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Great concept, and not a criticism, but a bit of an anecdote For Chinese-English it suggested "Lee", which as far as I know (my Cantonese and Mandarin aren't t

Great concept, and not a criticism, but a bit of an anecdote For Chinese-English it suggested "Lee", which as far as I know (my Cantonese and Mandarin aren't that great) is typically the Cantonese anglicisation of 李 (Mandarin Pinyin for this is Li) My given English name is "Lee" and this actually causes no end of confusion in both Hong Kong and China, as it's typically used as surname - in fact, when I attempted to use 李 or even 李李 (which is what my Chinese grandmother in law calls me) as a first name on a visa that required a Chinese name to be added - they wouldn't allow it! If anything - it illustrates why this is such a tough problem to crack!

KMag 6y ago
Hopefully your surname isn't easily mistaken for a given name. I've been living in Hong Kong almost 9 years now, and my middle name is often mistaken for my first name, or less commonly, my surname. Based on my experience, "Lee Ryan" would probably be mistaken for "Ryan Lee" well over 50% of the time.
- lvturner 6y ago
  It is - and sometimes I get called by middle name instead of either of the other names. In e-mails the failure rate for people getting my name in the right order is around 80% - sometimes even after I've corrected the sender three or four times (with decreasing subtly)
  - orthoxerox 6y ago
    In the international company I work for we have a rule that surnames are always in all caps in employee directories. So it can be "Ryan LEE" or "LEE, Ryan" or "LEE Ryan" (in Hungary), but you know that Lee is the family name. Before that rule was introduced, confusion was commonplace. A colleague of mine is called, say, Vyacheslav Spirin, and he signed his emails as "V. Spirin". To Indians this looked like a normal South Indian name, where "V." was the family name, so they assumed his first name was Spirin. When the same guy introduced himself in person as Slava they thought he and Spirin were different people.
    - CGamesPlay 6y ago
      To be fair, I would have thought that Vyacheslav and Slava were also different people.
junar 6y ago
李 is typically used as a surname. At least in Mandarin, there are other Chinese characters like 丽 (for females) and 力 (for males) that can be spelled Li/Lee, and also used as given names. For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lily_Li https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lily_Li https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_Leehom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_Leehom

KMag 6y ago

Hopefully your surname isn't easily mistaken for a given name. I've been living in Hong Kong almost 9 years now, and my middle name is often mistaken for my first name, or less commonly, my surname. Based on my experience, "Lee Ryan" would probably be mistaken for "Ryan Lee" well over 50% of the time.

lvturner 6y ago
It is - and sometimes I get called by middle name instead of either of the other names. In e-mails the failure rate for people getting my name in the right order is around 80% - sometimes even after I've corrected the sender three or four times (with decreasing subtly)
- orthoxerox 6y ago
  In the international company I work for we have a rule that surnames are always in all caps in employee directories. So it can be "Ryan LEE" or "LEE, Ryan" or "LEE Ryan" (in Hungary), but you know that Lee is the family name. Before that rule was introduced, confusion was commonplace. A colleague of mine is called, say, Vyacheslav Spirin, and he signed his emails as "V. Spirin". To Indians this looked like a normal South Indian name, where "V." was the family name, so they assumed his first name was Spirin. When the same guy introduced himself in person as Slava they thought he and Spirin were different people.
  - CGamesPlay 6y ago
    To be fair, I would have thought that Vyacheslav and Slava were also different people.

junar 6y ago

李 is typically used as a surname. At least in Mandarin, there are other Chinese characters like 丽 (for females) and 力 (for males) that can be spelled Li/Lee, and also used as given names. For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lily_Li https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lily_Li https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_Leehom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_Leehom