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Ask HN: How to handle Asian-style “Family name first” when designing interfaces?

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Re: Ask HN: How to handle Asian-style “Family name first” when designing interfaces?

#111

Personal opinion. As an Asian person, don’t overthink this. Just have fields for family name and given name to distinguish between the two. Sure, when there’s a text field saying hello “first name last name” it might be flipped but this shouldn’t be a deal breaker or offensive in any capacity. Worst case is you can have a toggle they can click but from a developer standpoint, that might be over engineering for someth…

Well, if the app is designed for the asia pacific region then last name first name should be default to fit the majority of user's expectation, no?

Even in countries where you might assume this is true, it's not always!

For instance in China, most names are single character family name followed by a two character given name. Some rare family names are two characters and usually they will have a single character given name. Some people have single character family name and single character given name.

Then you get people from different ethnic groups who put the family name at the end. Often these are characterised by a long given name and then an interpunct joining that with the family name, but that's not always done. For instance a popular singer at the moment has the Chinese name 希林娜依·高 where 高 is a fairly normal Chinese surname so it's easy to identify as such. A very popular actress is named 迪丽热巴·迪力木拉提 so it's not always the case you can easily tell which name is which.

Even for those with simple construction, so the characters are FAB (family name, and 2 characters for given name). You'll find that within a family, where you might expect pet names, it's common instead to call each other by AB, except when they're annoyed and use the full name FAB. In a business context, someone with a higher rank might be F先生 (Mr F), F总 (Manager F), F董 (Director F), but close colleagues might call you AA, BB, 小A, 小B etc - but typically they won't get to choose that, they'll be told by the person "you can call me ___" and they might allow different people to use different names or react with their official title if someone uses too informal a name with them.

I've got Chinese friends who exclusively use an English name at work in China. I've got a friend who later moved to the UK, and most people in the UK know her by her Chinese name, but except for a few close school friends, nobody in her working life in China even knew her real name because the company she worked for only used English names (this isn't very common though).

In other countries, many people don't use their first name much. In the UK, I've known quite a few people who've primarily used their middle name, and others (including me) are generally known by others with a name that isn't among any of their given names. Sometimes these are common transformations, e.g. David to Dave, David to Dai (in Wales), but other times people just use initials or nicknames (e.g. I've got a friend who pretty everybody calls Danger, it started as a joke with friends, but now even his parents sometimes use it!)

Anyway, that was a long diversion, but it's always safer I think to ask for the full name as one field that not try to change it, but use it exactly as provided for official purposes, and to also ask for a preferred name for your communication with them. In cases were you share the name to other people, e.g. an online community, you might want an additional display name which might well be different again.

Re: Ask HN: How to handle Asian-style “Family name first” when designing interfaces?

#112
post #76
post #50

I lived in Asia for many years and worked with people from many places there. It's common to hear "How should I address you?" This is equivalent to the people here suggesting a "nickname" field (good idea). There are people with only one name. Don't make them double it (Ananda Ananda). There are people with several given names. But they may only want to be called by the first, or the first two, or the last. There are…

I have an elderly German aunt by marriage who considers it an affront that Vodafone sends her chirpy business letters starting "Hallo >!" and continuing in the familiar second person instead of the more (to her) respectful "Sehr geehrte Frau Dr. >," and formal "Sie" (grammatically third person plural, but also the formal second person). First names and familiar second person grammar are very much reserved for family…

It is an affront though, a butchering of the language and just generally disrespectful. The distinction is an integral part of the German language and it's wholly inappropriate for a telco provider to address someone like this.

Same goes with names: missing accents, umlauts, special characters, wrong ordering, wrong titles/gender etc. is aggravating. And customers do complain.

German companies often spend a non-trivial amount on software engineering time and data cleanup to get these things right. And the French take it even more seriously.

Non-native speakers may not understand it, but that's no excuse and you will alienate people and customers. Even younger generations notice.

And just fyi I'm a millennial and per "Du" with everyone I know. Not my telco provider though.

Re: Ask HN: How to handle Asian-style “Family name first” when designing interfaces?

#113
post #80
post #67

Just have a single "name field" and maybe preferred name, which is not the same. The family/given name format doesn't make much sense here. Indian name: Sathiavelllu Arunachalam, known as SA or Seth SE Asian ethnic Chinese names: Harry Lee Kuan Yew, (English name) (Surname) (Given name). Hated the name Harry and got it removed, though many Chinese are referred to by an English name. Indonesian name: Fatimah Azzahra (…

In most cases you don't even need the users real name. If I sign up for an account, but the invoice is going to the billing department of my company, why do you care what my real name is?

A little suspicion I get from this post is it sounds like they have bunch of users under believable names in English, as well as many name-sounding local names that may or may not have to do with names, and they want to regularize the hell out of it to real names only, and looking into coding a machine readable data scheme to enforce a policy.

Otherwise there should be not a lot of reasons to parse and format Asian names, as suggested plenty times over here. If the incoming invoice has to go through legal checks first, the requirement shall be as codified and supplied, whether it's that the name shall be written back to front or in purple on red.

Maybe I'm just overthinking, likely I am.

Re: Ask HN: How to handle Asian-style “Family name first” when designing interfaces?

#114
post #89

Is there any reason why you need to specifically know the first and last name, or the family and given name? I think there is a lot of inertia in the idea that you must have two name fields, but why? Why not just have one name field, and let people type what they want in it? Or better yet, have one field for “what should I print as the name when I send you a package or letter”, and “what would you like me to call you…

Also even in west the first name + last name doesn't capture the whole effect.

