4 ms·

There's w3c guideline for this https://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-personal-names https://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-personal-names

austinjp 3y ago
Nice, although the pertinent quote is: "This article doesn't provide all the answers – the best answer will vary according to the needs of the application, and in most cases, it may be difficult to find a 'perfect' solution."
zarzavat 3y ago
I respectfully disagree with their advice to use “Family name” and “Given name”, over “First name” and “Last name”. Everybody has a First name and Last name (unless they are mononymic), even if this doesn’t correspond semantically to what the writer of the form anticipated. Many people don’t have a Family name and this creates user confusion when filling out forms.
- physicsguy 3y ago
  I have a friend who just married a Burmese girl of Indian origin and she just had a single name 'Jennifer'
- marcus_holmes 3y ago
  The point is that First Name and Last Name do not correspond to Family Name and Given Name, which is actually what is desired (you can start an email to me as "Hello <Given Name>", and be reasonably sure of avoiding insult. You can't do that with "Hello <First Name>", you will definitely insult some people). However, I don't do this. If I want someone's name so I can talk to them, I just ask them "what do you want us to call you?" with a single field (and if they enter "Captain HugePenis" then I cheerfully start the email "Hello Captain HugePenis,"). I only use Given/Family if I need their official name for bureaucracy reasons, and then it's very much "what's your name as it is written in your passport/id?", and I don't use it to address them, because it's very easy to get wrong.
  - hibbelig 3y ago
    In German, you have to ask the customer whether they want to be addressed in the formal way “Sehr geehrter Herr Schmidt” (esteemed Mr. Schmidt might be an approximate translation, of course this sounds totally off in English) or the informal way “Hallo Paul”, or maybe they prefer “Lieber Paul” (dear Paul) or even “Lieber Herr Schmidt”! Note that the formal and informal ways use different parts of the name. So if the website asks me for my name, then I have to rub my crystal ball to figure out which style the company intends to use.
    - marcus_holmes 3y ago
      I know that human Germans have problems with knowing when to "du" someone, so how the hell is a website is supposed to know?
  - zarzavat 3y ago
    Okay but say a person with an East Asian name fills out your form and dutifully fills out your form with their name in reverse. i.e. if their name is the Chinese equivalent of “Smith John”, they fill it out as given name: John, family name: Smith. Aren’t you going to be rendering their name in the wrong order for all your interactions? How do you know which order to concatenate it?
    - manfre 3y ago
      This is why you'd use the single "what do you want to be called?" value (e.g. preferred_name). Then it's not an issue because it's the exact text they provided.
    - dgoldstein0 3y ago
      I think the point is it's a single field so you don't do any concatenation
      - marcus_holmes 3y ago
        This. There's two separate concerns: what you call them, and their "official" name. What you call them is always better done as a separate single field, rather than trying to concatenate the official name fields.
- regularfry 3y ago
  The point isn't that it's first and last, it's to avoid an implicit assumption that they are in a particular order. That semantic correspondence is exactly what changing to given/family is supposed to preserve. Yes, there are people with only one. There is/was a fairly well-known example in UK network infrastructure circles. That's a problem in either system if you make the fields required. Given/family removes ambiguity for a larger number of humans than first/last, but you're always going to run into something from the Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names list so unless you can get away with just a single "name" field (and you can't always) it's the better option of the two.
  - lelanthran 3y ago
    > Given/family removes ambiguity for a larger number of humans than first/last, I dunno. The former places the cognitive load on the user. The latter places no additional cognitive load on either party. After all, what exactly do you mean by "Family Name" and how sure are you that meaning you have is shared by even a significant minority of cultures and people? How many countries have passports that label each name in the name field as a "given" name or a "family name"? How many countries have their revenue service care about whether a "given" name is to be used or a "family" name? OTOH, to figure out which name is first and which name is last, all the user has to do is look at their ID, which they have presumably seen thousands of times already. First/last at least has the benefit that, to the user filling in the form, they don't have to think about it - the first name on the ID goes first, the last name on their ID goes last. They can leave out anything in the middle because the form didn't ask them for it! The problem isn't the NAME, the problem is the addressing of that person which can be only be solved by by adding a field for addressing, and where it can't be solved (titles, honorifics, etc), then given/family name won't solve it either.
    - mediumdeviation 3y ago
      > I dunno. The former places the cognitive load on the user. The latter places no additional cognitive load on either party. It adds cognitive load because I've not seen a system where first/last name is not a synonym for given/family name, except it also indicates the system designer is not aware of alternative ordering for names and is forcing me to decide between correct order/incorrect semantic vs. incorrect order/correct semantic, so it's always a game of guessing what the system will subsequently try to display my name as if I enter it in a certain way.
- numpad0 3y ago
  So far the consensus of HN hive mind seems you should just give everyone a mandatory nick and optional full name fields and bypass all the formatting issues. It shouldn't be important if situation allows that. With that said, the idea behind that recommendation is that, the "first" and "last" names in American mind corresponds to, or SHALL correspond to, the European idea of given names(Gates III or John or Jong-Il) and family names(father's name, name of their home communal village of The Vincis, or whatever for greater identities of an individual) respectively, rather than simply being the 1st and 2nd items of your `struct name` in either cases of American name orders and Asian name orders in use, and hence relevant forms for names SHALL be so marked clearly to avoid systems falsely identifying you with your community identifier that comes first in your culture. Doing this makes sense for this context and purpose.
- puszczyk 3y ago
  In some languages ”family name” maybe confusing. E.g . in Polish it sometimes (often) mean maiden name (women traditionally replace or add to their last name the last name of their husbands). So the “pre-marriage” name is referred to as: - “nazwisko panieńskie” (maiden name) - or “nazwisko rodowe” (literally this is “family name”)

austinjp 3y ago

Nice, although the pertinent quote is: "This article doesn't provide all the answers – the best answer will vary according to the needs of the application, and in most cases, it may be difficult to find a 'perfect' solution."

