Personally I support this.
I think Japanese names sound wrong in western name order: most family names have a distinctive sound and construction.
Foreign Minister Taro Kono to ask media to switch order of Japanese names
81–90 of 262 posts
Re: Foreign Minister Taro Kono to ask media to switch order of Japanese names
#82English 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.
I remember some mail always uses capitalized case [IRS and SSA?]..
Re: Foreign Minister Taro Kono to ask media to switch order of Japanese names
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've seen tabloid rags refer to Kim Jong Un as [sic] "Mister Un" more times than I can count. I think it would be useful to be able to know the ordering of a name without having to look it up.
Or just not read tabloids which, despite being rags, should know better anyway. Actually, it's because a journalistic publication should know better that I'm inclined to call such an example wilful ignorance. People not knowing the Japanese name order, that's something that can be overcome with just the most minor amount of education. People who steadfastly get it wrong despite the standards of their profession, they…
>Or just not read tabloids
You make a good point. If only the likes of The Guardian and Bloomberg didn't make it to the front page on HN regularly.
Re: Foreign Minister Taro Kono to ask media to switch order of Japanese names
#84Re: Foreign Minister Taro Kono to ask media to switch order of Japanese names
#85There is an impressive amount of variation regarding personal name formats even within Asia. In my culture (Thai), I put my given name first and then my family name (inherited from my father), like in most of the west, but actually my name of formal address is my first , given name, and my family name is hardly ever used except as a differentiator. [1] In Vietnamese culture, I believe the given name is also the name…
I have seen the following variations in Pakistan. Given name is what people prefer to be called informally. * marks if people strongly prefer to be referred to by this name in a formal setting. Prefixes are usually religious in nature (Muhammad/Syed) and then you are never supposed to use them except when reading out the full name.
FamilyName GivenName*
GivenName FamilyName
GivenName* Father'sGivenName
GivenName Father'sGivenName FamilyName
Father'sGivenName GivenName FamilyName
Prefix GivenName*
My name is of the third type and as a scientist it annoys me immensely that my work is referred to by my Father'sGivenName in western culture when no one has ever called me that in real life in my culture.
Re: Foreign Minister Taro Kono to ask media to switch order of Japanese names
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This is fantastic. Living in both the English and Japanese-speaking worlds [...] I think consistency is preferable If I'm not mistaken, his suggestion would make the Japanese convention less consistent with the English convention (while making it more consistent with the Chinese convention).
It would make the English rendering of Japanese names consistent with … well, themselves. 安倍 (Abe) 晋三 (Shinzo) will be Abe Shinzo, not Shinzo Abe. The Japanese don't reverse Western names, so Steve Jobs is never Jobs Steve.
Ah I see! Yes indeed.
Re: Foreign Minister Taro Kono to ask media to switch order of Japanese names
#87In terms of Chinese names, my observation is that in English media, if your name is printed as "first_name last_name" then you haven't made it yet. But if you are somebody, your name will appear as "last_name first_name". E.g. Xi Jinping, Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping. When was the last time you heard "Ming Yao the former Rockets center"?
All four of the people you used as examples were born in the Mainland and had always used that order. Do you have any examples of people switching from Firstname Lastname to Lastname Firstname after "making it"?
Re: Foreign Minister Taro Kono to ask media to switch order of Japanese names
#88This is unexpected and quite interesting. I think we totally gloss over the fact that we've just been writing Japanese (and Korean) names incorrectly. I've always thought it to be quite odd, and there are exceptions too. Mun Jae-in, Kim Il-Seung, Kim Jong-Il are written correctly, so you might think political figures get a pass, yet Syngman Rhee is backwards.
I don’t think it’s correct to say we’ve been writing them “incorrectly.” We have been writing the English representation of a name whose canonical representation isn’t even in English characters. The convention often is used by Japanese people themselves (for example, in corporate directories). This is simply a change in the English representation to more closely match the Japanese form.
Re: Foreign Minister Taro Kono to ask media to switch order of Japanese names
#89This is fantastic. Living in both the English and Japanese-speaking worlds, it'll be nice not having to go through mental gymnastics to remember how to call somebody in whichever language. I think consistency is preferable; it's surely not impossible for people to be educated on name order.
I have a friend who is (I guess) Japanese-American. Someone like his great-great-grandfather was Japanese and the family name has been passed down, but for all intents and purposes, he's a white American.
How would his name be written?
Re: Foreign Minister Taro Kono to ask media to switch order of Japanese names
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
My last name is mixed case, so capitalizing it makes it wrong.
Perhaps adjusting the capitalization, e.g. McMILLAN rather than MCMILLAN?
This might be suitable.
I don't know about jlv2, but the Dutch frequently have a tussenvoegsel[1], an insertion between their names which is properly lowercased but is a part of the family name.
So the physicist who researched molecular stickiness is named Johannes Diderik van der Waals. His surname is "van der Waals" and a scientific reference should be cited as "van der Waals, JD", sorted alongside other surnames starting with W (either sorted at WAALS∅∅JD where ∅ is a symbol that evaluates less than any letter, or occasionally you will see them sorted at W∞VAN∅DER∅WAALS∅∅JD so that all of the tussenvoegsels end up at the end of their section, where ∞ is a symbol that evaluates greater than any letter).
It is considered formally incorrect to capitalize tussenvoegsels, except when they begin a sentence or when you precede them with an article like Mr. or Dr. You would probably want to write his name in this last-name-capitalized-first-no-commas convention as “van der KAMP Johannes Diderik;” writing ”VAN DER KAMP” looks wrong to me—but I am not sure what the French do.
Is there a Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Surnames yet? There’s famously one for names in general.