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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?

#31

Post by evolve2k »

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 Pakistan to still get the display order they want.

But I've never seen it done this way before, hence my curiosity to ask everyone.

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

#33

Post by viraptor »

chomp wrote: post #6

Use a single text field for the full name.

Yes. Unless you have a really good reason to split the name (legal documents), you should think really hard about why you're attempting to get a full name in the first place, instead of "a nickname for this account". And if you really do want the name, why can't you use whatever the user puts in a single field "name" instead.

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

#34

Post by jasfi »

est wrote: post #16
jasfi wrote: post #9

You have two fields: full name and the name you want to be addressed by (e.g. in an email). This should cover the requirements of 99% of apps. You can add another field if really needed.

> the name you want to be addressed by (e.g. in an email) In fact, I don't want my full name to be addressed anywhere at all. Just call me by the alias I provided.

The full name is typically used for billing, or just for record keeping. Your SaaS itself may not need it.

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

#35

Post by davorak »

masklinn wrote: post #27
wenc wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would not do this. For reasons of respect, you may need to address a person by either their first or last name (with a title). Addressing a person by their full name can come across as rude (I personally find it rude too, e.g. "Hey John R. Brown, this is your order"), so it's useful to split up "given name" and "family name" into 2 fields so that you don't have to depend on name ordering which varies by culture. If…

> I would not do this. For reasons of respect, you may need to address a person by either their first or last name (with a title). Just add a field for the desired form of address, or a nickname. > Addressing a person by their full name can come across as rude Stuffy, Maybe, but rude? Calling people by their first name is rude. Calling people by forms of address which don’t exist is rude.

> Stuffy, Maybe, but rude?

Full names, at least in the USA, are sometimes used by parents to address their children when they are in trouble. Rude might not be the right word but potentially at least jarring. I have never experienced it or seen someone react that way from text but I have with verbal addresses.

edit some conversations about the topic for reference since it is harder to google for than I initially thought it would be.

https://www.quora.com/Why-do-parents-address-their-unruly-ch...

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskParents/comments/pj6aqw/why_do_y...

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

#37

Post by wenc »

masklinn wrote: post #27
wenc wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would not do this. For reasons of respect, you may need to address a person by either their first or last name (with a title). Addressing a person by their full name can come across as rude (I personally find it rude too, e.g. "Hey John R. Brown, this is your order"), so it's useful to split up "given name" and "family name" into 2 fields so that you don't have to depend on name ordering which varies by culture. If…

> I would not do this. For reasons of respect, you may need to address a person by either their first or last name (with a title). Just add a field for the desired form of address, or a nickname. > Addressing a person by their full name can come across as rude Stuffy, Maybe, but rude? Calling people by their first name is rude. Calling people by forms of address which don’t exist is rude.

> Stuffy, Maybe, but rude? Calling people by their first name is rude. Calling people by forms of address which don’t exist is rude.

For me and my people, it's perceived as rude (it sounds infantilizing). Just because you don't perceive it that way doesn't mean it is not.

> Calling people by their first name is rude

Yes, it can be. That's why it's useful to have their last names disambiguated so a proper title can be appended. When you have the full name in a single string, you can't do that -- you don't have enough information to decompose the name into its parts. When you have both given name and family names, you don't have to guess which is which.

There are forms of address that sound rude if appended to full names.

(of course it can be argued that even with 2 fields one might get it wrong, so I fully agree that adding a field indicating how one prefers to be addressed is the best solution of all)

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

#38

Post by chrismorgan »

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…

Country isn’t adequate; different parts of India use different conventions. To list the two states I’m most familiar with: West Bengal is mostly “Given Family” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengali_name>, while Telangana largely uses “F. Given” (family name normally abbreviated, in my experience; the initial can also be more than one Latin letter for some Telugu consonants, mostly “Ch.”, and can be initials for more than one word) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telugu_names>.

Seriously, just avoid splitting name fields if you can help it. Do you absolutely have to have split names? Begrudgingly do so and acknowledge things will never be right for everyone. But if not, just don’t (and don’t make the mistake of assuming a format in order to do things like surname sorting—with a unified field you simply can’t do surname sorting).

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

#40

Post by latchkey »

I built an ecommerce system where we shipped hundreds of thousands of tshirts to people. They used a bazillion variations of browsers. It took a while for us to get the form 100% correct across everything.

One field.

Also, don't use type=number fields... the browser UX is terrible across many devices. Just make everything type=text and be done with it.

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