According to the International Cataloguing Principles (ICP) the Form of Name for Persons as an authorized access point should be constructed following a standard: “When the name of a person consists of several words, the choice of first word for the authorized access point should follow conventions of the country and language most associated with that person, as found in manifestations or reference sources”. Thus, this set of documents summarizes the conventions for each country, established by each national cataloguing agency, to help other cataloguing agencies creating authority data worldwide.

The IFLA Cataloguing Section published a list including conventions for 105 countries in 1996:

  • Names of persons : national usages for entry in catalogues. — 4th revised and enlarged edition. — München : K.G. Saur, 1996. — xi, 263 p. — (UBCIM publications ; new series, vol. 16)
  • A scanned PDF of the print publication is available here

Work to update the Names of Persons document has been continued over the past decades and the IFLA Cataloguing Section has received updated entries from many cataloguing agencies from around the world. These updates are being shared here on this page online in order to make them available for other cataloguing agencies.

UPDATE PROCESS

National libraries or cataloguing agencies willing to contribute updates, please submit the update for your country, using either the current version for your country posted below or this template, to Ted Westervelt, Information Coordinator for the Cataloguing Section.

List of files available, sorted by alphabetical order, along with the date of the last update.

Language files:

Country files: