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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

#101

Post by astrobe_ »

maxander wrote: post #49
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.

As someone whose (bog-standard American-style) last name is also a common first name, this convention would save me a lot of trouble as well. It’s a consistent source of confusion for secretaries, receptionists, and so on.

Our current prime minister is Edouard PHILIPPE: two first names. Out of the 20 most common family names, half are also used as first names.

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

#102

Post by Xixi »

crdrost wrote: post #90
philwelch wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Your post made me want to check the rules of the "particule" in French [1], with regard to French names, as in: Charles de Gaulle, Jean de La Fontaine or Armand Jean du Plessis de Richelieu.

Turns out, capitalization depends on the grammatical construct. It's always capitalized at the beginning of a sentence, or to avoid ambiguity as in "Les mémoires de De Sèze". It's never capitalized when writing the full name (Jean de La Fontaine). In other constructs, it's complicated, and quite subjective...

Foreign names with particules follow the rules of the country of origin.

[1] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Particule_(onomastique)#Majusc...?

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

#103

Post by munificent »

thefounder wrote: post #52
falsedan wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It disregards the cultural history of names to suit what’s easiest for Western Europeans to understand.

I couldn't care less about the order of my name(s) or my name itself either...call me Mike, Michael or whatever is easier for you (Machiel, Maicon or Maycon, Michaela, Michelangelo, Michal etc.) Why do people make a such big deal about names anyway?

Sometimes people care about different things than you do.

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

#104

Post by marshray »

maxander wrote: post #49
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.

As someone whose (bog-standard American-style) last name is also a common first name, this convention would save me a lot of trouble as well. It’s a consistent source of confusion for secretaries, receptionists, and so on.

    /me waves

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

#105

Post by Causality1 »

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #21
Causality1 wrote: post #17

Personally I think this is a matter of translation. In English the personal name comes first followed by the surname. In Japanese honorifics come after the name but it would be quite silly to ask foreign media to call Abe Shinzo "Abe Shinzo Mr." instead of "Mr. Abe Shinzo" or for an American to ask British media to not refer to American mothers as "mum". Sometimes localizing a name means altering it.

But we don't usually reorder Chinese and Korean names, and before the Meiji era Japanese names weren't reordered (or rather, we don't reorder the names of historical figures!?), so it's Tokugawa Ieyasu not Ieyasu Tokugawa.

With the result that if I'm reading a random name from an Asian nation I have absolutely no idea which is the personal name and which the family name. Usually that's inconsequential, but it would cause problems if I ever had dealings with business contacts overseas.

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

#106

Post by alistairSH »

FabHK wrote: post #53

FWIW, many Hong Kong people have both a Chinese name and a Western one, and then it works quite nicely, respecting both conventions: FirstWestern Family FirstChinese Such as Andrew LEUNG Kwan-yue, Tommy CHEUNG Yu-yan, etc.

Is that western name official (on birth certificate or passport) or informal?

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

#107

Post by lalalandland »

crdrost wrote: post #90
philwelch wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Band names in English have the same convention. The Beatles is under B.

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

#108

Post by munificent »

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.

This doesn't work in media that doesn't distinguish letters by case. That's still fairly common for things like forms and other official records that only use capital letters.

Obviously, the correct answer is XML:

    ShinzoAbe

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

#109

Post by thaumasiotes »

klodolph wrote: post #97
dsr_ wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Hello, I'm Cheng Xu. Please call me Cheng." or "Hello, I'm Xu Cheng. Please call me Cheng." solves the problem either way.

Well, it doesn't solve the problem of communicating whether you are using the family name or given name, which is an important piece of information to know since it indicates the level of familiarity / intimacy / distance. This distinction is a bit less common for personal conversations in English-speaking countries but important in many parts of the world. Perhaps I would be talking to "Cheng", but later I would be…

> Perhaps I would be talking to "Cheng"

In my experience, while it is common for a Chinese personal name to be one syllable, it's not at all common for a person to be addressed by that one-syllable name. There are several strategies:

1. A person with a one-syllable name might be addressed by their whole name. For example, a 孙艺 might be called 孙艺 in speech, even though 孙 is the family name.

2. The person might have a nickname. For example, I know someone who goes by his nickname 哈哈; I've never heard his actual name.

3. The one-syllable name might be reduplicated; 袁璐 might be addressed as 璐璐.

4. The one-syllable name might be prefixed with 小; 李宁 might be addressed as 小宁.

Options 3 and 4 are diminutive constructions and may be too intimate for a strange man (or even a familiar man) to use to a woman.

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

#110

Post by johnchristopher »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #92

I think this is the start of the hockey stick graph in the unicode-ification of the world We are becoming a closer more integrated world and we will find it waaaaay easier to have common shared conventions and regulations - but that does not mean we all choose an existing one, (ie cultural hegemony) we just migrate to a new one, more complex perhaps but one that fits (more or less) everybody. It's fascinating (been f…

Factoid: reminds me of a strip in a recent superman comics, I quote a villain getting his message broadcasted on every devices of the planet: "You really should settle on a common language or you'll never achieve anything significant as a specie".
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