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

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

#201

Post by worrycue » Thu, Aug 31, 2023, 9:30 AM UTC

dkdbejwi383 wrote: post #144

worrycue wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

The famous Singaporean politician Lee Kuan Yew to whom you refer was given the English name Harry by his parents. The poster you're quoting isn't themselves claiming to be LKY.

What does “Hated the name Harry and got it removed” meant then? Sounds like the poster got the name removed.

Also it was his grandfather that gave him the name “Harry”, not his parents.

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

#202

Post by mejutoco » Thu, Aug 31, 2023, 9:31 AM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #181

nicbou wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

It's interesting how in Germany there is so much accent on titles. Every country has their own interface standards and it is always educational to dig in to that for a bit to get acquainted with the local customs so you don't end up making some kind of faux pas. And sometimes those standards are very fluid, someone calling you 'Sir' may do so in a mildly sarcastic manner to get the point across, they don't necessaril…

> It's interesting how in Germany there is so much accent on titles.

Seeing all the title drop down when subscribing to the economist (UK) made it clear to me it is a thing there too, at least in some circles.

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

#203

Post by pomstazlesa » Thu, Aug 31, 2023, 9:31 AM UTC

toyg wrote: post #158

weinzierl wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Just have a single "name field" and maybe preferred name, which is not the same." This is the way to go. "The family/given name format doesn't make much sense here." It doesn't make much sense in many places all over the world. In Germany technically speaking our given names are a set and we can have many of them. While it is practically necessary to write them out in a certain order in our documents, from a legal s…

> In Bavaria where I live, the informal convention is also last name first It's probably a Roman thing. Julius Caesar was actually "Caesar, of the gens Julia", so last-name first. In Italy we also used to list last-name first, particularly in official and military communications. This has changed significantly in the last 40 years, particularly in everyday bureaucracy, but it's still used by police and other bodies.

Same thing in Hungary.

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

#204

Post by rob74 » Thu, Aug 31, 2023, 9:32 AM UTC

weinzierl wrote: post #135

muzani wrote: 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 (…

"Just have a single "name field" and maybe preferred name, which is not the same." This is the way to go. "The family/given name format doesn't make much sense here." It doesn't make much sense in many places all over the world. In Germany technically speaking our given names are a set and we can have many of them. While it is practically necessary to write them out in a certain order in our documents, from a legal s…

In Hungary it's also last name first, both officially and informally - not sure if it's some Asian influence or something else...

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

#205

Post by delta_p_delta_x » Thu, Aug 31, 2023, 9:37 AM UTC

muzani wrote: 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 (…

For the record, traditional Indian names are far more complicated.

Consider the name of a famous violinist, Lalgudi Gopala Jayaraman Radhakrishnan, also known as Lalgudi G. J. R. Krishnan. From a Western perspective, 'Lalgudi' isn't strictly a 'name' per se: it is a toponymic surname, and is the name of a taluk (or administrative subdivision: it is a third-order division after state, and district) in Tamil Nadu.

Gopala is an avonymic, i.e. his grandfather's name, and Jayaraman is a patronymic, his father's name. His given name is Radhakrishnan, but frequently rendered as Krishnan.

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

#206

Post by rob74 » Thu, Aug 31, 2023, 9:37 AM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #181

nicbou wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

It's interesting how in Germany there is so much accent on titles. Every country has their own interface standards and it is always educational to dig in to that for a bit to get acquainted with the local customs so you don't end up making some kind of faux pas. And sometimes those standards are very fluid, someone calling you 'Sir' may do so in a mildly sarcastic manner to get the point across, they don't necessaril…

Actually, the stereotype among Germans is that Austrians are even more fond of their titles, although I think that has decreased in both countries in the last decades.

The "addressing people by their first name and using Du instead of Sie" is indeed handled very differently in different companies. I consider myself lucky to work for a company where "Du" and first name is the rule, so I don't have to keep an internal list of colleagues which I can use "Du" with...

