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Don't do this. In Vietnam names like Nguyen Thi Anh Mai are common. The family name is "Nguyen" is the family name. "Anh Mai" is the "first name". But they sh
by freddie_mercury 3y ago
Don't do this.
In Vietnam names like Nguyen Thi Anh Mai are common.
The family name is "Nguyen" is the family name. "Anh Mai" is the "first name". But they should be called "Mai". And reversing the order "Mai Anh Thi Nguyen" is just wrong.
And Catholic families in Vietnam often have names "Nguyen Thi To but everybody calls me by my baptismal name of Mary". Or you have a "house name" (i.e. your real name) and an outside name (so that ghosts can't follow you home). Or you have your real name and an unofficial English name (for reasons both good & bad) that literally everyone at work calls you.
In the Philippines people have names Anna Katrina Gomez. But you don't call them Anna. You call them Katrina because that's how it often works in the Philippines.
The solution is simple:
One field is "what is your full name?"
One field is "what would you like to be called?"
You don't need to try to infer one from the other.
- throwaway2990 3y agoNo. Either the name serves some legal purpose and they need to write it in full and 2 fields supports that. Or the name serves no purpose and they can write what they want in those 2 fields.
- silisili 3y agoAre you missing a name from your PH example perhaps? Everyone I've known there has their mother's maiden name as a middle name, and father's last as last name. Then on marriage sliding the original last name to the middle name. But one thing I did notice is that very few go by any given name, usually a play on it or a nickname instead.
- Saigonautica 3y agoYes please! My wife and I constantly struggle with this kind of thing. When there's just a "name" field that permits some high number of characters, it's fine. Which name is my "first name" or "last name" also depends on what identity document I'm using. I immigrated to Asia and switched to the family-name-first convention, but my birth certificate and so on are the opposite. So it's conceivable that a system requiring two forms of identification has both name orders, and both are correct. Names are awful.
- freddie_mercury 3y agoNot to mention you always have to second guess the designer. Does "last name" mean "family name" even though it is my first name? And what counts as "middle name"? Is it "Thi"? But my "first name" isn't Anh Mai. It is just Mai. But "Thi Anh" isn't my middle name, either, that's just nonsense. And, yes, we have the "multiple documents with different name order" depending on whether it is the Vietnamese birth certificate, the US Consular Record of Birth Abroad, the Vietnamese passport, or the Australian passport....
- SanderNL 3y agoInteresting. Indeed, why not just ask “what would you like to be called?” and maybe for administrative(?) purposes ask the full name. Naming is a tar pit and even Westerners might like to be called John when their name is Winstonshire. Let’s not even bother. What is the downside? I’m not seeing it. I see people here recommending to implement logic to handle this fully and I’m not seeing why this would be preferable.
- freddie_mercury 3y agoHeck, I just saw on Reddit some guy just discovered his girlfriend's "real name" is "Lawr'ryn" due to dumb parents. She preferred to go by Lauren. And her brother Pur'see went by Percy. Why, as a system designer, would you force your user to see "Lawy'ryn" every day just because that's on some government document somewhere?
- lmm 3y ago> You don't need to try to infer one from the other. 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? By all means make it possible to override, but you should absolutely default "what would you like to be called?" rather than making everyone enter their name twice.
- zinekeller 3y ago> 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.
- lmm 3y agoI 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.
- kccqzy 3y agoI guarantee you half an hour is at least an order of magnitude too low of a time estimate to implement such heuristics.
- Scarblac 3y agoSo use the heuristics to set the initial value for the second field based on the first. Just let the user edit it as they wish.
- lmm 3y agoThat's exactly what I'm advocating!
- JimDabell 3y agoYou’re talking about literally billions of people, not “occasional edge cases”.
- Scarblac 3y agoAnd maybe you don't need the full name. And don't limit it to Asia either, it's relevant everywhere.
- __rito__ 3y agoThis is the most sensible answer here. My name is Ritobrata Ghosh (Given Family). But my friends, teachers, colleagues always called me Rito. I have a different short name that is used by immediate family and close relatives. Rito is also easier for western people's tongues. So, that is what I almost always use. I use my full name only in legal and financial documents. In every other place, I am just Rito. I like to be addressed as "Rito" and appear as "Rito Ghosh" in badges, documentation, slack, any non-legal/non-financial documents. So, the best way to go, in my opinion, is having two fields- one for full name, another for preferred name. Do not _assume_ anything. This is also consistent with western names, like: William Henry Gates III as Bill Gates. There is also another field in many places where there are badges and such. "This field will appear as is in your badge" is wise in such cases.
- seszett 3y ago> In Vietnam names like Nguyen Thi Anh Mai are common. Which reminds me of this problem: she might have sisters called, say, Nguyen Thi Anh May and Nguyen Thi Anh Minh, and in quite a few countries this will result in them having identical names on their identity cards and most communication, either "Nguyen Thi", "Nguyen Thi Anh" or even "Nguyen Thi Anh M."
- lawgimenez 3y agoBorn in the Philippines, you forgot the middle name or mother’s last name is also important.