Sqlite design for cross linked tables and foreign keys usage - sql

Question

I don't know if this is the right place to ask. Because it is a question regarding sql database design I was thinking about database administrator but because the target of that site is database professionals (and I'm absolutely not a professional) I'll just post my question here. Please point me to the right place if you think there's a better place for this type of question.
Getting to the question.
I'm designing a database for translations of literary works. Because this involves people and people often don't fit in a "static" data model I have a pretty convoluted schema. Here is just a section of it, regarding people's names. Because foreign authors are involved (expecially Japanese) I have the added problem of transliteration for people names. At present the structure of the database for people and names is as follows
Let's take an example:
I have a person called "Kyokutei Bakin", which transliterates as 曲亭馬琴 in ideograms and キョクテイ バキン in japanese phonetic alphabet. This author is also known as "Takizawa Bakin" (滝沢馬琴, タキザワ バキン） and so on...
The 3 table structure with one to many relationships account for a person having multiple names (biographical_name, pen_name, ecc...) and for the fact that every name can have multiple phonetic readings.
This is all good. When I search for someone I just LEFT JOIN the tables and add OR conditions for the various fields. eg:
SELECT DISTINCT name.name_text, phonetic_name.name_text FROM name
LEFT JOIN phonetic_name ON (name.name_id=phonetic_name.name_id)
WHERE (name.name_text LIKE "%bak%")
OR (phonetic_name.name_text LIKE "%馬琴%");
My problem is that I want one of the names to be the main name of that person. The way I've done it is adding a "main_name" column in the "person" table that points to the "name_id" column of the "name" table. So that I can JOIN name ON (person.main_name=name.name_id) when I want just the main name.
My doubt is:
-Is it a good practice to cross-link two tables?
(Here "name" references "person" on person_id, but at the same "person" references "name" for main_name).
-Can this cause problems?
-How do I set foreign keys in this kind of situation?
-In case this is way too messy, how can I improve the design?
Additional info:
Being a design problem the sql implementation should not be so important, but just in case it does, I'm using sqlite3.

Answer 1

I would personally simplify the design like this:
Table: person
person_id (primary key)
...
Table: name
name_id (primary key)
name
name_type
parent_name_id (foreign key of itself)
person_id (foreign key of person table)
The table name has a recursive relationship where parent_name_id contains the name_id of the main name of the person. Note that for the main name name_id=parent_name_id. In the column name_type you can store the type of name (phonetic, ideogram, kanji, etc.). You can possibly normalize further the name_type into a dedicated table if you wish to have pure third normal form.
I would say the main benefit of this design is that it greatly simplifies your query when querying for names of any type. You can simply run something like this:
Select distinct b.person_id, b.name as main_name
From name a
Inner join name b on a.parent_name_id=b.name_id
Where a.name like ‘%...%’
In addition you can store as many names as you want for a single person.
If you want to return several names from different types you can do like this:
Select distinct b.person_id,
b.name as main_name,
c.name as kanji_name,
d.name as katakana_name
From name a
Inner join name b on a.parent_name_id=b.name_id
Left join name c on b.parent_name_id=c.parent_name_id and c.name_type=‘kanji’
Left join name d on b.parent_name_id=d.parent_name_id and d.name_type=‘katakana’
Etc...
Where a.name like ‘%...%’