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

Post by pndy » Wed, May 22, 2019, 9:03 AM UTC

patio11 wrote: post #190

planteen wrote: post #139

Working with Japanese colleagues and customers, you calling everyone by their last name with the suffix "-san". In discussions even when the person is not present, Americans still say "Abe-san" since it is how you always address them. Is "-san" only supposed to be used when you are addressing the person? I'm unsure on the correct way to use it.

You should -san the outgroup (including when speaking about them in the 3rd person); you should not -san the ingroup. Whether someone is outgroup or ingroup depends on who you're talking to and can change. There are other options as well. In general, Americans who are rubbing up against Japanese people in a not-specifically-Japanese context get lots of leeway on this question. (One has to be good if one works as a fu…

Post by Ultramanoid » Wed, May 22, 2019, 9:29 AM UTC

gmueckl wrote: post #181

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.

Fun fact: some German names (e.g. Strauß) change spelling when capitalized. The letter "ß" is a ligature that only exists as a lower case letter and has to be written as "SS" when capitalized. Names are fun. I recently had dealings with a company that assumed in its employee roster that the last word entered in the name field was your last name (i.e. anything beyond the last space). One of my coworkers was from Spain…

Post by pbhjpbhj » Wed, May 22, 2019, 10:53 AM UTC

natestemen wrote: post #160

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wrong, or contrary to your preferred style? I see names like Macdonald and MacDonald, where one family prefers the mid-capitalisation to another or family names like De Havilland. But it seems like a reasonable disambiguation to capitalise a family name. Could you be more specific about what makes it "wrong". FWIW my family name is commonly misspelt, life is too short to get too hung up about it. In my case it's just…

wrong could be contrary to your preferred style. that's just how it goes. just because you don't care if others misspell you name doesn't mean that applies to all others.

Post by sunstone » Wed, May 22, 2019, 12:09 PM UTC

Post by RandallBrown » Wed, May 22, 2019, 1:59 PM UTC

zapzupnz wrote: post #145

lmm wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same way he orders it - whether in Japan or in America. Japanese people don't flip the order of the names Americans call themselves. We should extend them the same courtesy.

Indeed. It's really quite simple; we should call people as they call themselves, not how we think they should be called. It's the basic respect we expect for ourselves but the West is bizarrely inclined not to give to others. We come up with all sorts of systems, checks, and balances to decide what the order should be rather than just use the order that it is already in.