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Abe’s New Word Order

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Re: Abe’s New Word Order

#41

Post by xiaq »

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #12

There's going to be a lot more Wikipedia articles with the explanatory note “ In this Japanese name, the family name is [surname].” If this catches on, maybe there will be three eras of Japanese name order in English. Pre-Meiji, Post-Meiji, Post-Reiwa.

All the articles on Chinese people already have this. For example, this one on the writer Lu Xun: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lu_Xun.

This convention is widely practiced in Western journalism, but unfortunately it hasn't become common knowledge. As a Chinese person working in UK, I frequently have to explain my name order, despite the fact that most people have definitely seen "Eastern" names like Xi Jinping and Yao Ming in the news. I guess most people never asked themselves whether "Xi" and "Yao" are given names or family names.

Personally I welcome this change by the Japanese government. My hope is that this will raise awareness of the "Eastern" name order.

Re: Abe’s New Word Order

#42

Post by gerikson »

oarsinsync wrote: post #38
spats1990 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I know this is the norm for France and I vaguely believe it's normal in Europe more broadly. Is it! OK, then I more or less retract that dumb speculation /implication about the olympics (except that it makes more sense given that this capitalisation system is also used in Europe, I had never seen it outside the Olympics). Thank you.

The French are the only Europeans I know that do this. I wish more did. (I'm not French)

Isn’t this common in Hungarian too?

Re: Abe’s New Word Order

#43

Post by tambre »

kstenerud wrote: post #20
stoicShell wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I edited the post with more examples. Capitalized letters names in the middle, e.g. "JohnESmith" for "John E. Smith"? Note that owners would choose their array, i.e. how they wish to normalize their own name(s). In most countries it would probably be issued by the State, though. But hey that's a joke, a thought experiment at best; I think strings with spaces are perfectly fine. The concept of a defining single…

Unfortunately, it exemplifies the USA-centric approach to names: First, Middle, Last. All with the first letter capitalized and the rest lowercase. But that's not how things work in more than half the world. Just taking the capitalization issue: Even the French name DuPont will break your example. Non-latin scripts generally don't have capitalization, and even European ones have letters that can't be capitalized (for…

> [...] have letters that can't be capitalized (for example ß).

Here's ß capitalised: ẞ

Bad example, but you're otherwise correct. My personal pet peeve is systems mangling names with umlauts. Such names used to be common in my country, but they've become pretty rare now with globalisation likely to blame. But a workaround nowadays seems to be to give two different first names: one that has no special letters and another with.

Re: Abe’s New Word Order

#44

Post by BlameKaneda »

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #12

There's going to be a lot more Wikipedia articles with the explanatory note “ In this Japanese name, the family name is [surname].” If this catches on, maybe there will be three eras of Japanese name order in English. Pre-Meiji, Post-Meiji, Post-Reiwa.

Makes me wonder if non-Japanese Wikipedia articles will change the surnames to reflect this.

e.g. "MIYAZAKI Hayao (宮崎 駿 born January 5, 1941) is a Japanese animator, filmmaker, screenwriter, author, and manga artist. A co-founder of Studio Ghibli, a film and animation studio, he has attained international acclaim as a masterful storyteller and as a maker of animated feature films, and is widely regarded as one of the most accomplished filmmakers in the animation business."

Re: Abe’s New Word Order

#45

Post by bitwize »

I think normalizing on big-endian name order might be a good thing. The "BE in native language, LE sometimes in Western languages[0]" convention can lead to confusion. Some web sites, such as PayPal, choose BE or LE depending on the country of origin of the request; a Japanese name in a PayPal ledger can appear in kanji but in little-endian order if you're viewing it from the USA, making it look weird. Also, the "endianness" of a full name is hard to tell sometimes in English because journalism, anime dubs, etc. tend to use BE while casual conversation tends to use LE. So sometimes I'm like "uhhh, which is the family name and which is the given name?"

I doubt this figured much into Abe's reasoning. It's Abe. Wouldn't be surprised if he started wearing a topknot into the Diet.

[0] Some Western languages also have big-endian name order. Hungarian, for instance; Paul Erdős is really Erdős Pál.

