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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?

#81

Post by nicbou »

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 (…

This is what I usually do if I need the name at all, but sometimes you need to interface with systems that need that data split.

A simple, unimportant one: how do you politely address the person? In Germany, you'd start a letter with "Sehr geehrte Frau Dr. Musterfrau", which implies knowing the last name, gender and title of the person. You can drop the title, but dropping the gender makes the whole thing impersonal. Using the full name feels off.

In my case, it was to address a resignation notice, so it was a bit of a nitpick with no legal consequences. However in other cultures and scenarios it can matter a lot more.

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

#82

Post by [deleted] »

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 (…

[deleted]

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

#83

Post by JimDabell »

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.

You’re talking about literally billions of people, not “occasional edge cases”.

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

#84

Post by jack1243star »

goscots wrote: post #4

One interesting approach would be to use a regex to detect if the name is written in Hanzi, Kanji or the Korean or Vietnamese alphabets and write the name in whatever format is appropriate for the locality. The Asian people I know would be be unsurprised to see their name rendered western style when written using whatever romanization format their native language uses.

Please don't do this. Like with western names, it is impossible to discern nationality/culture from written names alone.

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

#85

Post by yreg »

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 (…

Slack does this and I don't like it. I have Hungarian colleagues and some (but not all!) of them have entered the family name first.

I always feel awkward responding to them, because I don't know if I'm typing `Hello $FIRSTNAME` or `Hello $LASTNAME`.

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

#86

Post by Scarblac »

freddie_mercury wrote: post #42
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…

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…

And maybe you don't need the full name.

And don't limit it to Asia either, it's relevant everywhere.

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

#87

Post by lmm »

JimDabell wrote: post #83
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.

You’re talking about literally billions of people, not “occasional edge cases”.

How do you figure that? Billions of people would mean over 10% of the world population having exceptional names, which seems very implausible.

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

#88

Post by newaccount74 »

fy20 wrote: post #80
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?

> why do you care what my real name is

Because the billing department verifies bills before paying them, and needs to know who to ask about the bill?

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

#89

Post by efitz »

Is there any reason why you need to specifically know the first and last name, or the family and given name? I think there is a lot of inertia in the idea that you must have two name fields, but why?

Why not just have one name field, and let people type what they want in it?

Or better yet, have one field for “what should I print as the name when I send you a package or letter”, and “what would you like me to call you?” (e.g. preferred name)

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

#90

Post by nhinck2 »

croes wrote: post #79
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.

There is no "a solution" and never will be. Design your solution to be maximally relevant to your scenario and accept that it can't be perfect.
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