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>Store the name in two fields, have the users bend over our western form standards but be able to search and sort easily. You can't search and sort easily if t

>Store the name in two fields, have the users bend over our western form standards but be able to search and sort easily. You can't search and sort easily if the names are stored in Japanese. You need 4 fields for that. Edit: now that I think about it I could think of a disgustingly hacky way to squash them into 2 fields and retain those properties, and by extension into a single field and retain those properties.

shawnz 6y ago
Why would you need 4 fields?
- nullsense 6y ago
  To store the furigana for the given name and family name to allow you to correctly perform sort operations.
  - shawnz 6y ago
    Disclaimer: I know very little about Japanese How could you store that in a separate field from the name? Don't the characters in the furigana need to be matched up in a certain way with the characters in the name? It seems like storing the characters in line in the same field as the name would actually be the more correct thing to do here, using a system like Unicode's interlinear annotation characters for ruby text.
    - nullsense 6y ago
      Where you use each field and what you use it for depends on the context. The furigana can be used for search, sorting or display. It's most useful stored separately. It's also not necessary to display it nicely with the ruby text as it's just a name, so dump it anywhere on the screen where someone can find it is good enough. Furigana displayed with Ruby text is useful as a reading aide in proper passages of text, usually reserved for rare words one is not expected to know and/or as a guide for children in texts aimed at younger readers. You have to put yourself in the position of an overworked, underpaid call center worker with a CRM in front of the who has just been phoned up by a customer called Junko and they are now tasked with locating which record in the system belongs to this customer. You see, there are something on the order of 4 or 5 different representations of this name in Kanji. If you weren't able to search by Furigana the call center staff would have to enquire which kanji it's made up of and then receive a verbal description of the radicals the kanji is composed of and in what order. Now once they're able to find all of the "Junko"s in the system they need to narrow it down. If they were simply presented a fullname with no furigana they might well run into the prickly problem of not actually being able to read the rest of the name. At which point the conversation gets awkward again.
    - numpad0 6y ago
      Typical Japanese name fields are akin to this: > (furigana) <- aka pronunciations > _konbinaetar_ | ____wai____ > . > . Family name | Given name > _Combinator_ | ____Wye____ And there are always irregular pronunciations so they can’t be always inferred or correlated
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
  Japanese names are written in kanji (Chinese logographic characters with semantic meaning), and pronunciation of kanji is a matter of context. Kanji in names have a variety of possible common pronunciations, meaning that when given the kanji alone the pronunciation can be ambiguous. The extra two fields are presumably for the kana (syllabary characters that are unambiguously pronounced) spelling of the names. Even then, there are two accepted standards for sorting kana. Japanese is full of these kinds of fun exercises in writing system complexity.

shawnz 6y ago

Why would you need 4 fields?

nullsense 6y ago
To store the furigana for the given name and family name to allow you to correctly perform sort operations.
- shawnz 6y ago
  Disclaimer: I know very little about Japanese How could you store that in a separate field from the name? Don't the characters in the furigana need to be matched up in a certain way with the characters in the name? It seems like storing the characters in line in the same field as the name would actually be the more correct thing to do here, using a system like Unicode's interlinear annotation characters for ruby text.
  - nullsense 6y ago
    Where you use each field and what you use it for depends on the context. The furigana can be used for search, sorting or display. It's most useful stored separately. It's also not necessary to display it nicely with the ruby text as it's just a name, so dump it anywhere on the screen where someone can find it is good enough. Furigana displayed with Ruby text is useful as a reading aide in proper passages of text, usually reserved for rare words one is not expected to know and/or as a guide for children in texts aimed at younger readers. You have to put yourself in the position of an overworked, underpaid call center worker with a CRM in front of the who has just been phoned up by a customer called Junko and they are now tasked with locating which record in the system belongs to this customer. You see, there are something on the order of 4 or 5 different representations of this name in Kanji. If you weren't able to search by Furigana the call center staff would have to enquire which kanji it's made up of and then receive a verbal description of the radicals the kanji is composed of and in what order. Now once they're able to find all of the "Junko"s in the system they need to narrow it down. If they were simply presented a fullname with no furigana they might well run into the prickly problem of not actually being able to read the rest of the name. At which point the conversation gets awkward again.
  - numpad0 6y ago
    Typical Japanese name fields are akin to this: > (furigana) <- aka pronunciations > _konbinaetar_ | ____wai____ > . > . Family name | Given name > _Combinator_ | ____Wye____ And there are always irregular pronunciations so they can’t be always inferred or correlated
AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
Japanese names are written in kanji (Chinese logographic characters with semantic meaning), and pronunciation of kanji is a matter of context. Kanji in names have a variety of possible common pronunciations, meaning that when given the kanji alone the pronunciation can be ambiguous. The extra two fields are presumably for the kana (syllabary characters that are unambiguously pronounced) spelling of the names. Even then, there are two accepted standards for sorting kana. Japanese is full of these kinds of fun exercises in writing system complexity.