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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?

#271

Post by eptcyka »

yreg wrote: post #85
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`.

It doesn't matter, it should always be `Hello $theirPreferredName`.

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

#272

Post by muzani »

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?

If you don't need a legal name, a "name" field suffices.

There are plenty of situations where you need their full legal name as per passport or other form of identification. In here it's often some form of anti-money laundering laws. The first time I came across it was for a game show where you could win money, but to take the money out of the app, the law required some legal identification.

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

#273

Post by FearNotDaniel »

weinzierl wrote: post #135
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 (…

"Just have a single "name field" and maybe preferred name, which is not the same." This is the way to go. "The family/given name format doesn't make much sense here." It doesn't make much sense in many places all over the world. In Germany technically speaking our given names are a set and we can have many of them. While it is practically necessary to write them out in a certain order in our documents, from a legal s…

Agreed. Currently consulting for an org which is having this very debate; the consensus is leaning towards replacing FirstName/LastName with FullName (i.e how are you generally identified) and PreferredName (how do you like to be addressed).

Some additional observations from the German-speaking world (both Vienna and rural Austria):

- yes, we also often refer to people, even in everyday speech, as LastName FirstName

- often when referring to someone by name they are also given a definite article (equivalent of English "the"), e.g. "die Maria" or "der Gruber Hansi"

- some people I've encountered with a background in the German aristocracy (not Austrian, where such titles are technically abolished) have extremely long legal names with multiple prince/duke/von X und Y etc clauses. This will be their full legal name that appears in the passport and must be used when booking flights etc, but is not what they would use as "full name" in an everyday business context. So "Full Name" might not always be "Legal Name".

Also in a South Asian/Indian diaspora context, it is very common for people to be addressed by a semi-formal nickname that does not appear anywhere in their legal name. Come to think of it, I know one or two Austrian aristos* who use the same approach.

* yes, technically the aristocracy is abolished but they still live in their castles and know each other's pedigrees...

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

#274

Post by numpad0 »

throwaway2990 wrote: post #141
ralferoo wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even in countries where you might assume this is true, it's not always! For instance in China, most names are single character family name followed by a two character given name. Some rare family names are two characters and usually they will have a single character given name. Some people have single character family name and single character given name. Then you get people from different ethnic groups who put the f…

It doesn’t matter if your friend uses an English name at work. It doesn’t matter if the ethnic group writes it last first or first last. If you’re filling in Chinese documentation and writing it in Chinese it will be a single field in Chinese. If you’re writing it in English it will be written in 2 fields as first name and last name as the English version of the Chinese name. The spoken English name of “alice” or “Da…

Wait, Chinese application forms don't have two separate fields!? That adds to the list of falsehoods. Japanese ones always has one for surname, one for given, lines above for pronunciation always, except for signatures.

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

#275

Post by throwaway2990 »

robjan wrote: post #263
throwaway2990 wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no list. Either you live in China and fill in your name in Chinese. Or you don’t live in China and you write your name in English.

Hong Kong is in China and everyone has an English legal name and most people have a Chinese legal name. The English name may be a Romanisation of the Chinese name, a western name or a combination. Depending on which combination of names you have, your nationality and the specific situation, the Chinese or English one may take precedence e.g some government departments prefer the Chinese name but most businesses prefe…

Yes. Doesn’t change anything. You fill in stuff for mainland. You use Chinese name. You fill in stuff for Hong Kong. It’s either in English or Chinese. But it’s slowly transitioning to Chinese only. As China eradicates all the English stuff and implements the red scarf Education in HK.

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

#276

Post by usrusr »

weinzierl wrote: post #135
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 (…

"Just have a single "name field" and maybe preferred name, which is not the same." This is the way to go. "The family/given name format doesn't make much sense here." It doesn't make much sense in many places all over the world. In Germany technically speaking our given names are a set and we can have many of them. While it is practically necessary to write them out in a certain order in our documents, from a legal s…

Germany used to be extremely restrictive about the set of character sequences that were allowed as given names. Some of that is probably still in place. When everybody was called Fritz or Hans or Gundula plus some word describing an ancestor's profession (it's all following the pattern of Smith and Miller), the order didn't really matter and that freedom was liberally abused: contexts that use the formal as identifier (Schmidt, Müller) and the given name only as a tie-breaker on collision will happily put the family name first, despite the reverse being specified in the terms themselves (Vorname and Nachname translate to pre, post, they really don't leave anything open to interpretation).

