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A basic guide to using Asian names

152 points by bear_with_me 3y ago

jhvkjhk 3y ago
I have a Indonesian Chinese friend who has strange name. She said her parents made up her name preventing the massacre against Chinese.
- dessimus 3y ago
  Wow! That was a heavy burden for those parents. Imagine knowing that a misstep in the naming of your child would cause the death of many people.
  - robobro 3y ago
    Are you familiar with the Indonesian genocide? It was pretty awful but it seems like the world at large is unaware of what happened.
    - sacrosancty 3y ago
      I think he's joking about the parent saying the name of that individual prevented the massacre.
    - oddmiral 3y ago
      You are right, word should know more about this bloodbath for communist blood bathers.
- em500 3y ago
  Yes, somewhere around 1966, ethnic Chinese living in Indonesia where pressured/forced to adopt an Indonesian-sounding name: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Indonesian_surname#1966%E2%80%931998 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Indonesian_surname#196...
riffraff 3y ago
let me just state the order of names is not standardized in Europe either, darn Hungarians. (Nobody actually cares, but I do get constant confusion as a foreigner in Budapest because people sometime expect surname-first and sometimes given-first, trying to accomodate for me)
- theodric 3y ago
  Something I've seen genealogists do, as well as some French-speaking Lebanese, and maybe others that I haven't noticed or encountered, is to put the surname in all caps to disambiguate e.g. 'Harrison Paul JEFFERSON'
  - xmcqdpt2 3y ago
    It's common in France and ex French colonies to use "LAST NAME, First Name" on official documents, including resumes.
- glandium 3y ago
  In France both orders are used, depending on context.
  - mjn 3y ago
    Same situation in Greece. Formal documents like identity cards, university diplomas, and even mailboxes, generally put the surname first, while in running text, like a news article, the given name is first. Some formal documents also list the patronymic, in the order: Surname Given Patronymic. In some situations it is less clear which convention applies. For example most of my older relatives use surname-first for their Facebook account name, which is less common with younger people. I have also seen both orders on business cards. I think most Greeks would not expect foreigners to be familiar with or follow these conventions though.
- RugnirViking 3y ago
  It's not unheard of in the UK either on official documents to put last name first, for example a lot of correspondance from banks etc would be "to mr lastname firstname"
chrismorgan 3y ago
In south Indian names: > Initials are often used to shorten the name. A fun complication to this is that the initial may be more than one letter in English, taking the first consonant as it is in the source language (which uses an alphasyllabary), which may correspond to more than one letter in the Latin script; for example, “Ch. Naveen”.
- navigate8310 3y ago
  Initials also include Sh. which means Shriman or Shri for males and Smt. which mean Shrimati
  - unmole 3y ago
    They aren't initials and shouldn't be used as such.
  - chrismorgan 3y ago
    That seems more like an abbreviation, like English titles such as “Mr.” and “Mrs.”?
    - fuzztester 3y ago
      Yes.
- SanjayMehta 3y ago
  “Ch.” could be short for “Choudhary,” a title. Or for “Chiranjeevi,” usually used on wedding cards before the groom’s name.
  - chrismorgan 3y ago
    I know a couple of people in Hyderabad where it’s definitely family name. But yeah, the mixture of initials and abbreviations of titles and such can readily become difficult to penetrate.
  - martyvis 3y ago
tkgally 3y ago
The guidance on Japanese names is a bit simplistic. Yes, the Japanese government has announced a surname-first policy, but Japanese people are not bound by that policy. I have hundreds of name cards (meishi) that I have received from Japanese businesspeople, academics, and government officials over the years, and my rough estimate is that more than half who indicated their name in English on the card put their surname last. For more nuanced guidelines, I recommend the Japan Style Sheet published by the Society of Writers, Editors, and Translators in Tokyo. It can be downloaded for free at [1]. An excerpt: “Japanese write their names in their own language surname first, as do Chinese and Koreans. After contact with the West was reestablished in the mid-nineteenth century, many Japanese adopted the practice of giving their surname last in international contexts. Japanese learn in school to reverse their names when writing or speaking in English and their domestic English-language media follow this practice, as do almost all other media around the world. Especially in translations, either name order may be adopted. Writers and editors may also choose a hybrid approach.” (p. 37) [1] https://japanstylesheet.com/download-jss/ https://japanstylesheet.com/download-jss/
- freddie_mercury 3y ago
  > The guidance on Japanese names is a bit simplistic The title of the page is a "basic guide". Not a "comprehensive guide". And they note that "the person’s preference is the most important thing to consider", which already covers your "but I have name cards in a different format" objection.
