Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

japantimes.co.jp

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 262 posts

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

#221

Post by Sniffnoy »

throwaway287391 wrote: post #217
SilasX wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know I have to do it... Falsehoods programmers believe about names: - Everyone has exactly one well-defined "family name". (In Latin America people have more than one, and some cultrues may go by a single name that isn't a family indicator.) - In every formal context, the "family name" is how you should address someone. (You do not address the queen of England as "Mrs. Windsor", and Saddam Hussein preferred to be…

> In every formal context, the "family name" is how you should address someone. (You do not address the queen of England as "Mrs. Windsor", and Saddam Hussein preferred to be known as "Saddam", which is not a family name.) Don't these "falsehoods" just become ridiculous at some point? Like, am I really supposed to carve out special cases in my shitty app's business logic for the Queen and Saddam Hussein?

A better counterexample here would be Russian conventions of address. I'm not sure why the grandparent comment used such rare, basically-ignorable cases instead.

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

#222

Post by marchrock »

stordoff wrote: post #5

What I find interesting is that there are exceptions to the current practice in English. Yoko Taro (family name: Yoko) is known widely as Yoko Taro, yet most other Japanese game developers are known as GivenName FamilyName (in English). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoko_Taro

I thought this was because his recent work were done under his pen name "ヨコオタロウ (Yoko Taro)", which is fully katakana-ized version of his real name "横尾太郎 (Yoko Taro)" but treated as one word.

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

#223

Post by hiroshi3110 »

As a Japanese, first we MUST stop pronounce Chinese names, both place and person, in Japanese on-yomi rule. e.g. Beijing(北京) is called "Pekin". Xi Jinping (習近平) is Shu Kinpei. It always confuse me when first heard those name in English.

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

#224

Post by pandaman »

9HZZRfNlpR wrote: post #96
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…

But a lot of people do come only family name. I'm not sure if it's different in America, but everyone is using Obama, Bush, Häkkinen etc. Heck a lot of people don't even know their first names here. You can say that it's because they are famous, but I'm just trying to outline there are differences. No one close to them they in real life would refer them by family name. Putin's passports says Vladimir Vladimirovich Pu…

And speaking of Putin's passport: Russian international passports usually have the patronymic spelled only in the Cyrillic name, the international name is just First Last. So most likely Putin's passport says "Vladimir Putin" and "Владимир Владимирович Путин". I think it's the best decision - nothing good is going to come out from forcing patronymics on people who cannot even read Russian and exposing your citizens to all potential fuckups caused by name confusion.

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

#225

Post by seanmcdirmid »

dis-sys wrote: post #214
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When was the last time mainland China had a leader with a one character given name? But ya, it is a matter of preference.

> When was the last time mainland China had a leader with a one character given name? The person commonly known as Sun Yat-sen in the west. His given name is 文, he used it to sign all official documents.

Crazy that 中山 was his Japanese name....

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

#226

Post by donpark »

sohkamyung wrote: post #209
midhir wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

It's not for Malaysian born Chinese. We usually have three names. For example, mine is SOH Kam Yung: SOH - family name Kam - 'generational' name (same as for my brothers) Yung - my given name For simplicity, I usually add a hyphen (Kam-Yung) in my name to make it easier for people to refer to me in non-formal settings, i.e. I should be called "Kam Yung" or "Mr. Soh". Calling me "Kam" (it has happened) is nonsensical…

Same for Koreans. Capitalizing the first character of the 'generational' name and lowercase for given name could work.

But I think emphasizing the given name offers better UX so given name should be all caps and family name should be all lowercase like this: YUNG Kam soh or soh Kam YUNG.

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

#227

Post by yoz-y »

yellowapple wrote: post #215
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.

Sticking to a consistent ordering of given and (middle and) (paternal and) (maternal and) family names would also remove ambiguity.

It would but then a good part of the world would have to change their convention. I don’t think they see any good reason to adopt our conventions.

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

#228

Post by thaumasiotes »

paulific wrote: post #178
thaumasiotes wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but I don't see what the ambiguity is supposed to be. How would you interpret the name such that the 劉 wasn't part of the given name?

If you only hear it spoken, or you don't understand the naming convention and start making guesses about what you think is going on. People in countries where middle names are normal also tend to make the assume that one of the syllables is a middle name.

> People in countries where middle names are normal also tend to make the assume that one of the syllables is a middle name.

Some Chinese do think of it that way.

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

#229

Post by ahartmetz »

hiroshi3110 wrote: post #223

As a Japanese, first we MUST stop pronounce Chinese names, both place and person, in Japanese on-yomi rule. e.g. Beijing(北京) is called "Pekin". Xi Jinping (習近平) is Shu Kinpei. It always confuse me when first heard those name in English.

So that might be why Beijing is called Peking in German... Although the (generally closer to original pronunciation) English romanizations of some Chinese names are becoming more common.

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

#230

Post by JamesBarney »

jasonjei wrote: post #55
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.

I don’t think it’s just a matter of translation preference. I think it’s also to be respectful to the people whose names are being mentioned. When Chinese or Japanese concert Roman names to Hanzi/Kana, they try to observe the FIRSTNAME LASTNAME convention if preferred by that culture. Such as スティーブン・ポール・“スティーブ”・ジョブズ (Steven Paul “Steve” Jobs)

This is something that is hard for me to understand because I wouldn't think it was disrespectful to be called Barney James in another language.(honestly I wouldn't care if they called me Barney James in English)
Post reply on HN