[derek73]

Takes bare wm (William) out of the default titles, so Wm Smith reads given Wm, last Smith. 1.4.0 through 2.5.0 read title Wm with no given name. This is part (a) of #789. Part (b), the dotted Wm., stays open for phase 2 (#752).

wm was listed as a title in 0.5.5 for #68, which asked that Wm. Scott Magargee III not read given name Wm.. That request was mistaken: Wm is William written short. The title reading is now an excluded = { title = … } entry in nameparser/vocab/en.toml that carries the reason, so anyone who adds it back hits the reason as a build error (query.py --word wm, --issue 789).

What moves

Input	Before (2.5.0)	After
Wm Smith	title Wm, last Smith	first Wm, last Smith
Wm Scott Smith	title Wm, first Scott	first Wm, middle Scott
Dr. Wm Smith	title Dr. Wm	title Dr., first Wm
Wm. Smith	title Wm.	title Wm. (unchanged, rules/H2)
John Smith Wm.	title Wm.	last Wm. (1.4.0 through 2.2.0's reading)
Smith, John Wm.	title Wm.	middle Wm. (1.4.0 through 2.2.0's reading)
Wm. Smith, John	title Wm.	last Wm. Smith (1.4.0 through 2.4.0's reading)

Out of scope: the dotted Wm. opening the given part. rules/H2 (the leading-abbreviation title) reads any unlisted period-marked abbreviation there as a title, whether or not the word is listed. Making Wm., Chas., Geo., Ma. or Jo. a given name in that slot needs a reading that outranks a shape rule. That is phase 2's D14(b), not this PR. tests/v2/cases.py pins today's Wm. Smith so the phase 2 change shows up there. #789 stays open for that half (this PR does not close it), and it is on decisions/vocabulary-model's Open: line.

A correction this PR makes. The 2026-10-19 decisions entry, and #789's body, both say removing wm moves only the bare spelling. That was wrong on its date. It took the off-switch parse at the head of the name only. A trailing Wm. (rules/H5, the trailing title run) and a Wm. before a family comma (rules/H6, the title before a family comma) are read by vocabulary, not shape, so they move too. The entry is corrected in place, and the mechanisms.md field note now says to take the off-switch parse in each position as well as each spelling.

Measured

Base is 08d130e. Local snapshots were recorded with --tree on a master checkout.

• Committed snapshot and CLDR / GND / Wikidata agreement views: no move. No committed corpus holds the token wm, so these could not move.
• fec-individuals: 77 of 1,893,964 names move.
  • 69: bare WM opens the given part.
  • 3: bare WM behind another title.
  • 3: trailing WM..
  • 2: WM. before the family comma.
• ctgov-officials: 1 of 352,104 moves. Wm behind a title, before a family comma.
• psc-individuals (local_agreement.py): matches the record.

Docs

• decisions/vocabulary-model: a new 2026-10-22 Should Chas. Smith read given Chas.? Abbreviated given names read as titles today #789 entry, a Standing line, and Should Chas. Smith read given Chas.? Abbreviated given names read as titles today #789 on the Open: line. The 2026-10-19 Classify the titles in und.toml by language and kind #750 bullet is marked superseded and its measurement corrected in place.
• decisions/vocabulary-exclusions: wm added to the TITLES refusal list.
• mechanisms.md: the off-switch field note.
• nameparser/vocab/README.md: the wm exception sentence is removed.
• Release log: an Unreleased bullet.
• migrate.rst: no "Changed in" entry yet. The 2.6 entries are being collected at release, as for Should a title word written after another title be the given name (Mr Sultan Khan, Mr Md Karim Uddin)? #853 and Read a semicolon between post-nominals as a comma (D15) #871. Wm Smith belongs in that list.

Checks

• uv run pytest and -n0 -m serial: pass.
• uv run --python 3.15 pytest: pass.
• mypy and ruff check: clean.
• sphinx-build -b doctest docs: 0 failures.
• README doctest: passes.
• A design-docs review found five issues, all fixed. A second review of the fix commit found one dating nit, also fixed.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

[codecov]

Codecov Report

✅ All modified and coverable lines are covered by tests.
✅ Project coverage is 99.07%. Comparing base (08d130e) to head (01c45e8).

Additional details and impacted files

@@           Coverage Diff           @@
##           master     #873   +/-   ##
=======================================
  Coverage   99.07%   99.07%           
=======================================
  Files          47       47           
  Lines        4735     4735           
=======================================
  Hits         4691     4691           
  Misses         44       44           

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