Practical International Data Management - field lengths

Fields in data tables need to be long enough to contain the required data, without abbreviation, and this is longer than is usually expected or catered for. For example, fields allowing only 30 characters for a surname are common but unable to take many long names common throughout the world, such as muslim names.

Examples

• Airline 'ban' on long name - A Swedish woman is not allowed on a plane because her name is too long to fit on a boarding card. Cached version
• Example of an aristocratic German name: Karl Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jacob Philipp Franz Joseph Sylvester Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg

Processing

Depending on how a name is stored in your data file, we advise at least these field lengths:

• Form of address 30
• First given name 30
• Second given name 30
• Other given names 30
• Preferred calling name 30
• Full given name initials 15 (includes full stops between letters)
• Full middle initials 15 (includes full stops between letters)
• First surname 150
• Second surname 150
• Other surnames 150
• Academic title 30
• Seniority 30

A company name field should be at least 150 characters long. A job title field should be at least 100 characters long. Thoroughfare name fields, depending on the level of data fragmentation, should not be shorter than 100 characters long. The longest postal code currently in use in the world is 10 digits long

Resources

• How long is YOUR street name field? A blog post by Graham Rhind using an example of a thoroughfare name containing 89 characters. (Cached version)
• Size does matter. Graham Rhind looks at how lonmg addresses and their components can be. October 2012. (Cached version)

Practical International Data Management Online.  A free resource from GRC Data Intelligence. For comments, questions or feedback: pidm@grcdi.nl