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

#207

Post by zarzavat » Thu, Aug 31, 2023, 9:38 AM UTC

regularfry wrote: post #171

zarzavat wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I respectfully disagree with their advice to use “Family name” and “Given name”, over “First name” and “Last name”. Everybody has a First name and Last name (unless they are mononymic), even if this doesn’t correspond semantically to what the writer of the form anticipated. Many people don’t have a Family name and this creates user confusion when filling out forms.

The point isn't that it's first and last, it's to avoid an implicit assumption that they are in a particular order. That semantic correspondence is exactly what changing to given/family is supposed to preserve. Yes, there are people with only one. There is/was a fairly well-known example in UK network infrastructure circles. That's a problem in either system if you make the fields required. Given/family removes ambig…

The original sin is assuming that names have a particular structure. But at least First/Last places the burden of that sin not on the user.

My partner has only given names. When forms ask for their “Family name”, my internal thought process goes like this:

1. WTF do I write here?

2. Why are they asking for Family name? Oh they are probably just Anglophone and assume this is how names are.

3. It’s okay, just lie on the form then.

Then I choose their final given name and write it in the family name field.

This kind of enforced microdishonesty grates on the user over time. It certainly makes me grumpy!

First and last name is better because it’s not imposing a structure that may not exist. The burden of that false structure goes on the service rather than the user.

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

#208

Post by yznlp » Thu, Aug 31, 2023, 9:39 AM UTC

MandieD wrote: post #138

jval43 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-trivi…

Not saying she's unreasonable for feeling that way - just wondering if this is also something that should be considered in Asia, too, and giving a bit of context for people who aren't familiar with Germany. I know that Japanese has an even more "complicated" (to non-native-speakers) grammatical distinction of familiarity, but not much more about it, and have even less idea about how it works in other Asian languages/…

I'm not sure about older people, but business/formal emails in Japanese are like at least 70% fluff. There are loads of guides on the internet like [1], just look at the English translation of the example at the top...

Depending on the level of formality you might need to conjugate verbs slightly differently or use vocabulary that's considered more respectful. From my experience the younger generation is more relaxed about the rules, but Japan as a whole is pretty slow to change.

[1] https://www.wasabi-jpn.com/japanese-lessons/how-to-write-ema...

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

#209

Post by puszczyk » Thu, Aug 31, 2023, 9:40 AM UTC

toyg wrote: post #158

weinzierl wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Just have a single "name field" and maybe preferred name, which is not the same." This is the way to go. "The family/given name format doesn't make much sense here." It doesn't make much sense in many places all over the world. In Germany technically speaking our given names are a set and we can have many of them. While it is practically necessary to write them out in a certain order in our documents, from a legal s…

> In Bavaria where I live, the informal convention is also last name first It's probably a Roman thing. Julius Caesar was actually "Caesar, of the gens Julia", so last-name first. In Italy we also used to list last-name first, particularly in official and military communications. This has changed significantly in the last 40 years, particularly in everyday bureaucracy, but it's still used by police and other bodies.

In Poland informally it’s always . Formally, it depends most places are on the same as informal, but particularly military and some other bureaucracies will use . I always thought this is a holdout from the pre-computer days to make it easier to sort alphabetically (last names are a bit better distributed than the popular first names).

In France they seem to prefer (yes, all caps) even for less formal things.

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

#210

Post by yreg » Thu, Aug 31, 2023, 9:41 AM UTC

master-lincoln wrote: post #199

GoblinSlayer wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't say hello, just state your business.

You are being downvoted, but I wonder if people really appreciate the politeness on automated communication. If no person interacted with me, why would I want to be addressed respectfully? I think this mainly serves corporations which can humanize automated communication to make customers feel more cared about (by simulating interaction like a real human would initiate)

I believe it makes the experience more pleasant (at least for neurotypical people), but it'simportant to not overdo it. It shouldn't add friction or subtract from clarity.