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Foreign Minister Taro Kono to ask media to switch order of Japanese names

japantimes.co.jp

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Re: Foreign Minister Taro Kono to ask media to switch order of Japanese names

#11

Post by munmaek »

knolax wrote: post #10
munmaek wrote: post #4

This is unexpected and quite interesting. I think we totally gloss over the fact that we've just been writing Japanese (and Korean) names incorrectly. I've always thought it to be quite odd, and there are exceptions too. Mun Jae-in, Kim Il-Seung, Kim Jong-Il are written correctly, so you might think political figures get a pass, yet Syngman Rhee is backwards.

I think for Syngman Rhee the reason he is known that way in English is because he spent a significant amount of his life living in the US and interacting with Americans; In America the convention followed by most people with Asian names is to use the English order in English. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syngman_Rhee

He didn't move to the US until he was ~29, in 1904. So even back then we got their names backwards.

Re: Foreign Minister Taro Kono to ask media to switch order of Japanese names

#13

Post by gaspoweredcat »

stordoff wrote: post #5

What I find interesting is that there are exceptions to the current practice in English. Yoko Taro (family name: Yoko) is known widely as Yoko Taro, yet most other Japanese game developers are known as GivenName FamilyName (in English). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoko_Taro

to be fair Yoko Taro is kind of an exception to most rules

Re: Foreign Minister Taro Kono to ask media to switch order of Japanese names

#14

Post by jlv2 »

xxpor wrote: post #2

English should adopt the French convention of capitalizing the family (last) name. For example, this would make it ABE Shinzo, which would remove ambiguity. When encountering East (thanks for the reminder) Asian (or Hungarian, for that matter) names in emails for example, I'm usually worried about if their "last" name in the directory is their given name and what they should be addressed by or their actual last name.

My last name is mixed case, so capitalizing it makes it wrong.

Re: Foreign Minister Taro Kono to ask media to switch order of Japanese names

#15

Post by gumby »

dragonwriter wrote: post #7
xxpor wrote: post #2

English should adopt the French convention of capitalizing the family (last) name. For example, this would make it ABE Shinzo, which would remove ambiguity. When encountering East (thanks for the reminder) Asian (or Hungarian, for that matter) names in emails for example, I'm usually worried about if their "last" name in the directory is their given name and what they should be addressed by or their actual last name.

> English should adopt the French convention of capitalizing the family (last) name. I've seen that convention used in English-language sources more often than in French-language sources, which seem to usually use the pattern (also dominant in English) of initial caps for names with none of the name elements in all caps. Is that really a “French convention”?

That's not used in literature or journalism, but in most other cases (forms, etc) it is pretty standard.

Re: Foreign Minister Taro Kono to ask media to switch order of Japanese names

#16

Post by jasonjei »

viburnum wrote: post #9

The names in the credits of Japanese films often vary from person to person. Is it just personal preferences?

In Japanese? It’s almost guaranteed to be LASTNAME FIRSTNAME if in Chinese symbols (kanji/漢字) unless the name is written in kana.

金城 武 KANESHIRO Takeshi

Re: Foreign Minister Taro Kono to ask media to switch order of Japanese names

#17

Post by Causality1 »

Personally I think this is a matter of translation. In English the personal name comes first followed by the surname. In Japanese honorifics come after the name but it would be quite silly to ask foreign media to call Abe Shinzo "Abe Shinzo Mr." instead of "Mr. Abe Shinzo" or for an American to ask British media to not refer to American mothers as "mum". Sometimes localizing a name means altering it.

Re: Foreign Minister Taro Kono to ask media to switch order of Japanese names

#18

Post by HuShifang »

xxpor wrote: post #2

English should adopt the French convention of capitalizing the family (last) name. For example, this would make it ABE Shinzo, which would remove ambiguity. When encountering East (thanks for the reminder) Asian (or Hungarian, for that matter) names in emails for example, I'm usually worried about if their "last" name in the directory is their given name and what they should be addressed by or their actual last name.

Agree. This is, actually, a regular (if not standard) practice in many domains of academic bibliography for Chinese authors (which is useful, as some individuals with Chinese personal and family names working in Anglophone contexts do follow the English convention of putting personal names first -- meaning that you often can't tell which is the personal and which is the family name in pinyin, e.g. "Li Jia")

Fun fact: Han Chinese surnames are almost always one character, but there are a very few that are two characters[1] -- usually, they're very old, very aristocratic names. E.g. "Sima 司馬", "Ouyang 歐陽", and "Zhuge 諸葛".

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_compound_surname

Re: Foreign Minister Taro Kono to ask media to switch order of Japanese names

#20

Post by RcouF1uZ4gsC »

wccrawford wrote: post #12

Did this article put his given name first, despite being about him asking that the media put the family name first? I wonder if he finds that as frustrating as I do.

It looks like it. From his wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tar%C5%8D_K%C5%8Dno

it looks like his father's name is Yōhei Kōno which which suggests that Kono is his family name.

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