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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?

#281

Post by jimktrains2 »

hinata08 wrote: post #221
rob74 wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

France as well I believe that it's mostly the English speaking world that is strict with having "first name" first and "last name" last. It's not an Asian cultural feature to have family name first, but it's an English speaking thing to have it last. OP isn't trying to use his software in Asia specifically. He's just adapting to non US market.

In the English-speaking world (or at least in the USA) we sort by last name, so any list of names you get is always last, first. For that reason many forms (though not all) will have the last name as the first thing you fill in.

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

#282

Post by kuschku »

shafyy wrote: post #195
msh wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Which country is that? And how would you address a person called Martina Müller in a written document? "Sehr geehrte Müller?" Or is it not a German-speaking country you're referring to?

It turns out the people who want to be addressed by neutral gender usually don't care as much about Siezen and honorifics, so the systems I built usually just go with "Hallo" or "Moin". I even had one system which would go with "Sehr geehrte/r" for people who had chosen a title or set their language preference to "Deutsch (Sie)" and with "Moin" for everyone else.

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

#283

Post by kuchenbecker »

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.…

Do you want to talk or do you want information? Asking a question gets you the requested information when I respond, and a Hello is a request to talk.

Asking for a hello is holding the information until I'm engaged, at which point we should just meet for 5 minutes because it will be faster.

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

#284

Post by zamalek »

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…

> "Just have a single "name field" and maybe preferred name, which is not the same."

> This is the way to go.

Agreed. Does anyone know of any reason to care about first/last, apart from it being part of My First SQL Database and sating our inner desire to create pointless taxonomies?

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

#286

Post by richie_adler »

GoblinSlayer wrote: post #149
yreg wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slack does this and I don't like it. I have Hungarian colleagues and some (but not all!) of them have entered the family name first. I always feel awkward responding to them, because I don't know if I'm typing `Hello $FIRSTNAME` or `Hello $LASTNAME`.

Don't say hello, just state your business.

Thank you!

Mandatory reference to nohello.net/en/

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

#288

Post by muzani »

leokennis wrote: post #130
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 (…

I feel like this is the way. If you want, include fields for all types of names (given, honorific, father's surname, whatever is imaginable) but also add the field "how should we address you" and use that for messages. So: * honorific surname: Sharifah * given name: Azizah * father's honorific surname: Syed * father's given name: Ahmad Tarmizi * address me as: Zaphod Beeblebrox the 4th

It's not very useful to include most fields. Often parts of a name are not in use at all, unless you're doing legal identification. I'd never include my patronym where possible.

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

#289

Post by paulmooreparks »

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…

> 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.

Even this presents problems, as countries like Singapore have multiple overlapping cultures with unique naming conventions. Likewise, India encompasses many languages and even unique naming conventions within those languages.

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

#290

Post by searchableguy »

devoutsalsa wrote: post #257
searchableguy wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :)

Awesome! I hope you tried all the food items including desert delicacies cooked in sand and charcoal.
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