  - bumbledraven 3y ago
    > The title of the page is a "basic guide". Not a "comprehensive guide". Straw man. Thep post could give more useful advice with a few extra words without being "comprehensive". > And they note that "the person’s preference is the most important thing to consider", which already covers your "but I have name cards in a different format" objection. The post suggests putting Japanese family names first, with a generic, obvious disclaimer at the top about personal preference taking priority. There a lot more to what tkgally (who is a professor emeritus at University of Tokyo and former professional translator, by the way) said about that than "I have name cards in a different format". For one, he estimated 50% of the business cards he received had the family name last. He also linked the guidance from the Japan Style Sheet which provides many additional points in favor of not assuming the family name goes first.
quickthrower2 3y ago
A bit like programming: url.hostname, or hostname url.
- hk__2 3y ago
  > A bit like programming: url.hostname, or hostname url. What do you mean? A URL contains its hostname.
  - quickthrower2 3y ago
    Haskell
  - forgotpwd16 3y ago
    Maybe hostname.network or network.hostname? Like assume computers alpha and beta in network alphabet, then there's a choice between alpha/beta.alphabet or alphabet.alpha/beta.
SeanLuke 3y ago
Westernized Chinese names seem to be missing. For example, in Hong Kong it's common to have both Chinese and Western first names. This leads to a complex rule: Using the Western name only: WESTERN-FIRST CHINESE-LAST Using the Chinese name only: CHINESE-LAST CHINESE-FIRST Using both: WESTERN-FIRST CHINESE-LAST CHINESE-FIRST (CHINESE-FIRST can be one or two characters). I think I got that right?
- dmurray 3y ago
  It's unfortunate that you refer to them as "LAST" and "FIRST" when the whole point of the exercise is to decouple ordering from naming. "Christian name" and "surname" is closer to what you want, but problematic for different reasons. It should be "Western-given", "Chinese-given", "Chinese-family".
- joeblubaugh 3y ago
  Right, here in Singapore you might see Andrea Tan Zixuan
- mbg721 3y ago
  I see the dual-first-name thing a lot with consultants, but within the West I think it's typically Western-first, Chinese-first, Chinese-last, isn't it? Which is extra confusing.
  - aldonius 3y ago
    That's similar what I see for Chinese-Australian people. They'll get both a Western and a Chinese given name, though legal order probably varies.
kqr 3y ago
When I receive emails from @name I usually open my response with "Dear $name[0]" but I know better than to do that with Asian-sounding names. However, I never knew exactly what to do instead, so I've always chickened out and went with the full "Dear @name" in the same order that I was given the names. I hoped this would enlighten me as to the appropriate way to go, but I clearly overestimated the homogeneity of Asian name conventions!
- andrewaylett 3y ago
  It's often the case that people will sign off with a form of their name that they're happy to be addressed by. - Andrew
  - stavros 3y ago
    That's a good point, thanks andrewaylett!
andrewaylett 3y ago
The most important point: > keep in mind that in all cases, the person’s preference is the most important thing to consider. If in doubt, just ask! I'd be quite interested to read the converse article -- it's true that British names usually go "First Last", it's the exceptions that are hard to deal with. I know several people who go by a middle name, several more who are known by a diminutive that starts with a different letter of the alphabet to their formal name. Or who are known by their last name, because seemingly every other family in the South East of England called their early-80s son "Andrew". But for an article like the one here, the interesting part would be to find out which aspects I think may be less interesting, but are actually surprising to people who haven't grown up with them.
- lanstin 3y ago
  I would also love to read, “cultural considerations in visiting Norman, Oklahoma” written for the South Asian audience. Or “how to manage your US born workers” for upper class Asians. “Getting along in the US suburbs for the shy Indian tech geek.” To the extent these things exist, they are not easily accessible to English only US born people. Actually, I have just found my next series of Chat GPT questions. That said, the original article was interesting and more details than I had picked up inductively over the years.
  - lanstin 3y ago
    GPT-4 said to study up on football, especially the Sooners, try the fried Okra, say please and thank you a lot, and get used to car dependence, vast empty spaces, extreme weather, confusing language styles of seeming friendly but not meaning it, and increased physical distance between even friends.
    - j16sdiz 3y ago
      > study up on football By "football", did you meant that hand-held oval-shaped thing?
      - 3y ago
andrewaylett 3y ago
It's always worth referencing the classic Falsehoods programmers believe abut names: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/ https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-... (I think this is the original "Falsehoods programmers believe about ..."?)
hoseja 3y ago
Is there some website or something where you can enter a Japanese name in unspecified order and receive a guess on which is family name and which is given name?
- fenomas 3y ago
  Japanese first/last names are largely separate, so it would be pretty safe to just find someone on wikipedia who shares either name and use them as a guide.
keiferski 3y ago
This would seem easily avoidable if people reverted back to using only last names [1] and an honorific, as was once common in the Western world. Mr. Smith, Ms. Jones, etc. 1. I mean family names here
- robobro 3y ago
  By last name, you mean family name, right? In Indonesia we always use an honorific followed by a person's preferred name. Very simple!
