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?

#351

Post by weinzierl » Thu, Aug 31, 2023, 1:47 PM UTC

Archelaos wrote: post #219

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.

> It's probably a Roman thing. There is very likely no connection. The introduction of surnames in Germany took place in the 15th century (somewhat earlier in German speaking parts of Switzerland). In Franconia, the "ethnic" distinct northern part of which is today Bavaria and which was never a part of the Roman empire, the last-name first custom also occurs in a few places such as Bamberg.

The Romans weren't but Napoleon was, so maybe it is more of an indirect Roman influence?

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

#352

Post by Tainnor » Thu, Aug 31, 2023, 1:47 PM UTC

thaumasiotes wrote: post #251

cge wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 famili…

Some famous people got additional names, agnomina, such as "Africanus". And Roman emperors were later known for inflationary use of such designations. You could run a minor campaign on the Rhine and call yourself Germanicus for example.

The whole part about the Roman naming system indicating heritage became even more complicated when Caracalla (properly named Marcus Aurelius Antoninus) made every free man in the Empire a Roman citizen and now basically everyone was called "Marcus Aurelius" without ever having had any ties to the Aurelii family.

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

#353

Post by registeredcorn » Thu, Aug 31, 2023, 1:48 PM UTC

There's an excellent GitHub repo that lists a lot of common falsehoods regarding names. I'm not sure how useful it'll be to OP, but the repo in general should probably have way more attention than it already does.

https://github.com/kdeldycke/awesome-falsehood#human-identit...

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

#354

Post by retrac » Thu, Aug 31, 2023, 1:49 PM UTC

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.

French uses the same convention as English. First then last. No one would ever say, or write, "Macron Emmanuel est le président de la France".

In languages like Japanese or Hungarian, that's what family name first means.

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

#355

Post by fer » Thu, Aug 31, 2023, 1:49 PM UTC

dontupvoteme wrote: post #108

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…

Very interesting however >People have exactly one canonical full name. What is on your passport then?

If you obtain French citizenship you can "francify"[0] your name; you'll end up with two full canonical names. Nothing really forces you to change your original name in your original nationality.

[0] https://www.service-public.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/F10528

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

#356

Post by smeej » Thu, Aug 31, 2023, 1:53 PM UTC

marcus_holmes wrote: post #168

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 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…

I used to use this as a mild form of spam detection, like people do with "+" email aliases, by adding something to the "what do you want us to call you?" field that was specific to the site.

Then, if I started getting spam to that name, I knew who sold me out.

It was especially useful for physical spam mail that wasn't coming to an email address. I discovered quite quickly which magazine gave all my info to every company that wanted it.

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

#357

Post by kypro » Thu, Aug 31, 2023, 1:55 PM UTC

Tainnor wrote: post #337

ghaff wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> "Avoid asking users for their title. It’s extra work for them and you’re asking them to potentially reveal their gender and marital status, which they may not want to do." I'm always a bit surprised when I see some e.g. tech conferences still insisting on title as a mandatory field (or really asking at all). It's not just the gender and the marital status but some people attach a lot of significance to all manner…

At least in Germany, titles are still rather important. I agree that it's silly but if you have a PhD you're very likely to put "Dr." on your doorbell name plate.

What do you mean by, "important"? That it's impolite to not refer to someone using their preferred title, or that people tend to expect them?

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

#358

Post by Semiapies » Thu, Aug 31, 2023, 1:58 PM UTC

smeej wrote: post #345

Semiapies wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not universally, no. The closest for English-language use is to put a spurious comma between family and given name (e.g., "Cixin, Liu" for Cixin Liu). In an ebook management system I've been developing, I use a full_name and a sort_name field for authors/editors/contributors, because books are a reasonable thing to want to sort by author names.

Even this has some culturally confusing elements, doesn't it? For example, in my studies I had cause to read many books by Hans Urs von Balthasar. Nobody ever referred to him as "von Balthasar," just "Balthasar," but his books were always sorted by the "von."

Even this has some culturally confusing elements, doesn't it?

It's never not going to.

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

#359

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Aug 31, 2023, 1:59 PM UTC

johneth wrote: post #247

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 GOV.UK design system[1] agrees with you: > "Use single or multiple fields depending on your user’s needs. Not everyone’s name fits the first-name, last-name format. Using multiple name fields mean there’s more risk that a person’s name will not fit the format you’ve chosen and that it is entered incorrectly." and > "Avoid asking users for their title. It’s extra work for them and you’re asking them to potentially…

[deleted]

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

#360

Post by jzb » Thu, Aug 31, 2023, 2:00 PM UTC

delta_p_delta_x wrote: post #205

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. Gop…

I wish we had world culture education as a part of grade school, including things like how to address people / naming conventions. I've learned a lot (and continue to) in the last 10-15 years through working with people and reading things in dribs and drabs, but it'd have been nice to know these things before I needed them and not ad hoc.