Person Names for Canada

Name Styles

The structure of a person's name can vary among countries. Therefore, a predefined name style exists for capturing relevant components of a person's name. The format in which names must be entered for workers located in Canada is predefined and should not be modified during implementation. The name style determines:

Which name components appear when you create a person record.
The order in which the name components appear.
Which name components are required and which are optional.

For example, in one country you may be required to enter a title while in another, the title may be optional.

Here's the list of attributes that the Canadian name style includes.

Name Component	Required
Last Name	Required
First Name	Optional
Title	Optional
Prefix	Optional
Suffix	Optional
Middle Name	Optional
Honors	Optional
Preferred Name	Optional
Previous Last Name	Optional

When you create a person record you select a legal employer, which sets the legislative context for the record. For example, if the legal employer is a Canadian legal entity, the legislative context is Canada and the Canadian name style is used. A person's contacts have the same name style as the person for whom they're contacts.

Name Formats

A name format is a template for arranging the following components in a specified folder:

First name
Last name
Title

These five name formats are available for Canada:

Format Type	Usage	Default Structure
Full Name	Names that appear in reports.	[Last Name], [First Name] [Middle Name] [Title]
Display Name	Names that appear singly, for example, on the Person Management page header.	[First Name] [Prefix] [Last Name]
List Name	Names that appear in lists	[Prefix] [Last Name], [First Name]
Order Name	Names that appear in name-ordered lists where the full name alone isn't sufficient to sort the list.	[Last Name] [First Name]
Preferred Name	Names that aren't legal names, but how Canadian employees are referred to, especially those employees of a foreign decent.	[Last Name], [First Name] [Preferred Name]

Name formats can vary among countries; therefore, both global and local versions of names formats exist.

When a person's name is displayed to you, the format of the name can vary according to the context in which it appears. For example, in an ordered list of names, last name may appear before first name, but in another context the first name can appear before last name.

Global and Local Name Formats

The profile option HR: Local or Global Name Format controls whether you see local names or global names by default.

Global names use one name format; therefore, users in multinational enterprises can see person names presented consistently, regardless of their countries of origin.

Users who view or manage person records in a single country may prefer to see local names. For example, users who view or manage person records only in Japan may prefer to see Japanese rather than global formats of person names. Canada doesn't require entry of a local character set. For those entries of names that require the use of accents, the name can simply be entered with those accents in the global format.

Person-Name Languages

Each enterprise identifies a global-name language. Person names appear in this language by default. When you create a person record, you can enter a local name in a different language from the global-name language. Names appear in this language for users whose HR: Local or Global Name Format profile option value matches the local-name language.

For example:

The global-name language for the enterprise is American English.

You set the local-name language in a person record to Japanese. Henceforth, users whose HR: Local or Global Name Format profile option is set to Japanese see the person's name in Japanese.

All other users (those who are viewing global-format names or whose HR: Local or Global Name Format profile option is set to a value other than Japanese) see the person's name in American English.

Note: If you enter no local name in a person record, the local name is the same as the global name by default.

You can set preferences to select the language in which they see the display-name versions of person names.