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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

#121

Post by saalweachter »

johnchristopher wrote: post #110
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #92

I think this is the start of the hockey stick graph in the unicode-ification of the world We are becoming a closer more integrated world and we will find it waaaaay easier to have common shared conventions and regulations - but that does not mean we all choose an existing one, (ie cultural hegemony) we just migrate to a new one, more complex perhaps but one that fits (more or less) everybody. It's fascinating (been f…

Factoid: reminds me of a strip in a recent superman comics, I quote a villain getting his message broadcasted on every devices of the planet: "You really should settle on a common language or you'll never achieve anything significant as a specie".

Mi pensis, ke ni havas unu.

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

#122

Post by yorwba »

munificent wrote: post #108
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.

This doesn't work in media that doesn't distinguish letters by case. That's still fairly common for things like forms and other official records that only use capital letters. Obviously, the correct answer is XML: Shinzo Abe

Except people are going to enter the name incorrectly anyway, as you demonstrated. (Abe is his family name.)

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

#123

Post by YawningAngel »

mcguire wrote: post #42
jcrawfordor wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In genealogical research it's typical to not only standardize capitalization of family names (typically to ALL CAPS) but to also standardize spelling to the most common or first used spelling. Otherwise searching becomes a very frustrating venture, and these things change surprisingly quickly through generations.

Good luck with mcguire. ;-)

Would this not render fairly unambiguously to MAGUIDHIR (?spelling, corrected in an edit as I got it wildly wrong)? It only seems confusing if you're not Irish, and I'm already completely at sea with names that aren't Western European so this seems like a fine tradeoff to make.

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

#124

Post by seanmcdirmid »

ksec wrote: post #112
midhir wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's interesting, I thought the given name in Chinese was almost always two characters. Is this not the case? 我是中文学生 :) Funnily the first thing you learn in Chinese is how to say who you are. But there's very little help with actually picking a Chinese name!

>I thought the given name in Chinese was almost always two characters. Is this not the case? Mostly in Old, Traditional or Southern part of China.

When was the last time mainland China had a leader with a one character given name?

But ya, it is a matter of preference.

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

#125

Post by johnchristopher »

saalweachter wrote: post #121
johnchristopher wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Factoid: reminds me of a strip in a recent superman comics, I quote a villain getting his message broadcasted on every devices of the planet: "You really should settle on a common language or you'll never achieve anything significant as a specie".

Mi pensis, ke ni havas unu.

On en a plusieurs. Et c'est l'opinion d'un vilain qui est ici citée.

(I suggest we get back to english for the sake of the rest of the conversation since this exchange between us served its purpose of being insightful with a bit fun thrown in)

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

#126

Post by Hamuko »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #20
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.

Taro is also a very common Japanese male name. Think of "John".

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

#127

Post by z2 »

midhir wrote: post #70
HuShifang wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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:…

That's interesting, I thought the given name in Chinese was almost always two characters. Is this not the case? 我是中文学生 :) Funnily the first thing you learn in Chinese is how to say who you are. But there's very little help with actually picking a Chinese name!

As others have alluded to--here's an explanation for _a good portion_ of the people who have two character given names. The first character of the given name is defined by ancestors, generations ago in a poem. Each subsequent generation uses the next character of that poem.

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

This stopped for much of the mainland in the last century due to a few revolutions that happened there.

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

#128

Post by [deleted] »

snthd wrote: post #60

I'd love to see names always included once in their native script. >Foreign Minister 河野 太郎 (Kōno Tarō) said Tuesday he plans to ask overseas media outlets to write Japanese names with the family name first, as is customary in the country. Implicitly that would be a declaration that the English isn't authoritative.

[deleted]

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

#129

Post by School-Cotton »

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”?

Yes, it is extremely common and standard in France.

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

#130

Post by FabHK »

ksec wrote: post #114
alistairSH wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that western name official (on birth certificate or passport) or informal?

Could be both. Some have it in their formal identifications, but many don't.

Yeah, and some get their Western name early, while some choose it as a teenager or so. Which sometimes leads to weird choices - I met a guy called "Nose", and a girl called "Money".
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