  - keiferski 3y ago
    Yes, family name, my mistake.
- JimDabell 3y ago
  That doesn’t work if the culture in question doesn’t use family names. For instance Malays use their given name followed by their father’s given name. Would you really refer to somebody as “Mr [their father’s given name]”?
  - keiferski 3y ago
    Hmm, well reading the Wikipedia indicates that bin is used, which is similar to Arabic. It doesn’t seem that odd to call someone Mr. bin Osman. However the article does say that it’s considered rude to call someone by their father’s name in Malay culture. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysian_names https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysian_names
  - jhbadger 3y ago
    That's actually how Western family names originally worked in part -- that's why things like Richardson and Johnson are common nanes (Richard's son and John's son). Of course other ones also came from professions like Smith, Baker, Cooper (maker of barrels), etc.
- tamimio 3y ago
  Agree, I do that all the time, I also feel it is a little more respectful to call someone by their family name rather than just name. Additionally, it’s better in terms of privacy in the internet, less phishing and social engineering attacks.
petesergeant 3y ago
Strange that it mentions nicknames for Indonesia, but not for Thailand, where you'd almost exclusively use someone's nickname for addressing them by name. Also, Balinese names[0] are a trip if you're not familiar with them, where people are named by birth order (up to 4 -- after that you stick "again" on the name). 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balinese_name https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balinese_name
asmala 3y ago
In some of these countries, nationality is a weak proxy for what actually matters for name order; ethnicity. Take for example Malaysia. Yes, ~70% of the population are Malay Muslims who (mostly) follow the convention mentioned here. But you also have 20%+ Chinese, ~7% Indians (with considerable ethnic diversity!), and an assortment of native peoples, all who follow their own conventions.
vdddv 3y ago
Should we not simply be following the rules of the language spoken at the time? When speaking English, use the English convention. When speaking Japanese, use the Japanese convention etc.
- Longlius 3y ago
  The issue is that the convention in many languages is that the name order depends on the origin of the name in question. In Japanese for example, native Japanese names are always spoken in Family-Given order but English names are always spoken Given-Family. So then the problem is now everyone must become an expert in discerning the origin of names just so they can use the correct order.
needle0 3y ago
As a Japanese native I'm torn on this. On one hand, respecting the local ordering & notation seems to be good manners. On the other hand, this creates an ambiguity where some people are writing Asian names in local notation and some others writing in western notation. (This is even true for Japanese people themselves, as mentioned in the other comments.) At least things were consistent when everyone wrote them in western notation; now we can't be sure which part is the family name and which part is the given name, especially if it's from a country that you're not familiar with the order/notation rules. There's the "write the family name in all caps" rule to assist with it, but not everyone follows that rule either.
- glandium 3y ago
  Fun fact: the Japanese government insists that foreigners use the name they have in their passport in official documents. That includes the middle name. My middle name has thus crept in all over the place. I've barely ever used it in my home country, but now have to use it everywhere (I live in Japan). Anyways, more relevant to OP, as a result, sometimes I'm called by my middle name, as if it were my last name (because the order is last first middle and they must assume that the literal last is the last name...)
  - tkgally 3y ago
    I also live in Japan, and I have exactly the same problem. I think the people with the biggest name problems in Japan may be ethnic Chinese. Many use the Japanese readings for their name characters in daily life, but some official purposes require the Chinese readings. Some Chinese also use yet another given name in English. I've had some friends who ran into serious problems proving they were who they were. Addendum: Another problem that some people with Chinese names have in Japan is that the hanzi/kanji in their names do not display properly or at all in Japanese fonts, and even if the characters can be displayed they don’t have well-known Japanese readings, so people using phonetic input don’t know how to type the characters.
    - glandium 3y ago
      While we're here with fun facts. I've been living here for ten years, and haven't needed a registered seal until recently. To register my seal (using katakana) at the city hall, I needed to register my katakana name at the city hall too, which I never needed and had never done. How do you that? By presenting a somewhat official document with your katakana name, which none of the official IDs (resident card or driver's license) have. The document they would accept are a cash card or a passbook from a bank. How did the bank get my katakana name in the first place? I made it up. So what's the point? Who knows.
biztos 3y ago
A fun thing about Thailand is that if your name is David Jones you will often be addressed as Mr. David. (Aka Khun David.) Takes a minute to realize this is not a mistake. [edit:] Also if you use a nickname, say Bunny Colvin, you will be Mr. Bunny.
- User23 3y ago
  This is common in the American southeast too.
