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Should a Mongolian choice read the father's name first? (Ухнаагийн Хүрэлсүх gives given 'Ухнаагийн', family 'Хүрэлсүх') #1237

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@derek73

Mongolians have no family name in the Western sense. A name is the father's (rarely the mother's) name, then the given name. Written in full, the father's name comes first, in the genitive: Ухнаагийн Хүрэлсүх, "Khürelsükh, Ukhnaa's (son)". In passports and many lists it is in the nominative: Ухнаа Хүрэлсүх. Official documents put it in the surname field, and the given name is the name people are called by. The parser reads by position, so under the default policy the father's name is the given name (measured on master ccaf6ad):

Input default FAMILY_FIRST
Ухнаагийн Хүрэлсүх given Ухнаагийн, family Хүрэлсүх given Хүрэлсүх, family Ухнаагийн
Ukhnaagiin Khürelsükh given Ukhnaagiin, family Khürelsükh given Khürelsükh, family Ukhnaagiin
Цэнд Сандаг-Очир (nominative) given Цэнд, family Сандаг-Очир given Сандаг-Очир, family Цэнд
Боржигин Ухнаагийн Хүрэлсүх (clan name first) given Боржигин, middle Ухнаагийн given Ухнаагийн, middle Хүрэлсүх, family Боржигин

locales.RU reads all of these as the default does. The East Slavic rotation (O1) never fires, and the patronymic view stays empty.

Measured (2026-11-08):

  • State Great Khural, 126 members, nominative Father Given (OpenSanctions mn_parliament, and the Khural API's last_name/first_name): default 0/126, FAMILY_FIRST 126/126.
  • Wikidata mn labels of Mongolian citizens, two words: 1,180 with the genitive on the first word, 1 on the second (Сандаг-Очир Цэндийн), 111 with neither. Under FAMILY_FIRST, 1,228 of the 1,230 genitive-first labels read right; the misses are a trailing comma and a parenthesis.
  • Wikidata en labels, two words: 515 with the romanized genitive (-yn, -iin, -giin) on the first word, 1 on the second, and 368 with neither. Those 368 come in both orders (Damdiny Demberel, Khaltar Bilegjargal father first; Urantsetseg Munkhbat, Munkhbayar Dorjsuren given first).
  • The genitive marks the father's name cleanly: 0 of 1,308 given names (126 Khural, 1,182 Wikidata) end in -ын, -ийн, -гийн or -ны, and 0 of the 126 Khural given names romanized end in -yn, -iin or -giin.

Options

  1. An MN pack with name_order = "family-first", as vi.toml's [rules] sets VI's order (Should parser_for(locales.VI) read Nguyen Van Anh as family Nguyen, middle Van, given Anh, and Le Van Anh as family Le? #1108). This covers Cyrillic, where the father's name comes first in every source above. It misreads romanized names written given first (Urantsetseg Munkhbat).
  2. A rule that reads the genitive, like O2 (the Turkic rotation) reads its marker: under a Mongolian choice, a first word ending in the genitive is the father's name, whatever the order. This covers the 1,180 + 515 marked names in both orders but not the nominative form (Цэнд Сандаг-Очир), which still needs option 1.
  3. Leave it to FAMILY_FIRST, documented as the Mongolian recipe.

Questions

  • Which field holds the father's name: family, as passports have it, or the patronymic view (rules/R9) with family empty? Under R9 a patronymic is a name word read in a name field, so the view could be filled alongside family.
  • How does a Mongolian choice read the glued official form Ц.Сандаг-Очир? That depends on the glued-initial question (Should an initial glued to a name split at its period? (Ц.Сандаг-Очир gives given 'Ц.Сандаг-Очир', no family) #1235).
  • Clan names (Боржигин) before the father's name: no source above writes one, so this round did not measure them.
  • Latin given names ending in -yn (Evelyn, Kathryn) would match a romanized genitive under option 2. That cost falls only on a caller who chose Mongolian.

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