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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?

#231

Post by qwytw »

throaway230831 wrote: post #222
toyg wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Gaius (also written Caius) was his given name, Ivlivs (Julius) the family name, Caesar the cognomen. In inscriptions (short): CAIVS IVLIVS CAESAR In speaking he would (in English;)) rather formally introduce himself as "Gaius of the Iulii, called Caesar". His mother called him Gaius, his peers called him Caesar once he got or choose?) this name.

Wouldn't Ceasar be much closer to his last name,though? It's definitely not his personal nickname.

His father was 'Gaius Julius Caesar' his grandfather (supposedly the first 'Ceasar') was 'Sextus Julius Caesar'.

The Cognomen is presumable something that evolved as a way to tell apart people belonging to different branches of the same family/clan because the number of first names was very limited.

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

#232

Post by nicbou »

msh wrote: post #118
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.…

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 t…

Even in Germany you can work around it. It's necessary for a third gender option, or when the gender is not known.

I imagine that it's not France either? French has similar greetings, with the same indecisiveness around the polite/casual pronouns. There's the added challenge of Quebec where casual pronouns are far more commonly used.

There's also the trap of "mademoiselle" which is no longer used because we no longer care about a woman's marital status. It's the same as with Fraulein.

You are right that rules might need to be made by country. The beauty of small scale solutions is that you can sweat small things like this instead of applying Silicon Valley sensibilities to the entire world.

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

#233

Post by lawgimenez »

freddie_mercury wrote: post #42
gandalfgreybeer wrote: post #5

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…

Don't do this. In Vietnam names like Nguyen Thi Anh Mai are common. The family name is "Nguyen" is the family name. "Anh Mai" is the "first name". But they should be called "Mai". And reversing the order "Mai Anh Thi Nguyen" is just wrong. And Catholic families in Vietnam often have names "Nguyen Thi To but everybody calls me by my baptismal name of Mary". Or you have a "house name" (i.e. your real name) and an outsi…

Born in the Philippines, you forgot the middle name or mother’s last name is also important.

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

#234

Post by darkwater »

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 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.

Only that... it didn't? The vast majority of bureaucracy and even many private entities in Italy use and strongly prefer the "Surname Birthname" format.

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

#235

Post by qwytw »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #226
GoblinSlayer wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't say hello, just state your business.

I here this trope so much. It is tiring and closed-minded. Are you Western culture and male? Probably. I have seen whole blog posts dedicated to this matter. Really? This matter is so stressful that people need to write 100s of words about it? Sheesh. Are you aware that it is polite to start a convo with people from South Asia with a small greeting? They wait for you to ack. If you don't ack, they will not continue.…

> They wait for you to ack. If you don't ack, they will not continue

Which is possibly one of the (admittedly probably very minor) reasons why they were left so far behind economically. Focusing on form over function in communication can be very counterproductive.

Not that I'm saying that saying "Hello, how are you?" to someone is waste of time. However certain people/cultures really go overboard with this and expected outsider to comply with these norms when they have much better things to do is not the most sensible idea.

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

#236

Post by nicbou »

IanCal wrote: post #215
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.…

> A simple, unimportant one: how do you politely address the person? This is I think solved with asking how people want to be addressed. It also helps deal with situations where someone's legal name isn't how they are usually referred to.

It was a bit trickier in my case because it was an English tool to fill a German form. There was the awkward issue of "Frau Dr." and "Herr Dr." being the same thing in the English dropdown.

The other issue is that the full name is used in the address, but only the last name in the greeting. There are no apartment numbers in Germany, so the name in the address must match the name on the mailbox. There can also be a lot of "Herr Müller" working at the same address.

In the end I opted for Mr/Mrs/Other + first and last name, and dropped the title. It's good enough for this purpose, but it shows how tricky something like a name can get, especially if the person filling the form is not aware of all this.

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

#237

Post by Macha »

worrycue wrote: post #201
dkdbejwi383 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There's no pronoun for that sentence, so it's left undefined who it's talking about. It doesn't mean the poster. It also doesn't really matter, if one former Singaporean politician dropped their "first name" then it's being used as an example that others may too.

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

#238

Post by danparsonson »

croes wrote: post #79
wmeddie wrote: 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…

Is there an article showing a solution because listing problems is the easy part? And maybe it's just me but >because names are central to our identities, virtually by definition. isn't true, my name is for the outside world, inside I'm just I, that's my identity.

>>because names are central to our identities, virtually by definition.

>isn't true, my name is for the outside world, inside I'm just I, that's my identity.

What happens in your head when someone calls your name? Surely that's a feeling of identity?

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

#239

Post by dkdbejwi383 »

worrycue wrote: post #201
dkdbejwi383 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It means that LKY himself stopped using the name Harry, for whatever reason. His (LKY) Wikipedia article states when, but not why - it cites his autobiography so that may be a useful source if you are interested to learn more.

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

#240

Post by albert_e »

I come from a family that traditionally writes names as Familyname Givenname.

But even in our country Firstname Lastname is prevalent among many regions and central government.

I grew up in the 90s and simply resigned that I will always be Givenname Familyname in most systems and documents.

After school I never bothered writing / typing / filling my Familyname first anywhere.

By simply staying consistent with this (wrong) way, I ensured that all my documents perfectly agree with each other. That peace of mind and lack of hassle is worth any "sacrifice" for me. Others may place different value on keeping their conventional names and must also have real reasons to do so too. I was lucky maybe, not to have those hurdles.

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