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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?

#471

Post by [deleted] »

throaway230831 wrote: post #278
qwytw wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't Ceasar be much closer to his last name,though? It's definitely not his personal nickname. His father was 'Gaius Julius Caesar' his grandfather (supposedly the first 'Ceasar') was 'Sextus Julius Caesar'. The Cognomen is presumable something that evolved as a way to tell apart people belonging to different branches of the same family/clan because the number of first names was very limited.

I stand corrected: in case of Caesar, it was already hereditary in his family. Initially, it was more of a nickname or even an earned name, like with Caesars contemporary Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognomen

[deleted]

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

#472

Post by qwytw »

throaway230831 wrote: post #278
qwytw wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't Ceasar be much closer to his last name,though? It's definitely not his personal nickname. His father was 'Gaius Julius Caesar' his grandfather (supposedly the first 'Ceasar') was 'Sextus Julius Caesar'. The Cognomen is presumable something that evolved as a way to tell apart people belonging to different branches of the same family/clan because the number of first names was very limited.

I stand corrected: in case of Caesar, it was already hereditary in his family. Initially, it was more of a nickname or even an earned name, like with Caesars contemporary Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognomen

> Magnus

Nicer than his other nickname 'adulescentulus carnifex ("teenage butcher") ' I guess..

But yeah, the cognomen seems weird/hard to understand e.g. Pompey's dad was called Strabo but he seems to have never used that name himself, while other like Ceasa, Metellus or Cicero were pretty much just surnames.

Romans probably found their naming system as confusing as we do so they started using nicknames ad hoc.

It was even more awful if you were a woman, you technically didn't even have your own name until the imperial period. You and your sisters would just be called Aemilia I, Aemilia II, III etc (or the 'elder'/'younger'). if your father was belonged to the Aemilius clan for example...

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

#473

Post by kccqzy »

lmm wrote: post #74
zinekeller wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So you should make your system more cumbersome for 95%+ of users just for the sake of doing the right thing in occasional edge cases? As the app is apparently developed for use in Asia-Pacific, no, it isn't.

I guarantee that if someone vaguely familiar with the countries they operate in spends half an hour actually trying, they'll come up with heuristics that are correct for 95%+ of the target population.

I guarantee you half an hour is at least an order of magnitude too low of a time estimate to implement such heuristics.

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

#474

Post by david-gpu »

lelanthran wrote: post #453
david-gpu wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like many folks in Latin America, I have two given names and two surnames (no hyphen). I run into IT systems that choke at my two surnames every now and then and it's a pain. Introducing a hyphen isn't great: it doesn't match my legal name and it's awkward because some people do have a hyphenated surname plus another surname. I've also met several people whose legal name doesn't include a surname.

> Like many folks in Latin America, I have two given names and two surnames (no hyphen). I run into IT systems that choke at my two surnames every now and then and it's a pain. You presumably have a formal name: A B C D, with A and B being your two given names, C and D being your two surnames. So what does it say on your ID? Your birth certificate if you have no ID? Does your countries revenue service address you as…

> You presumably have a formal name: A B C D, with A and B being your two given names, C and D being your two surnames.

Yes, that's right. That is my full legal name.

> So what does it say on your ID? Your birth certificate if you have no ID?

Same as my full legal name: A B C D.

> Does your countries revenue service address you as "Dear A B", "Mr C D", "Dear A", "Mr D" or something else altogether?

Well, there is no such thing as "my country" because I'm a dual citizen. Born in Spain, currently living in Canada as a naturalized citizen. That is where the troubles begin, because while in Spain IT systems typically assume people have two surnames, in North America they often assume a single surname.

So far it has not a problem when dealing with the various levels of the Canadian government, but for example my bank addresses me as A B C-D due to limitations in their IT infrastructure.

Incidentally, in Spain we are typically addressed as A C or Mr. C for brevity, while A B C D would be reserved for formal communications.

I hope this answers your questions.

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

#475

Post by Delk »

vintermann wrote: post #105
wmeddie wrote: post #14

Definitely read https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-... if you haven't yet. Then think about what are the requirements your system needs when it comes to names. Does the app need to know what a user's name is at all or is a username enough? Does it need to distinguish the family part of their name for anything? A thing I think is the most general is to just have a Full Name field (min length 1…

It's not just programmers. Plenty of genealogists, do things like automatically give a wife their husband's (male!) patronym. Even though they see it doesn't work that way in the sources, they seem to feel that it "should" work that way.

