Building parsers for Nanohistory has involved quite a bit of thinking about what's in a name. I'm going to leave organizations, places, and things and outline how I've approached the issue for prosopographical data. Let's get some basics out of the way first - just so we're clear on what's going on. A "name" is essentially a label; whether it as attached to anything in particular is secondary in practical terms. In short, a name is a descriptor for something that can exist in reality or be completely fictive. This is important to note because unlike a cataloguer in a repository, historical scholars are interested in the movement and shaping of identities: names are the lynchpins, but do not
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