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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?

#391

Post by mhink »

weinzierl wrote: post #334
usrusr wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 identifie…

When I was a child in Bavaria I was often called by house name + given name, in that order, especially by the elderly. The house name is different from the family name which appears in official documents like the birth certificate. Another difference between northern and southern Germany is the Münchner-Du and the Hamburger-Sie. In standard German we use the formal pronoun Sie with the last name in formal situations…

> Marcus, can thee get the car, please.

Two notes:

First, you'd use "thou" here, as it's the nominative case, and the correct conjugation would be "canst".

Secondly, "thee" and "thou" were very much the form used to speak to a close friend or social inferior in early modern English. "You" functioned more like French "vous" or German "Sie"- as either a plural formation or a formal address of a social superior.

With that in mind, it would probably be more accurate to say that they should be rendered "Marcus, can you get the car, please?" and "Mrs. Miller, canst thou get the car, please?" And notice the parallel between "canst thou" and "kannst Du"!

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

#392

Post by LeifCarrotson »

nerdponx wrote: post #342
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…

I certainly don't mind being called "Mr.", but I don't see why it can't just be another field, or part of a free-text field.

Like you, I don't mind being called "Mr.", but the problem is that my sister would very much prefer not to put "Miss" (and not to lie) because it results in undesired advances, and my wife would also prefer to not put "Mrs." because it results in discrimination for the opposite reason, and because it results in people asking to talk to me instead. At the same time, you can't drop it entirely, because my aunt will complain loudly if she's not allowed to put the "Dr." honorific that's very important to her identity in a title field.

I agree with the recommendation that it's best just to have a big name field and allow users to be "Dr. Firstname Lastname" if they want that, or "Firstname Lastname" if they don't want a title, or "Englishname Surname Givename" if they want that.

The push-back usually becomes that you can't trivially parse it a single name field later to use part of the name conversationally as if you know the person closely and send them spam with "Hey , we haven't heard from you in a while, did you know that we now offer blah?". Instead, be honest, if you can't even take the time to understand the name syntax of an entire country, you don't know that user closely.

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

#393

Post by tekkk »

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…

I wonder if you could circumvent some of this with the default first/given & last/family name with two checkboxes to choose the preferred name to be called with. Of course it wouldn't be bullet-proof if you wanted to substring the name, like using only the 2nd part in Vietnamese names, and you probably would have to make filling both of them optional.

Or just having a preferred name and full name, duplicating data but probably it wouldn't be a big deal in most cases.

This would be a nice GitHub project for someone to showcase name inputs in all languages.

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

#394

Post by alentred »

alexvitkov wrote: post #361
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…

If you plan to only do English forever that's acceptable, but there's _a lot_ of languages where you need to know someone's gender to be able to use their name in a sentence. Weird thing to look over in a thread about internationalization

If this is why a website or a form asks for it, and there is no way around it, better just ask for it directly ("How would you prefer to be addressed? He/him, she/her, or neutral?") instead of a choice of 25 historical titles.

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

#395

Post by wirthjason »

On the flip side, I wish rat Japanese design allowed for middle names. It annoys me that my marriage certificate has my first and middle name concatenated together simply because my legal name on my passport has a first, middle, and last name.

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

#396

Post by rescbr »

resolutebat wrote: post #261
jacquesm wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting how in Germany there is so much accent on titles. Every country has their own interface standards and it is always educational to dig in to that for a bit to get acquainted with the local customs so you don't end up making some kind of faux pas. And sometimes those standards are very fluid, someone calling you 'Sir' may do so in a mildly sarcastic manner to get the point across, they don't necessaril…

Sir-itis is particularly endemic to the Philippines, in no small part thanks to call center scripts. At one point we had a company driver who insisted (quite seriously, no sarcasm involved) on calling his passengers Sir Firstname.

I'd rather say it comes from the Spanish Don, as it is used not as a title but in formal occasions, together with the given name.

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

#397

Post by mcv »

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.

My mom listed our family as my dad's name with "Dr." in front, I think in the phone book. My dad was never happy about that. But we're not German.

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

#398

Post by vhcr »

makeitdouble wrote: post #377
alexvitkov wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you plan to only do English forever that's acceptable, but there's _a lot_ of languages where you need to know someone's gender to be able to use their name in a sentence. Weird thing to look over in a thread about internationalization

I'd assume in these languages you can get away with either not using the name, or going for a neutral form (same as when you don't know who you're speaking to) French has that gendered structure too, with workarounds to manage uncertainty.

There's some push to have gender neutral language in Spanish, but it's pretty controversial.

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

#399

Post by klyrs »

Hamuko wrote: post #336
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…

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.

It's always been a point of amusement for me; some sites get these incredibly long lists of titles, but you can only pick one. So, despite it all, folks like Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would still be put out. And for example, when you pick "Reverend Mother" out of an airline website's dropdown list, they don't actually say "Reverend Mother" when they call your name over the PA.

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

#400

Post by mcv »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #223
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 (…

Many Indonesian Javanese people only have a single name. It is more rare these days, but certainly not zero, or only old people who don't use computer. I've met people in their 20s with a single name. Also, in (South) Korea, depending upon the person's preference, they may choose to do family name first or last. It's crazy. I don't know why. (Can someone explain it to me?) As a result, most will write their romanized…

I used to know an American guy in Amsterdam who only had a single name. His explanation was always that his parents were a bit weird. It was a short 4-letter name too. He might well be in the running for the shortest name ever.
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