To be fair, most of the stuff in "falsehoods programmers believe about $concept" lists are really falsehoods almost everyone believes. Software is just one of the places where the limits of those implicit beliefs might actually become apparent.

Most people never need to think about the details of how names might work in a different culture across the world, let alone work that into any kind of a rule-based mechanism or a rigid information model. If some random person working at a construction site in Europe or the US has no idea that first names and last names aren't a universal thing, that has exactly zero direct effect on anything. In most cases that's probably even true of lawyers or other high-level white collar work.

I'm actually inclined to believe lots of programmers know more about e.g. time [1] than a non-programmer Joe Random does on average, exactly because software developers may actually end up coming across at least some of those issues.

[1] e.g. https://gist.github.com/timvisee/fcda9bbdff88d45cc9061606b4b...

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

#476

Post by RadiozRadioz »

dgb23 wrote: post #303
johneth wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The GOV.UK design system[1] agrees with you: > "Use single or multiple fields depending on your user’s needs. Not everyone’s name fits the first-name, last-name format. Using multiple name fields mean there’s more risk that a person’s name will not fit the format you’ve chosen and that it is entered incorrectly." and > "Avoid asking users for their title. It’s extra work for them and you’re asking them to potentially…

This has to be one of the best design systems I ever looked at...

As a UK citizen, I am routinely impressed by our government website. It is one of the few things this country does right, in my opinion. I know some people who work on the UI, and they put painstaking attention into every tiny detail to make things as accessible as possible. The goal is that it should be universally navigable by anyone, regardless of technical competence, disability or background.

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

#477

Post by Izkata »

master-lincoln wrote: post #199
GoblinSlayer wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't say hello, just state your business.

You are being downvoted, but I wonder if people really appreciate the politeness on automated communication. If no person interacted with me, why would I want to be addressed respectfully? I think this mainly serves corporations which can humanize automated communication to make customers feel more cared about (by simulating interaction like a real human would initiate)

It depends on how it's done. If it's part of the real message then it's easily ignored and no harm done, if it's a separate message then it wastes the time of whoever is on the receiving end (especially if they wait for a response before sending the real message).

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

#478

Post by LeifCarrotson »

irrational wrote: post #403
LeifCarrotson wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like you, I don't mind being called "Mr.", but the problem is that my sister would very much prefer not to put "Miss" (and not to lie) because it results in undesired advances, and my wife would also prefer to not put "Mrs." because it results in discrimination for the opposite reason, and because it results in people asking to talk to me instead. At the same time, you can't drop it entirely, because my aunt will com…

> would very much prefer not to put "Miss" (and not to lie) because it results in undesired advances, and my wife would also prefer to not put "Mrs." because it results in discrimination for the opposite reason The opposite reason being that she desires advances? Unless you are implying an open marriage, that doesn’t sound right. Can you clarify what you mean?

No, for some reason it seems to result in her being ignored because she's unavailable. Probably preferable to undesired advances, but still not really treating her the same way they'd treat a man.

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

#479

Post by lmm »

pharrington wrote: post #451
lmm wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. The vast majority of them follow a small number of simple patterns, and it's really not that hard to find a heuristic that interprets them with high accuracy.

What everyone is saying is that you do less work, use 0 heuristics and guess absolutely nothing, to get 100% accuracy.

100% accuracy but a substantially worse UX for the overwhelming majority of users. A heuristic doesn't have to be perfect to be useful.

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

#480

Post by lmm »

numpad0 wrote: post #339
skissane wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> From the global point of view the exceptional case is the American one, Name Middle Family. That’s not really “American”. Most other Anglophone countries are mostly the same. Maybe it should be called “Anglophone” not “American”? To a certain extent, even “West European” There are some subtle differences - my impression is the US is more accepting of generational suffixes (Jr, III, etc) than Australia is, for insta…

> Most other Anglophone countries are mostly the same. I don't have any French or German or Polish friends to verify but this is so demonstably false just by reading some of comments here. Name Middle Family is clearly at most American.

France, Germany and Poland would not normally be considered Anglophone.
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