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

411–420 of 527 posts

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

#411

Post by coldacid »

scarby2 wrote: post #385
sigwinch28 wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Move to Britain, change your given name to Graf (that's German for the title of count/earl), and get a passport. I'm curious to see what the result would be, myself.

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

#412

Post by deathanatos »

leokennis wrote: post #121
manlobster wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can do `Hello @TheirSlackHandle`.

This is what I do too. Basically, we are deflecting the awkwardness and/or blame to the software.

Assuming the other end has filled in what Slack calls Display Name (which I interpret as "preferred name", is heavily implied by Slack's UI, and I think most people will too) … then you've addressed them as they prefer. (And if not, they can change it, and it instantly updates!)

I mean otherwise it's like literally any other communication medium, and you'll have to either take a culturally-appropriate respectful best effort guess at a preferred address, or just ask.

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

#413

Post by reportt »

irrational wrote: post #403
LeifCarrotson wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 com…

> 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 The opposite reason being that she desires advances? Unless you are implying an open marriage, that doesn’t sound right. Can you clarify what you mean?

> and because it results in people asking to talk to me instead.

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

#414

Post by jmopp »

lmm wrote: post #189
jmopp wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...yes? Have you looked at Indian names? Or Indonesian names? Or Ethiopian names

Yes. The vast majority of them follow a small number of simple patterns, and it's really not that hard to find a heuristic that interprets them with high accuracy.

The prime minister of Ethiopia is Abiy Ahmed. When he won the Nobel Peace Prize, he was referred to as Mr Abiy, which is his given name. Ahmed is his father's name, and it would be incorrect to refer to him as Mr Ahmed. Likewise, many Tamil people often have a first name and a patronymic, which may just be referred to with an initial. Example: S. Ramanujan. Ramanujan is his given name, Srinivasa is his father's name. In Indonesia, the government doesn't have a notion of first and last names. If you have a surname it's interpreted by the government as your family having a tradition of adding the family name to the end (or beginning) of your name. Similarly in India you can have surnames, clan names, caste names, patronymics, or mononyms. Trying to divide a name up into its parts is a fool's errand: Much easier to simply ask, what is your full name and what is your preferred name.

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

#415

Post by eloisant »

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 (…

Yes, basically:

- one "full name" field. (English speakers would use Firstname Lastname) - one "how should we call you?" name. (English speakers would use their first name, in some other cultures people would preferred to be called by their last name)

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

#416

Post by cozzyd »

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.

not to mention that often the title is Prof. Dr.

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

#417

Post by amyjess »

msh wrote: post #118
nicbou wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

I think to address your politeness questions, it can only be done if you handle each language/country split separately and the app creators have detailed cultural knowledge for each country/language. I come from a country right next to germany and addressing a person with a gender specifier like Frau would be seen as extremely old fashioned and potentially sexist. So I guess it also depends a lot on to which degree t…

Honestly, just do it the manual way. Have three free-form fields: "Full Name", "Preferred Name", and "Formal Address". Yes, it'll mean more typing, but it's the only way to deal with several cultures.

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

#418

Post by rangerelf »

vhcr wrote: post #398
makeitdouble wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And downright dumb-sounding.

"Todes"

Please stop.

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

#419

Post by RestlessMind »

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 are many Indian languages where verb conjugations are either male or female and there is no neutral option.

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

#420

Post by e63f67dd-065b »

evolve2k wrote: post #31
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…

Yes assume I have a Family name field and a Given Name field, the question is how to display them in the right order. Im considering having a select field next to the name something like Name Order: "Western style", "Eastern style" or Name Order: "Given Name, Family Name", "Family name, Given Name" With a bit of extra work I can detect the country set a default for this field, while allowing users in places like Paki…

As others have mentioned, this is impossible to get right -- for the simple reason that there is no consistent order -- not for the same country, the same geographic area, the same culture, or any other marker you can possibly think of.

Example: in Malaysia and Singapore, Chinese people can have traditional Chinese names -- SAA for surname and 2 characters that's their "given name" so to speak. Some have an English name -- but it's written ESAA. Some only have one character names, so it's ESA. Some surnames have 2 characters, so ESSA/ESSAA.

When filling out US forms, ESAA usually turns into Englishname Surname, and SAA turns into Givenname Surname. So the display order for the first is firstlast, but the second is lastfirst. Same country, same culture, different display order depending on whether their parents gave them English names or they chose one later in life.

When there's a middle name field, often ESAA names turns into E AA S - first middle last. This display order is wrong. It should be first last middle.

As you can see, even within the same country, same culture, same neighbourhood, you still don't have a consistent order. It's simply not possible to do this in a consistent way.

Post reply on HN