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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?

#71

Post by zinekeller »

lmm wrote: post #70
freddie_mercury wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> You don't need to try to infer one from the other. So you should make your system more cumbersome for 95%+ of users just for the sake of doing the right thing in occasional edge cases? By all means make it possible to override, but you should absolutely default "what would you like to be called?" rather than making everyone enter their name twice.

> So you should make your system more cumbersome for 95%+ of users just for the sake of doing the right thing in occasional edge cases?

As the app is apparently developed for use in Asia-Pacific, no, it isn't.

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

#72

Post by gandalfgreybeer »

spicybright wrote: post #26
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…

Well, if the app is designed for the asia pacific region then last name first name should be default to fit the majority of user's expectation, no?

This is lumping Asia Pacific into one big group. For example in the Philippines, its first name - last name that’s the standard. And then there’s a minority of Chinese-Filipinos that sometimes have traditional Chinese names.

It’s more complex than what it seems that I think a razor would work rather than going through all cases.

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

#73

Post by froddd »

realusername wrote: post #69

It's not only and ansian thing. In France thr convention is LASTNAME Firstname (with that casing)

I was going to say that. It’s amazing how often French users get it wrong when filling in forms. It can result in online services trying a more informal tone calling people by their last name only (“Salut, DUPONT!”), which can be seen as a bit rude. People don’t read form labels with great attention.

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

#74

Post by lmm »

zinekeller wrote: post #71
lmm wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You don't need to try to infer one from the other. So you should make your system more cumbersome for 95%+ of users just for the sake of doing the right thing in occasional edge cases? By all means make it possible to override, but you should absolutely default "what would you like to be called?" rather than making everyone enter their name twice.

> So you should make your system more cumbersome for 95%+ of users just for the sake of doing the right thing in occasional edge cases? As the app is apparently developed for use in Asia-Pacific, no, it isn't.

I guarantee that if someone vaguely familiar with the countries they operate in spends half an hour actually trying, they'll come up with heuristics that are correct for 95%+ of the target population.

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

#75

Post by yosito »

splix wrote: post #28

Not necessary Asian btw. As a Russian I can tell that Russians also may use "family name - given name - father name", usually in official documents. Though it it also may be just "given - family", as well as any other variation informally. So you wouldn't make a mistake with UI

Doesn't Russian also have different forms of names depending on their grammatical place in the sentence?

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

#76

Post by MandieD »

jzwinck wrote: post #50

I lived in Asia for many years and worked with people from many places there. It's common to hear "How should I address you?" This is equivalent to the people here suggesting a "nickname" field (good idea). There are people with only one name. Don't make them double it (Ananda Ananda). There are people with several given names. But they may only want to be called by the first, or the first two, or the last. There are…

I have an elderly German aunt by marriage who considers it an affront that Vodafone sends her chirpy business letters starting "Hallo >!" and continuing in the familiar second person instead of the more (to her) respectful "Sehr geehrte Frau Dr. >," and formal "Sie" (grammatically third person plural, but also the formal second person). First names and familiar second person grammar are very much reserved for family and friends in that generation.

Is there a similar sentiment among older people in parts of Asia?

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

#77

Post by gandalfgreybeer »

evolve2k wrote: post #31
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…

Yes assume I have a Family name field and a Given Name field, the question is how to display them in the right order. Im considering having a select field next to the name something like Name Order: "Western style", "Eastern style" or Name Order: "Given Name, Family Name", "Family name, Given Name" With a bit of extra work I can detect the country set a default for this field, while allowing users in places like Paki…

Minor thing, don’t call it “Western style” or “Eastern style”. I’m not sure what the correct term is.

There are plenty of Asian countries that don’t follow last name - first name so it’s not necessarily an “eastern” thing.

another opinion from me about automating based on country. It’s a cool thing to implement but might not be worth the effort.

An example I have is in the Philippines, majority of people go First Name Last Name. However, there’s a Chinese sub population that has last name first name. But then most of this sub population also have “Christian” names that they use in Most official documents or websites. I’m pretty sure other countries will also have similar nuances.

Maybe a screen name or username will be the razor.

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

#78

Post by ozim »

masklinn wrote: post #55
jzwinck wrote: post #50

I lived in Asia for many years and worked with people from many places there. It's common to hear "How should I address you?" This is equivalent to the people here suggesting a "nickname" field (good idea). There are people with only one name. Don't make them double it (Ananda Ananda). There are people with several given names. But they may only want to be called by the first, or the first two, or the last. There are…

> It's common to hear "How should I address you?" This is equivalent to the people here suggesting a "nickname" field (good idea). It’s not uncommon in the west either and it’s weird how much we ignored it in software e.g. “I’m John Q. Smith the Third but call me John” or “May I call you j-dog?” > There are people who wish to be called by their full name. They may find it jarring to be addressed by just one piece of…

Web apps great equalizer. No one cares if you are knighted or have phd, put in your name and you can watch funny cats same way as the rest of pleb.

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

#79

Post by croes »

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.

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

#80

Post by fy20 »

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 (…

In most cases you don't even need the users real name.

If I sign up for an account, but the invoice is going to the billing department of my company, why do you care what my real name is?

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