But those informal regional order conventions? I read them as formalized disrespect for the individual: "you're not Hans who happens to be a Müller, you're a Müller who happens to be Hans. And the Müllers, they are part of us, so subsume!" Those regional things can be quite peculiar: a childhood memory of my mother (northern Germany) is that as a child she was sometimes referred to as given name + name of the family farm, I suspect not in that order. With that farm's name still being the name of the family that ran ran it before her family took over, at some point between the thirty years war and the industrial revolution.

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

#277

Post by skissane »

pmontra wrote: post #131
lmm wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

In way you are right. From the global point of view the exceptional case is the American one, Name Middle Family. It's about 330 M people vs 8 billions, 4%, which is less than 10%. But then you add the exceptional cases for every country or culture. From the other comments we already know that even in Western Europe there are many differences. So if you sum all those exceptional cases you get the 100% of the world po…

> From the global point of view the exceptional case is the American one, Name Middle Family.

That’s not really “American”. Most other Anglophone countries are mostly the same. Maybe it should be called “Anglophone” not “American”? To a certain extent, even “West European”

There are some subtle differences - my impression is the US is more accepting of generational suffixes (Jr, III, etc) than Australia is, for instance. But the overall structure “Given [Middle…] Surname” is shared

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

#278

Post by throaway230831 »

qwytw wrote: post #231
throaway230831 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gaius (also written Caius) was his given name, Ivlivs (Julius) the family name, Caesar the cognomen. In inscriptions (short): CAIVS IVLIVS CAESAR In speaking he would (in English;)) rather formally introduce himself as "Gaius of the Iulii, called Caesar". His mother called him Gaius, his peers called him Caesar once he got or choose?) this name.

Wouldn't Ceasar be much closer to his last name,though? It's definitely not his personal nickname. His father was 'Gaius Julius Caesar' his grandfather (supposedly the first 'Ceasar') was 'Sextus Julius Caesar'. The Cognomen is presumable something that evolved as a way to tell apart people belonging to different branches of the same family/clan because the number of first names was very limited.

I stand corrected: in case of Caesar, it was already hereditary in his family.

Initially, it was more of a nickname or even an earned name, like with Caesars contemporary Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognomen

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

#279

Post by throwaway2990 »

numpad0 wrote: post #274
throwaway2990 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn’t matter if your friend uses an English name at work. It doesn’t matter if the ethnic group writes it last first or first last. If you’re filling in Chinese documentation and writing it in Chinese it will be a single field in Chinese. If you’re writing it in English it will be written in 2 fields as first name and last name as the English version of the Chinese name. The spoken English name of “alice” or “Da…

Wait, Chinese application forms don't have two separate fields!? That adds to the list of falsehoods. Japanese ones always has one for surname, one for given, lines above for pronunciation always, except for signatures.

All forms require name + id.

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

#280

Post by regularfry »

numpad0 wrote: post #264
zarzavat wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The original sin is assuming that names have a particular structure. But at least First/Last places the burden of that sin not on the user. My partner has only given names. When forms ask for their “Family name”, my internal thought process goes like this: 1. WTF do I write here? 2. Why are they asking for Family name? Oh they are probably just Anglophone and assume this is how names are. 3. It’s okay, just lie on th…

First and last is worse because having first name registered as family name adds extra half a day to your schedule to be spent around support desk, and given/family nomenclature exists because it's just unnecessary pain. Your partner and billion others from their cultural sphere with single-field name system is a testament that concatenated two-field name system is the problem and is actually not working due to the f…

Yes, this. Given/family may be bad, but first/last is so much worse.
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