Maintenance
Part of March birthdays: a dated selection and how calendars shape each date
Guide to march birthdays by day and what a sort key misses about names
March birthdays by day, with the March 1 entries named and the collation rule that decides their order plus the sort key blind spot for name particles.
What to take away
- March 1 carries five documented birthdays in this recordFrédéric Chopin (1810), David Niven (1910), Roger Daltrey (1944), Ron Howard (1954) and Justin Bieber (1994).
- March 2 to March 31 appear as one documented name per day. Each row samples that date rather than completing it.
- Entries sort on a separate sort key, never on the name shown on screen. The key follows the Unicode collation algorithm default with accents folded to base letters, so Chopin files at C.
- Particles such as van, de, von and da leave the key when the person is indexed under the following element. Vincent van Gogh, born March 30, 1853, files under G.
- Order is a formatting choice. It never certifies a date.
One documented name for each day, March 2 to 31
Each row is one documented name for that date; many days hold more, and one entry keeps the table readable. The month index at March birthdays keeps the day order and is where to check a day this sample covers once.
One documented name for each day
| Day | Person | Born | Known for |
|---|---|---|---|
| March 2 | Jon Bon Jovi | 1962 | Singer |
| March 3 | Alexander Graham Bell | 1847 | Inventor |
| March 4 | Antonio Vivaldi | 1678 | Composer |
| March 5 | Eva Mendes | 1974 | Actress |
| March 6 | Michelangelo | 1475 | Painter |
| March 7 | Bryan Cranston | 1956 | Actor |
| March 8 | Freddie Prinze Jr. | 1976 | Actor |
| March 9 | Amerigo Vespucci | 1454 | Explorer |
| March 10 | Sharon Stone | 1958 | Actress |
| March 11 | Johnny Knoxville | 1971 | Performer |
| March 12 | Liza Minnelli | 1946 | Singer |
| March 13 | William H. Macy | 1950 | Actor |
| March 14 | Albert Einstein | 1879 | Physicist |
| March 15 | Ruth Bader Ginsburg | 1933 | Jurist |
| March 16 | Jerry Lewis | 1926 | Comedian |
| March 17 | Kurt Russell | 1951 | Actor |
| March 18 | Queen Latifah | 1970 | Rapper |
| March 19 | Wyatt Earp | 1848 | Lawman |
| March 20 | Spike Lee | 1957 | Director |
| March 21 | Gary Oldman | 1958 | Actor |
| March 22 | William Shatner | 1931 | Actor |
| March 23 | Jason Kidd | 1973 | Basketball player |
| March 24 | Peyton Manning | 1976 | Quarterback |
| March 25 | Aretha Franklin | 1942 | Singer |
| March 26 | Leonard Nimoy | 1931 | Actor |
| March 27 | Quentin Tarantino | 1963 | Director |
| March 28 | Lady Gaga | 1986 | Singer |
| March 29 | Eric Idle | 1943 | Comedy writer |
| March 30 | Celine Dion | 1968 | Singer |
| March 31 | Christopher Walken | 1943 | Actor |
March 1, where five names carry the naming cases
The columns match the table above, so the two tables read the same way.
March 1 five names
| Person | Born | Known for |
|---|---|---|
| Frédéric Chopin | 1810 | Composer |
| David Niven | 1910 | Actor |
| Roger Daltrey | 1944 | Singer |
| Ron Howard | 1954 | Director |
| Justin Bieber | 1994 | Singer |
Chopin's surname is the accent test. Sorted character by character, his accented e lands far from the C names it belongs beside.
Roger Daltrey works under a performing name beside a longer legal one, and the musicians with March birthdays page works through that split name by name.
Justin Bieber was born in London, Ontario, so a calendar serving Canada as a second market carries him.
Years come from published biographical records. Chopin is the disputed entry on March 1, since the records give February 22 and March 1. When records disagree, an official birth record settles the point, and the CDC guide to where to write for vital records explains how to request one.
Example: three March names and their sort keys
Three March names and sort keys
- Frédéric Chopin
- chopin, frederic
- Michelangelo
- michelangelo
- Vincent van Gogh
- gogh, vincent
Michelangelo is documented worldwide by one name. A person known by a single name is a mononym, not an incomplete record, so the key repeats the name and no field sits empty.
Van Gogh shows the particle rule: his van is a preposition, not the element collections file him under, so it leaves the key.
The ordering rule this page uses
- Keep the name as the source writes it and store it as the display field.
- Build the sort key in lowercase, folding accents to base letters and dropping particles.
- Mark the element treated as the family name, repeat the name for one-name entries, and let a human override the key alone.
Those three steps are the convention this page uses. A reader who knows the rule can predict where a name lands.
What a two-field model gets wrong about names
The common design keeps a given name and a family name, sorts on the second and shows the first. It works for many names and fails for the rest. Older records widen that gap, and the historical figures with March birthdays page treats a documented date as the start of a question.
[figure 1]
Name shapes vs two-field model
Name shape
- Single name
- Empty field, sorts on nothing
- Mononym plus legal name
- Picks one arbitrarily
- Patronymic
- Treats as inherited surname
- Family-name-first script
- Reverses on import
- Compound family name
- Splits at space, sorts on particle
Two-field model
- Single name
- One name, sort key equal
- Mononym plus legal name
- Store both, mark display
- Patronymic
- Record second is not family
- Family-name-first script
- Keep order, separate romanized form
- Compound family name
- Store community's sort key
What it should do
- Single name
- Mononym plus legal name
- Patronymic
- Family-name-first script
- Compound family name
What a two-field model gets wrong
What the two-field model does
- Single name, no family name
- Empty field, sorts on nothing
- Stage name beside a legal name
- Picks one arbitrarily
- Patronymic that changes each generation
- Reads it as a surname
- Particle such as van, de, von, da
- Splits at the space, sorts on the particle
- Name written family-name-first
- Reverses it on import
What it should do
- Single name, no family name
- Store one name, key equal to it
- Stage name beside a legal name
- Store both, mark the display one
- Patronymic that changes each generation
- Note that the second element is not a family name
- Particle such as van, de, von, da
- Drop it when the person is indexed under the next element
- Name written family-name-first
- Keep the original order plus a romanized form
Every failure here is silent. The entry looks well placed from the outside, a particle name that sinks to the letter v looks as tidy as any other row, and no reader knows enough to object. Nobody checks a list against a rule they were never shown.
Four checks catch most of them.
What a two-field model gets wrong
- Check every entry whose name contains a particle.
- Check every entry documented by a single name.
- Check every entry whose working name differs from the legal one.
- Check every entry written family-name-first in its own script.
The method carries to other months, and the February by-day pages apply it to a month with fewer days and heavier date disputes.
Common questions
Why sort on a key instead of the name the reader sees?
The displayed name serves the reader and the key serves the machine. One field doing both jobs means one gets done badly.
How do I get a name moved when it sorts wrongly?
Edit the sort key and leave the display alone. That is the one correction a list like this can make without touching the date.
How accurate are the birth years in these tables?
They follow published biographical records. A disputed year needs an official record, so treat it as provisional.
Should an accented name file under the accented letter or the base letter?
Under the base letter, which puts Chopin with the C names. A language-specific rule could differ, and this page states its own.
