When a database designer needs to preserve a personal name, he does not always provide fields for more than given names and surnames. He may have assumed that certain pre-posed title phrases, e.g., Mr. Mrs. etc., would be ignored, but data entry personnel put them in the given name field. The same sort of thing happens to postposed title phrases, e.g., Jr., Ph.D.. King of France. etc., in the surname field. Furthermore, entry of data into just these two fields may be inconsistent by allowing some personnel to use the given name field for maiden names or patronymics, and the surname field for clan or tribal names. These kinds of problems may be resolved by using a GRAMMAR to parse out, i.e., analyze, and classify the pieces.
There are other GRAMMARS that serve to describe the structure of personal name strings that are not used to identify persons. These name strings identify such things as cultures, families, clans, localities, dates, etc. There will be occasion to mention some of these since individuals often get their names or parts of them from such things as they may be associated with. For personal names these things are external associations from which they may be derived (cf. §4). Similarly with the discussion of the localities and dates, they will be related to other kinds of name strings.