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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?

#251

Post by thaumasiotes »

cge wrote: post #217
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.

Roman naming conventions[1] technically did have a personal first name that came first and was called that: first name or forename is a reasonably direct translation for praenomen. The complexity is that by the late republic praenomina were largely from such a small set of names that they were not particularly useful to distinguish anyone, and they became somewhat of a formality that would often be omitted. Julius Ca…

Hereditary cognomina were used to distinguish different major branches of large, powerful clans. Some sort of device to specify which subbranch of an enormous group you're talking about appears to be necessary in every place that has such enormous groups; in imperial China, then as now, vast swathes of the population were covered by just a handful of surnames, but the practice developed of referring to notable families by a combination of their name and the location where they were dominant.

So Caesar's close relatives were all also called Caesar, which is how it got to be an imperial title. You might think that with the original cognomen locked into place for such families, members would get a second cognomen so that there would be at least one part of their name that could identify them. But apparently not.

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

#252

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

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 (…

That's what we do, in our app.

People can write whatever they want, there, in whatever order they want. We only allow 255 characters, though, because we use classic VARCHAR, and index the field.

Some Spanish (as in Catalan) names can be downright legendary.

I support non-Roman character sets.

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

#253

Post by fer »

vintermann wrote: post #105
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…

It's not just programmers. Plenty of genealogists, do things like automatically give a wife their husband's (male!) patronym. Even though they see it doesn't work that way in the sources, they seem to feel that it "should" work that way.

In France married women, if they let their guard down, will be given their husband's last name as "nom d'usage" upon almost any sign-up paperwork, without being asked, at least in my experience.

Nom d'usage technically has no legal value, it's just a last name you might want to be addressed as, normally that of your husband but it can be a pen name and whatever. It's optional, and technically only at the request of the relevant person. Men can have nom d'usage too (égalité, after all).

Still, immigration offices, banks, insurances... they often slap the husband's last name if that field is left empty, just because. Why would you want something else, right? She probably forgot!

We started crossing those fields to make it clear she doesn't want a nom d'usage.

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

#256

Post by toastal »

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 (…

We should emphasize the “preferred name” option because it can be very expensive & arduous to change a legal name. Also using real names in UI/messages should be considered a bad practice because you risk leaking info to shoulder snoopers or dead-naming folks that don’t want to expend the time/effort/money for a legal rename. Just don’t.

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

#257

Post by devoutsalsa »

searchableguy wrote: post #191
devoutsalsa wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was recently in India. When using Zomato to order a food delivery, I was confused why the address form was asking for a PIN code. It took a moment to realize that PIN code was referring to what I think of as a zip/postal code.

Where did you visit in India? You liked it? :D

Jodhpur, Pune, and Agra (Red Fortress, Taj Mahal. I also went to Ellora Caves, which was amazing! India is great :)

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

#258

Post by WesolyKubeczek »

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 (…

The difficult bit is how you sort them.

I have this problem that some software which doesn't readily discern what should be first name and what should be last name gives me a list of all Johns followed by all Lisas and then Peters, which is less than helpful. Other software thinks it got it right but then for Hungarian names, it gives me all Istváns followed by all Józsefs, which, again, is less than optimal.

Having a "sort key for bloody sorting" field may be a way to go, I personally would use it, but making it user friendly is a bitch, and heuristics will get it wrong more often than not. Sorry but I've run out of nice words for this problem.

(A bibliographer enters the chat, I cower in fear)

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

#259

Post by krisoft »

wenc wrote: post #17
chomp wrote: post #6

Use a single text field for the full name.

I would not do this. For reasons of respect, you may need to address a person by either their first or last name (with a title). Addressing a person by their full name can come across as rude (I personally find it rude too, e.g. "Hey John R. Brown, this is your order"), so it's useful to split up "given name" and "family name" into 2 fields so that you don't have to depend on name ordering which varies by culture. If…

> For reasons of respect, you may need to address a person by either their first or last name (with a title).

It is really curious to hear that your decide to disrespect huge populations because you worry about respect.

> Most people in the world have filled out forms on U.S. sites. They'll know what to do.

Sure. People will mange. It is still communicating that the developers' head is stuck in their own context.

Will we manage? Sure. Is it respectful? Not at all.

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

#260

Post by numpad0 »

zarzavat wrote: post #178
marcus_holmes wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that First Name and Last Name do not correspond to Family Name and Given Name, which is actually what is desired (you can start an email to me as "Hello ", and be reasonably sure of avoiding insult. You can't do that with "Hello ", you will definitely insult some people). However, I don't do this. If I want someone's name so I can talk to them, I just ask them "what do you want us to call you?" with a si…

Okay but say a person with an East Asian name fills out your form and dutifully fills out your form with their name in reverse. i.e. if their name is the Chinese equivalent of “Smith John”, they fill it out as given name: John, family name: Smith. Aren’t you going to be rendering their name in the wrong order for all your interactions? How do you know which order to concatenate it?

You're mixing up multiple problems. If adding problems is what you want, none of my highschool classmates called each others in the "John" part of anyone's names, and emails beginning with a "Hello $firstname" in my language sounds weird to me anyway. But first/last names are often reused for billing and official purposes, so East Asian(CJK) users would know to fill the "first" with given and "last" with family name if asked that way for official purposes, no matter the visual order or how will it be used. If it's not for official purposes, people are just going to throw in random junks anyway.
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