ram Bahadur B.K. keep B.K. as its family name? #864 does for the dotted pair?
• What about Western names that end that way (John A B)? They're rare, but they would move too.
• One trailing letter (Kavitha S) is Should Armitage JO read family 'Armitage'? A surname followed by initials, with no comma, reads the initials as the family name #1137's shape, and the two issues should probably be decided together.