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Foreign Minister Taro Kono to ask media to switch order of Japanese names

japantimes.co.jp

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Re: Foreign Minister Taro Kono to ask media to switch order of Japanese names

#61

Post by knolax »

zapzupnz wrote: post #44
knolax wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don't see how it "It disregards the cultural history of names". As far as I'm concerned the order of the names is just a minor grammatical difference.

One person cannot speak for an entire gamut of people. There will be people for whom the way one says their name is not a simple matter of grammar but of identity, pride, family history, etc. The Japanese respect the rest of the world enough not to reverse our names — Brad Pitt doesn't become Pitt Brad — so there's no reason why we cannot accord the same back. There may also be great personal meaning or even simple w…

>One person cannot speak for an entire gamut of people.

You're right, in fact the article seems to be mainly about the Japanese Foreign Minister telling other Japanese people to order their names the Japanese way in English. Notice how The Japan Times, a Japanese company, neverless continues writing his name in the English order in the article.

>There may also be great personal meaning or even simple wordplay in their name

There's a lot of personal meaning in my name. However, regardless of the ordering，the meaning and pronounciation of my name is lost the moment I write in the Latin alphabet.

In an Ideal world we would all just leave names in their original script (Which is the convention in Asian academia for non-Asian names), but we don't live in such a world; We live in a world where English speakers in the Midwest struggle to pronounce the foreign names of their own hometowns (See Pekin IL).

Re: Foreign Minister Taro Kono to ask media to switch order of Japanese names

#62

Post by mrob »

firethief wrote: post #46
mrob wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some Japanese people do this already when writing their names in English, and Wikipedia's article "Japanese name" claims that it's recommended by the Ministry of Education. I'm usually against non-standard capitalization, but because it reduces the potential for confusion I support it here.

How is it non-standard?

I've never seen it used in mainstream news or literature, only in software and scientific papers, and not always then. I just searched for '.jp' in the Linux kernel changelog and none of the Japanese contributors I found wrote their names like that.

Re: Foreign Minister Taro Kono to ask media to switch order of Japanese names

#63

Post by apendleton »

wccrawford wrote: post #12

Did this article put his given name first, despite being about him asking that the media put the family name first? I wonder if he finds that as frustrating as I do.

I'm sure they, like most publications, have a house style guide that dictates things like this to ensure consistency across articles and over time. They'll presumably follow that style guide as it now stands until it's updated, at which time they'll change all articles to conform to the new style. Depending on the circumstance, what a person or entity wants to be called isn't the only consideration when deciding how to refer to them in print, and publications don't generally tend to want to leave it up to the whims of individual authors.

Re: Foreign Minister Taro Kono to ask media to switch order of Japanese names

#64

Post by FabHK »

There is an excellent Chinese singer (of German Lieder, as it happens), who used to go by the name of Shen Yang (with Shen being the family name). Now, quoting Wikipedia:

> he went on to win the 2007 BBC Cardiff Singer of the World competition.[4] After the win, noting confusion in the Western press over the name "Shen Yang", he decided to change its spelling to "Shenyang".

So that's somewhat unexpected, because while now the order is fixed, it really looks like he only has one name.

(BTW, Indonesians frequently have only one name (even in their official papers/passport), creating difficulties when booking flights, for example. Obviates difficulties with ordering the names, though :-)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shenyang_(singer)

Re: Foreign Minister Taro Kono to ask media to switch order of Japanese names

#65

Post by zapzupnz »

bnjms wrote: post #59
zapzupnz wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inventing things like this is needless. We don't put commas or grave characters in Chinese and Korean names.

And it would never be used in Chinese or Korean writing. It would only ever be used for Latin alphabets when the order of names is reversed from the norm.

Again, such things are not used in Chinese or Korean names — in the Latin alphabet. I was sure I didn't have to spell that out.

No need to make an exception for Japanese, no need to start inventing needless uses for punctuation. The world is spinning just fine with names like Xi Jinping and Kim Jong-Un, free of superfluous characters marking their first and last names.

Re: Foreign Minister Taro Kono to ask media to switch order of Japanese names

#66

Post by xxpor »

mrob wrote: post #62
firethief wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it non-standard?

I've never seen it used in mainstream news or literature, only in software and scientific papers, and not always then. I just searched for '.jp' in the Linux kernel changelog and none of the Japanese contributors I found wrote their names like that.

INADA Naoki, a Python contributor, signs their emails at least in the style.

Re: Foreign Minister Taro Kono to ask media to switch order of Japanese names

#67

Post by mimixco »

So does this mean the Minister's name is Tara KONO or Kono TARA? I can't tell from this article. I totally understand people wanting to have their names written correctly, but if the reader is confused, is that going to help people to understand one's name correctly? In the US, I don't think it would.

Re: Foreign Minister Taro Kono to ask media to switch order of Japanese names

#68

Post by zapzupnz »

jasonjei wrote: post #54
zapzupnz wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One person cannot speak for an entire gamut of people. There will be people for whom the way one says their name is not a simple matter of grammar but of identity, pride, family history, etc. The Japanese respect the rest of the world enough not to reverse our names — Brad Pitt doesn't become Pitt Brad — so there's no reason why we cannot accord the same back. There may also be great personal meaning or even simple w…

Chinese and Japanese, however, usually adopts the preference of locale name ordering. For example, Stephen Paul Jobs is rendered from Roman to Kana as スティーブン・ポール・“スティーブ”・ジョブズ Suteibun Pouru Jobuzu In Chinese as 史蒂夫·喬布斯 Shidifu Qiaobusi

But still, as you notice, in the right order.

Transliteration doesn't really come into it. Of course the Japanese would write スティーブ・ジョブス (but emphatically not ジョブス・スティーブ) rather than Steve Jobs, just the same way as we write Abe Shinzo rather than 安倍晋三.

Re: Foreign Minister Taro Kono to ask media to switch order of Japanese names

#70

Post by midhir »

HuShifang wrote: post #18
xxpor wrote: post #2

English should adopt the French convention of capitalizing the family (last) name. For example, this would make it ABE Shinzo, which would remove ambiguity. When encountering East (thanks for the reminder) Asian (or Hungarian, for that matter) names in emails for example, I'm usually worried about if their "last" name in the directory is their given name and what they should be addressed by or their actual last name.

Agree. This is, actually, a regular (if not standard) practice in many domains of academic bibliography for Chinese authors (which is useful, as some individuals with Chinese personal and family names working in Anglophone contexts do follow the English convention of putting personal names first -- meaning that you often can't tell which is the personal and which is the family name in pinyin, e.g. "Li Jia") Fun fact:…

That's interesting, I thought the given name in Chinese was almost always two characters. Is this not the case?

我是中文学生 :)

Funnily the first thing you learn in Chinese is how to say who you are. But there's very little help with actually picking a Chinese name!

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