For example my credit card has last name, first name and middle name. And should probably be passed as such. In some addressing you want all three. But for most communication and even mailing things only first + last is enough or if more formal last + first.

In the end it is huge mess with no clearly applicable rules.

Re: Ask HN: How to handle Asian-style “Family name first” when designing interfaces?

#115
post #58
post #14

Definitely read https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-... if you haven't yet. Then think about what are the requirements your system needs when it comes to names. Does the app need to know what a user's name is at all or is a username enough? Does it need to distinguish the family part of their name for anything? A thing I think is the most general is to just have a Full Name field (min length 1…

There are 4 main name forms that I often see: * Full name (John Smith) * Index name (Smith, John) - mostly for meatspace compatibility. * Preferred name (John Smith) - used in lists with other people's names * Personal name (John) - used in direct communications

Index vs. preferred name can get a bit wonky. I used to work on software that had a lot of attendee/speaker list functionality. Different types of customer had strong expectations about how names should be displayed and ordered, sometimes even in different contexts (attendees might be listed by last name but speakers by first, etc.). We had medical conferences where everybody would be listed as "Dr. Fredrica Bloggs, MD" but the sort order would be by last name. And that was just for English-speaking customers.

Re: Ask HN: How to handle Asian-style “Family name first” when designing interfaces?

#116
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was going to say that. It’s amazing how often French users get it wrong when filling in forms. It can result in online services trying a more informal tone calling people by their last name only (“Salut, DUPONT!”), which can be seen as a bit rude. People don’t read form labels with great attention.

Funny in some cultures calling people by their last name is actually respectful.

It is respectful in France too, but only if you use a title. Say the person is DUPONT Maëlle, then:

"Bonjour madame Dupont" is respectful

"Bonjour Maëlle" is informal

"Bonjour Dupont" is rude.

"Bonjour Maëlle Dupont" or "Bonjour DUPONT Maëlle", using whatever the user put as their "name", is just neutral (though the former is less formal than the latter).

Generally, you only want to address young people by their given name, and adults are more likely to find being addressed by their given name rude, than young people are to find being addressed by their family name "weird" (unless they are maybe less than 16).

I find that using just the given name in any kind of official communication often has a "fellow kids" vibe.

Re: Ask HN: How to handle Asian-style “Family name first” when designing interfaces?

#117

Ohh boy, as someone who works on a travel booking, service serving customers in Asia, this problem hits hard. I guess the answer depends on how you plan to handle the names once they got submitted. I happen to be handing that data over to airlines, which has some of the less forgiving, yet fragmented name requirements. If you handle this incorrectly, your customer can't fly, even after they paid for the flight. And f…

> In Singapore, we use a single field to input the first name and last name. I have a completely “ordinary” name from a western perspective – first (given), middle, last (family). I live in Singapore, which has a few different popular naming conventions from a few different cultures. I’ve received documents with my name in every single variation possible. I‘ve been Mr First Name, Mr Middle Name, Mr Last Name, and so…

It seems that with things like ticket there should be explicit "as in passport" instructions. Not that people will follow those...

Re: Ask HN: How to handle Asian-style “Family name first” when designing interfaces?

#118
post #81
post #67

Just have a single "name field" and maybe preferred name, which is not the same. The family/given name format doesn't make much sense here. Indian name: Sathiavelllu Arunachalam, known as SA or Seth SE Asian ethnic Chinese names: Harry Lee Kuan Yew, (English name) (Surname) (Given name). Hated the name Harry and got it removed, though many Chinese are referred to by an English name. Indonesian name: Fatimah Azzahra (…

This is what I usually do if I need the name at all, but sometimes you need to interface with systems that need that data split. A simple, unimportant one: how do you politely address the person? In Germany, you'd start a letter with "Sehr geehrte Frau Dr. Musterfrau", which implies knowing the last name, gender and title of the person. You can drop the title, but dropping the gender makes the whole thing impersonal.…

I think to address your politeness questions, it can only be done if you handle each language/country split separately and the app creators have detailed cultural knowledge for each country/language. I come from a country right next to germany and addressing a person with a gender specifier like Frau would be seen as extremely old fashioned and potentially sexist.

So I guess it also depends a lot on to which degree the app is localized.

Re: Ask HN: How to handle Asian-style “Family name first” when designing interfaces?

#119
post #67

Just have a single "name field" and maybe preferred name, which is not the same. The family/given name format doesn't make much sense here. Indian name: Sathiavelllu Arunachalam, known as SA or Seth SE Asian ethnic Chinese names: Harry Lee Kuan Yew, (English name) (Surname) (Given name). Hated the name Harry and got it removed, though many Chinese are referred to by an English name. Indonesian name: Fatimah Azzahra (…

> SE Asian ethnic Chinese names: Harry Lee Kuan Yew, (English name) (Surname) (Given name). Hated the name Harry and got it removed, though many Chinese are referred to by an English name.

Really? Your parents named you the exact same name as a famous politician?

Edit: Really? Downvote me for the OP’s bad English?

Re: Ask HN: How to handle Asian-style “Family name first” when designing interfaces?

#120

Ohh boy, as someone who works on a travel booking, service serving customers in Asia, this problem hits hard. I guess the answer depends on how you plan to handle the names once they got submitted. I happen to be handing that data over to airlines, which has some of the less forgiving, yet fragmented name requirements. If you handle this incorrectly, your customer can't fly, even after they paid for the flight. And f…

> In Singapore, we use a single field to input the first name and last name.

How do you handle this when passing the data to the airlines?

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