Re: Abe’s New Word Order

#46

Post by magduf »

kstenerud wrote: post #20
stoicShell wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I edited the post with more examples. Capitalized letters names in the middle, e.g. "JohnESmith" for "John E. Smith"? Note that owners would choose their array, i.e. how they wish to normalize their own name(s). In most countries it would probably be issued by the State, though. But hey that's a joke, a thought experiment at best; I think strings with spaces are perfectly fine. The concept of a defining single…

Unfortunately, it exemplifies the USA-centric approach to names: First, Middle, Last. All with the first letter capitalized and the rest lowercase. But that's not how things work in more than half the world. Just taking the capitalization issue: Even the French name DuPont will break your example. Non-latin scripts generally don't have capitalization, and even European ones have letters that can't be capitalized (for…

>and even European ones have letters that can't be capitalized (for example ß)

In German, that character is never used at the beginning of a word or name, so it's really irrelevant.

I think a better example of something that doesn't fit that scheme is a Dutch surname like "van der Beek": they're multiple words, separated by spaces, and not all of them are capitalized. Some German names are similar: "von Staufenberg".

Also, some cultures have more than 3 names. Hispanic people frequently have 4 or (I think) even 5 names, not just 3.

Re: Abe’s New Word Order

#47

Post by peshooo »

twic wrote: post #24
roenxi wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Well it's liker the German government saying that they will always write München even in English; that doesn't say anything about how English speakers (or German private citizens speaking English) might choose to refer to Munich. I suppose this sort of thing instantly confuses me - why aren't we already calling the city München if that is what the Germans are doing?

Exonymy. Here's a lightweight survey of it in Europe: https://www.citymetric.com/horizons/which-european-cities-ha... One fun fact in there: there's a town in Bulgaria called Plovdiv, but the Italians call it Philipoppoli - and they've been calling it that since long, long before it was called Plovdiv!

Well, that was the ancient name of the city.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippopolis_(Thrace)

Re: Abe’s New Word Order

#48

Post by stoicShell »

theandrewbailey wrote: post #29
stoicShell wrote: post #17

As a programmer and nerd with an aesthetic sense for consistency, I move that we all adopt an array of PascalCase strings as value for the "name" key. {"name": ["JohnSmith", "JohnEdwardSmith", "JohnESmith"]} {"name": ["AnneGauthier"]} {"name": ["ZoolisCartom", "CartomZolis"]} Owner decides the array's content; others (people and systems) may then just 'match' based on reqs/prefs. ____ More on-topic, from a linguistic…

No. You need to read: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-...

I must not have made my idea clear.

The thought experiment is not about software, nor is it about programmers.

It's about writing e.g. "JohnSmith" on your freaking passport in the name field. It's about people being free to have it written "John Smith" or "Smith John" or "johnSMITH" or however they want. It's about your business card, your mailbox, the name on your bank account.

I was just phrasing one example implementation of that idea.

Also, I appreciate the downvotes due my failure to convey my idea clearly, but for a thought experiment it's pretty harsh — how is it not 100% on topic when the article specifically talks about writing "Ryo Saeba" as "SAEBA Ryo"? I'm just saying, 'fine', but make it unique and user-choice.

That said I'm resting this case, the best jokes are the shortest I suppose. I was merely inviting comments to tell their own preferences. For instance, I reduce my first name to a sound that matches a greek letter's name, so I like to spell it e.g. "χLee" — and I'd love for it to be official spelling, I hate with a passion that my country doesn't allow name changes unless major reason. It's my name, isn't it? (if I read your linked blob correctly)

Re: Abe’s New Word Order

#49

Post by thatfrenchguy »

bitwize wrote: post #45

I think normalizing on big-endian name order might be a good thing. The "BE in native language, LE sometimes in Western languages[0]" convention can lead to confusion. Some web sites, such as PayPal, choose BE or LE depending on the country of origin of the request; a Japanese name in a PayPal ledger can appear in kanji but in little-endian order if you're viewing it from the USA, making it look weird. Also, the "end…

> [0] Some Western languages also have big-endian name order. Hungarian, for instance; Paul Erdős is really Erdős Pál.

In French it depends on the context, informally you're "Jacques Dupont", formally "M. DUPONT Jacques".

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