Should a peerage written after a comma stay a title, as in John Smith, 3rd Earl of Ashby? #968

Found by the govuk-people local corpus (#962), fetched 2026-10-30. Names are invented.

Today

• John Smith, 3rd Earl of Ashby → title 3rd, given Earl of Ashby, family John Smith.
• John Smith, Viscount Ashby → title Viscount, given Ashby, family John Smith.
• The readings vary: John Smith, 14th Earl of Ashby → given 14th, middle Earl of Ashby; John Smith, the Earl of Ashby → given the Earl of Ashby, no title.
• A hyphenated surname reads correctly: John Smith-Jones, 2nd Marquess of Ashby → title 2nd Marquess of Ashby, given John, family Smith-Jones.

Size: 20 govuk-people entries write a peerage after the name and a comma, nearly all historical prime ministers' pages; 17 reverse the name (16 reading some title, one none); the 3 with a hyphenated surname read correctly.

To settle: whether a comma part that opens with an ordinal or a peerage title is rules/C2's office-after-a-comma shape. Today an ordinal reads as a suffix-comma part only after a name.