Create a custom Person name format

You can use the USER_SYM_SUBROUTINE subroutine with the PERSON.NAME argument in a complex User Symbolic to combine different person fields together to create a custom Person name format.

Subroutine name

USER_SYM_SUBROUTINE

Subroutine argument

PERSON.NAME

Field type

Person Name and identifying fields

Example of use

The person's title, firstname, lastname and life years could be displayed.

Miss Georgia Flowers 1942-2001

Argument syntax and parameters

The subroutine is a piece of code that uses ‘arguments’. An argument is a set of options that tells the subroutine what to do. The argument parameters are commonly separated by an exclamation mark.

The PERSON.NAME subroutine argument structure is:

PERSON.NAME!arg2*arg3*arg4*arg5

What the argument parameters mean

Argument parameter Required or optional? Explanation
arg2 Required

Codes for the Person fields to display, delimited by exclamation marks. For example, T!K!L!PN.

  • T - Title

  • I - Initials

  • F - Firstnames

  • K - Known As

  • D - Life Dates

  • Y - Life Years

  • N - Nationality

  • C - City of Address

  • , - Comma

  • ( - Left Bracket

  • ) - Right Bracket

  • B - Date of Birth Year

  • A - Date of Death Year

  • PB - Place of Birth

  • PD - Place of Death

  • PN - Post Nominals
arg3 Optional The System ID of Name Type to be reported
arg4 Optional

If Life Years (Y) has been selected in arg2, then the Lifeyears flag can be used to determine how this data is displayed.

  • 0 - Birth year and death year will be prefaced with the abbreviations b. and d. For corporate records this will be estab. and closed.

  • 1 - The full words for born, died, established, and closed will be used.

  • - - A hyphen will be used to indicate born, died, established and closed.
arg5 Optional

The Case Conversion Flag can be used to alter the case of Title, Firstname, Known As and Lastname.

  • 0 - No Case Conversion

  • 1 - Convert to title case (e.g. SMITH will be converted to Smith).

  • 2 - Convert to upper case (e.g. Smith will be converted to SMITH).

  • 3 - Convert to lower case (e.g. Smith will be converted to smith).

Example of subroutine argument

This example will display the Title, Firstname, Lastname, and Life Years (T!F!L!Y) of Preferred name types (P). Lifeyears will be indicated by a hyphen (-) and all Name fields will be converted to title case (1).

PERSON.NAME!T!F!L!Y*P*-*1

For example, Miss Georgia Flower 1946-2015.