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

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

381–390 of 527 posts

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

#381

Post by numpad0 »

kelnos wrote: post #194
saltymimir wrote: post #57

Ohh boy, as someone who works on a travel booking, service serving customers in Asia, this problem hits hard. I guess the answer depends on how you plan to handle the names once they got submitted. I happen to be handing that data over to airlines, which has some of the less forgiving, yet fragmented name requirements. If you handle this incorrectly, your customer can't fly, even after they paid for the flight. And f…

Why not just have a single field for "your name as it appears on your identity document"? Or do the various airline systems expect the name to be split into separate fields depending on the locale? I've always found it weird how broken this is. Some US airlines have separate entry fields for first, middle, and last names. But then they jam it together on the boarding pass as "Last, Firstmiddle" (yes, with first and m…

Airlines are always weird. I remember myself consistently being FIRST/LASTMR on tickets; all caps, no space, with a slash, no comma. I suppose it's some canonical encoding that everyone working in commercial aviation just knows.

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

#382

Post by cheese_van »

Tainnor wrote: post #337
ghaff wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> "Avoid asking users for their title. It’s extra work for them and you’re asking them to potentially reveal their gender and marital status, which they may not want to do." I'm always a bit surprised when I see some e.g. tech conferences still insisting on title as a mandatory field (or really asking at all). It's not just the gender and the marital status but some people attach a lot of significance to all manner…

At least in Germany, titles are still rather important. I agree that it's silly but if you have a PhD you're very likely to put "Dr." on your doorbell name plate.

Can confirm. In Germany, recipients of a US visa often complain that their title isn't used on the visa, only their name. Especially PhD visa applicants.

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

#383

Post by makeitdouble »

fer wrote: post #253
vintermann wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just programmers. Plenty of genealogists, do things like automatically give a wife their husband's (male!) patronym. Even though they see it doesn't work that way in the sources, they seem to feel that it "should" work that way.

In France married women, if they let their guard down, will be given their husband's last name as "nom d'usage" upon almost any sign-up paperwork, without being asked, at least in my experience. Nom d'usage technically has no legal value, it's just a last name you might want to be addressed as, normally that of your husband but it can be a pen name and whatever. It's optional, and technically only at the request of t…

Yes, it's really bad.

We actually couldn't open a joint bank account with both names separated. They'd accept the papers signed in the official names, but the names on the cards and other communication needed to be unified for their system to accept it. They'd accept to reemit card with the correct names only as an exception by abusing the card renewal system apparently

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

#384

Post by Hamuko »

ghaff wrote: post #348
Hamuko wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Title is the one that always confuses me since titles are basically non-existent here. It seems really like a really important thing in the Anglosphere and I have no idea why. I just always pick "Dr" when I'm forced to pick one. So far it has never made any difference.

(PhD) Dr. is a funny one in the Anglosphere and also at least parts of continental Europe (and possibly elsewhere). It's sort of a big deal in academia and some percentage of other people feel pretty attached to the title. For others, the attitude is more it's just a degree and lots of people have advanced degrees that we don't go around using honorifics for.

I didn't even know that I could put my Bachelor of Engineering degree next to my name, and from what I can tell on the Internet, putting it next to my name would be considered pretentious.

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

#385

Post by scarby2 »

sigwinch28 wrote: post #347
johneth wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The GOV.UK design system[1] agrees with you: > "Use single or multiple fields depending on your user’s needs. Not everyone’s name fits the first-name, last-name format. Using multiple name fields mean there’s more risk that a person’s name will not fit the format you’ve chosen and that it is entered incorrectly." and > "Avoid asking users for their title. It’s extra work for them and you’re asking them to potentially…

On the other hand, HM Passport Office absolutely loves titles: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/titles-included-i... My personal favourite is if you change your first name to “Sir” and you are not actually a “Knight”, then you get the note “THE REFERENCE TO SIR IS TO THE HOLDER’S NAME AND NOT TO THE HOLDER’S TITLE” printed in your passport. Context: I wanted “Dr.” to be added to my passport.

You also get this with Lord and I'd assume Baron, count, Duke, viscount or their feminine equivalents.

I do wonder what would happen if I used a tile that was not used in the UK.

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

#386

Post by Larrikin »

In the Android apps I've worked on, family name and given name are saved separately in the database and then in our string file we have a separately defined string "full name format" that just takes in two strings. Depending on the localization string file, the two strings can be reversed. Haven't had to do major internationalization efforts in many apps I've worked on but this has been perfectly fine for times we needed to have multiple formats.

Just considering other countries and languages (and not doing obviously American/English only) has made the effort considerably easier, even when other countries aren't in the radar at the time

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

#387

Post by yreg »

richie_adler wrote: post #286
GoblinSlayer wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't say hello, just state your business.

Thank you! Mandatory reference to nohello.net/en/

That's about something else entirely. You are not supposed to write "Hello" and then wait for a reply making asynchronous communication synchronous.

Starting a full message with your request/business with a greeting is basic decency with no harm.

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

#388

Post by yreg »

richie_adler wrote: post #291
yreg wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's less friendly.

Replace "Hello, $reason_for_this_message" with "Hello, $acceptable_level_of_polite_preamble; $reason_for_this_message", then.

I don't get what problem do all of you have with me saying "Hello Richie" to my colleagues.

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

#390

Post by ghaff »

Hamuko wrote: post #384
ghaff wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(PhD) Dr. is a funny one in the Anglosphere and also at least parts of continental Europe (and possibly elsewhere). It's sort of a big deal in academia and some percentage of other people feel pretty attached to the title. For others, the attitude is more it's just a degree and lots of people have advanced degrees that we don't go around using honorifics for.

I didn't even know that I could put my Bachelor of Engineering degree next to my name, and from what I can tell on the Internet, putting it next to my name would be considered pretentious.

>putting it next to my name would be considered pretentious.

Yeah, probably. I sometimes will list degrees in a longer bio but that's mostly because it may turn out I went to school with someone. They're not very relevant to anything I'd be talking about at a conference. I'd never put degrees and class years next to my name unless it were an alumni thing.

As I say, PhDs in a non-academia setting are what you see something of a split on with some people displaying them liberally and others never mentioning them.

Post reply on HN