HumanName('Scott E. Werner').initials() drops the middle initial — the facade reads E as the conjunction #462

HumanName("Scott E. Werner").initials()   # 'S. W.'    -- the middle initial is gone
HumanName("john E. smith").initials()     # 'j. s.'
HumanName("Juan Y. Garcia").initials()    # 'J. G.'

E and Y are the Latin one-letter members of CONJUNCTIONS, and initials() filters conjunctions out. A middle or family initial that happens to be one of those letters is silently dropped.

A v1 parity break, shipped since 2.0.0

Measured on the released wheels:

mechanisms.md#FACADE-CONTRACT promises that 1.4-warning-free code keeps working through 2.x "EXCEPT release-log-classified fixes". No release-log bullet classifies this.

The 2.0 core gets it right — only the facade regressed

Same library, same name, two answers:

parse("Scott E. Werner").initials()        # 'S. E. W.'   correct
HumanName("Scott E. Werner").initials()    # 'S. W.'      wrong

The boundary is intact, which is what makes this precise

Only the dotted form is affected. A bare one-letter conjunction is still correctly dropped on both versions:

'maria y lopez'  ->  'm. l.'    1.4.0 and 2.x agree
'john e smith'   ->  'j. s.'    1.4.0 and 2.x agree

So this is not "conjunctions should initial". It is that v1 distinguished the conjunction e from the initial E. by the period, and the facade lost that distinction.

Reach, measured over the differential corpus

Comparing 1.4.0 against 2.2.0dev over the 1094-name corpus, restricted to the 865 names that parse byte-identically on both (so a parse change cannot be mistaken for this one), and comparing flattened letter sequences so 2.x's initials_list regrouping does not count:

14 of those 865 lose an initial, and every one is a middle E:

Amy E Maid · Amy E. Maid · Doctor, Jane E. · E Anne D,Leonardo
JOSE E MARIA SANTOS · Joe E. Smith · John E Smith · Jose E Maria Santos
Jose E. Maria Santos · Rt. Hon. Paul E. Mary · Smith, John E, III, Jr
US Magistrate-Judge Elizabeth E Campbell · john e. smith · scott e. werner

A fifteenth name, de los Santos (lS → S), is not this defect — los is in particles, not conjunctions, and that change is #402/#404's, already classified.

The Cyrillic half is sharper than the Latin one

The shipped single-letter conjunctions are &, e, y, и, й, і, و:

HumanName("Ivan И. Petrov").initials()   # 'I. P.'        facade
parse("Ivan И. Petrov").initials()       # 'I. И. P.'     core

_vocab.is_initial narrows by script repertoire (#320) precisely so an initial-shaped Cyrillic letter reads as an initial. The facade's predicate consults neither the shape half nor the repertoire half.

Cause

nameparser/_facade.py:474:

def _is_conjunction(self, text: str) -> bool:
    self._resolve()
    return _normalize(text) in self._lexicon.conjunctions

v1's is_conjunction excluded initials. _process_initial's comment four lines below states it copies "v1 parser.py:427 verbatim", and the copy dropped the carve-out.

The rule is stated and pinned elsewhere in the tree — nameparser/_render.py's _cap_word comment says "v1's is_conjunction excludes initials: 'E.' in 'Scott E. Werner' is an initial, not the conjunction 'e' (pinned live 2026-07-17)", using this very name. The core honors it; the facade does not.

Suggested fix

Give _facade._is_conjunction the initial carve-out the core already applies, so the facade and parse() agree. nameparser/_render.py's _INITIAL is the same shape test, and tests/v2/test_regex_sync.py already pins it against nameparser/_pipeline/_vocab.py.

Worth checking with it: _is_conjunction is one of the v1 hook names listed in _facade.py's hook roster, so a subclass may override it — whether the carve-out belongs in _is_conjunction or at its call site in _process_initial is a real question, and the hook contract should decide it rather than convenience.

Also worth a look while there: whether any other _facade predicate dropped a v1 carve-out the same way. _is_conjunction was found by checking one path; the roster has seven more.

Found reviewing #458, which fixed the equivalent re-derivation in the core's _cap_word.