zarzavat 3y ago

I respectfully disagree with their advice to use “Family name” and “Given name”, over “First name” and “Last name”. Everybody has a First name and Last name (unless they are mononymic), even if this doesn’t correspond semantically to what the writer of the form anticipated. Many people don’t have a Family name and this creates user confusion when filling out forms.

physicsguy 3y ago
I have a friend who just married a Burmese girl of Indian origin and she just had a single name 'Jennifer'
marcus_holmes 3y ago
The point is that First Name and Last Name do not correspond to Family Name and Given Name, which is actually what is desired (you can start an email to me as "Hello <Given Name>", and be reasonably sure of avoiding insult. You can't do that with "Hello <First Name>", you will definitely insult some people). However, I don't do this. If I want someone's name so I can talk to them, I just ask them "what do you want us to call you?" with a single field (and if they enter "Captain HugePenis" then I cheerfully start the email "Hello Captain HugePenis,"). I only use Given/Family if I need their official name for bureaucracy reasons, and then it's very much "what's your name as it is written in your passport/id?", and I don't use it to address them, because it's very easy to get wrong.
- hibbelig 3y ago
  In German, you have to ask the customer whether they want to be addressed in the formal way “Sehr geehrter Herr Schmidt” (esteemed Mr. Schmidt might be an approximate translation, of course this sounds totally off in English) or the informal way “Hallo Paul”, or maybe they prefer “Lieber Paul” (dear Paul) or even “Lieber Herr Schmidt”! Note that the formal and informal ways use different parts of the name. So if the website asks me for my name, then I have to rub my crystal ball to figure out which style the company intends to use.
  - marcus_holmes 3y ago
    I know that human Germans have problems with knowing when to "du" someone, so how the hell is a website is supposed to know?
- zarzavat 3y ago
  Okay but say a person with an East Asian name fills out your form and dutifully fills out your form with their name in reverse. i.e. if their name is the Chinese equivalent of “Smith John”, they fill it out as given name: John, family name: Smith. Aren’t you going to be rendering their name in the wrong order for all your interactions? How do you know which order to concatenate it?
  - manfre 3y ago
    This is why you'd use the single "what do you want to be called?" value (e.g. preferred_name). Then it's not an issue because it's the exact text they provided.
  - dgoldstein0 3y ago
    I think the point is it's a single field so you don't do any concatenation
    - marcus_holmes 3y ago
      This. There's two separate concerns: what you call them, and their "official" name. What you call them is always better done as a separate single field, rather than trying to concatenate the official name fields.
regularfry 3y ago
The point isn't that it's first and last, it's to avoid an implicit assumption that they are in a particular order. That semantic correspondence is exactly what changing to given/family is supposed to preserve. Yes, there are people with only one. There is/was a fairly well-known example in UK network infrastructure circles. That's a problem in either system if you make the fields required. Given/family removes ambiguity for a larger number of humans than first/last, but you're always going to run into something from the Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names list so unless you can get away with just a single "name" field (and you can't always) it's the better option of the two.
- lelanthran 3y ago
  > Given/family removes ambiguity for a larger number of humans than first/last, I dunno. The former places the cognitive load on the user. The latter places no additional cognitive load on either party. After all, what exactly do you mean by "Family Name" and how sure are you that meaning you have is shared by even a significant minority of cultures and people? How many countries have passports that label each name in the name field as a "given" name or a "family name"? How many countries have their revenue service care about whether a "given" name is to be used or a "family" name? OTOH, to figure out which name is first and which name is last, all the user has to do is look at their ID, which they have presumably seen thousands of times already. First/last at least has the benefit that, to the user filling in the form, they don't have to think about it - the first name on the ID goes first, the last name on their ID goes last. They can leave out anything in the middle because the form didn't ask them for it! The problem isn't the NAME, the problem is the addressing of that person which can be only be solved by by adding a field for addressing, and where it can't be solved (titles, honorifics, etc), then given/family name won't solve it either.
  - mediumdeviation 3y ago
    > I dunno. The former places the cognitive load on the user. The latter places no additional cognitive load on either party. It adds cognitive load because I've not seen a system where first/last name is not a synonym for given/family name, except it also indicates the system designer is not aware of alternative ordering for names and is forcing me to decide between correct order/incorrect semantic vs. incorrect order/correct semantic, so it's always a game of guessing what the system will subsequently try to display my name as if I enter it in a certain way.
numpad0 3y ago
So far the consensus of HN hive mind seems you should just give everyone a mandatory nick and optional full name fields and bypass all the formatting issues. It shouldn't be important if situation allows that. With that said, the idea behind that recommendation is that, the "first" and "last" names in American mind corresponds to, or SHALL correspond to, the European idea of given names(Gates III or John or Jong-Il) and family names(father's name, name of their home communal village of The Vincis, or whatever for greater identities of an individual) respectively, rather than simply being the 1st and 2nd items of your `struct name` in either cases of American name orders and Asian name orders in use, and hence relevant forms for names SHALL be so marked clearly to avoid systems falsely identifying you with your community identifier that comes first in your culture. Doing this makes sense for this context and purpose.
puszczyk 3y ago
In some languages ”family name” maybe confusing. E.g . in Polish it sometimes (often) mean maiden name (women traditionally replace or add to their last name the last name of their husbands). So the “pre-marriage” name is referred to as: - “nazwisko panieńskie” (maiden name) - or “nazwisko rodowe” (literally this is “family name”)