- FalconSensei 3y ago
  Brazil does this too
mabbo 3y ago
And this is why we need to really rethink the typical patterns on form inputs, which today usually presume a western style name pattern. Just ask people for their full name, and what they would prefer to be called. (Unless you literally cannot provide your services' value without more detail).
- Arnavion 3y ago
  I think most online forms I encounter these days have a single name field, though government forms are usually the exception. Separate first and last name fields was definitely very common 10-20 years ago but web devs seem to have learned since then.
mathieuh 3y ago
If for some reason I were mentioned in a written communication from a surname-first country I would absolutely expect to have my surname first and I wouldn't care. I would also expect my name to be transliterated into other writing systems should that be required. Is this really an important issue for people from surname-first countries?
- numpad0 3y ago
  This is just my gut feeling, but it smells like someone might be wanting to purge invalid Japanese names from an existing database of Asians, and it's not working out at all.
sdm 3y ago
This is a bit wrong for Thailand as it doesn't mention nicknames. Or rules for using the given name vs. nicknames. Unless in very formal context it's normal to use nicknames not given names. In day to day life nicknames are by far more commonly used than given names. Family names are almost never used expect in legal documents or formal setting. It's common for people who have been friends for years to not know each other's family names as they are so rarely used in day to day life. It's also common also for friends/coworkers to not know each other's given names -- though less so than family names. Especially as you would never call someone you're friends with by their given name as it would be a bit rude. Usually in offices (unless very old fashioned) or with friends and family you'd use nicknames exclusively.
- mabbo 3y ago
  Since you know more about this subject, I have a question on this topic that I've wondered for over two decades. In 2001, I did a month long exchange program to Thailand. A group of eight Canadians stayed with eight Thais, and the year before they stayed with us. Incredible program. All the Thais, as you mention, had nicknames. But many of the nicknames were English words that weren't really used as names in the West. I lived with a guy named 'Knight'. Another guy was 'Farm'. Were these names Anglicized versions of Thai nicknames? Or were the actual nicknames just sometimes pulled at random from an English dictionary?
  - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
    If Thailand is like China, they were English names chosen by kids in English class. Not their real nicknames, just the names they use when speaking and writing English, and chosen with all the tact and creativity of a middle schooler without much knowledge about standard English names in the west. Also, since Chinese names often have meaning, they often go for English names with meaning as well (although unrelated to their Chinese name). A famous English name in expat in China circles is Rainy.
    - mabbo 3y ago
      > A famous English name in expat in China circles is Rainy. Funny that. A friend of mine since high school - who is white and has never been to Asia - has the first name Rainey. Not a nickname. I've never met anyone else with the name!
numpad0 3y ago
There were discussions on this topic here, just 19 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37332126 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37332126 The hivemind consensus among most popular recommendations was to have a nickname field, followed by a full name field only if must, and don't try to validate names, Asian or not. Which is btw exactly how most social medias are built right now.
tamimio 3y ago
Russia is in Asia, Turkey is in Asia, Yemen is in Asia too among other countries, I think the article should be more specific than just limiting a whole continent in few countries.
karaterobot 3y ago
There are two issues, and the guidance about what order to use given names or surnames is only one part. I don't intuitively know which name is which, and it's impossible to guess whether the order given to me represents either the correct order, which I should preserve, or the incorrect order, which I should reverse. There is nothing inherent in a name that tells me what what is what; that's entirely cultural knowledge learned, traditionally, by making mistakes and being corrected. So, all else equal, it makes more sense to me to just repeat the name I've been given (by the news, for example) as it's at least conceivable they've already done the research and are using it correctly. I've also only rarely met people who even get angry if you get their name wrong, and those people seem to be angry about other things too. I can see why a public official would want to set the record straight. I have never seen a real person in the world care about this issue, including myself when I am misnamed.
boomboomsubban 3y ago
This seems like the perfect place to ask. I was recently watching an international sporting event. I watched games from South Korea and Japan, and with both countries I couldn't figure out if the Latin script name on their backs was their family name or given name. With South Korea I guessed it was their given name, someone had either Park or Moon as a name but a different name on their back. But with Japan I couldn't tell. Anyone know how they commonly handle jerseys? Searching "Japanese jersey name" was unhelpful.
- mk_stjames 3y ago
  How I approached this question: Googled pictures of the Japanese National baseball team, and then googled their wikipedia, noted that the english wikipedia article lists their names in western naming order (first first, family second). Matched some of the players names to the names on their jerseys in the photos. They have names on their jerseys like "Nakano" (#7) and "Okamoto" (#25) and "Nakamura" (#27) - these are their family names.
- kortex 3y ago
  As a really rough rule of thumb, in both Japanese and South Korean cultures, it would be fairly improper to address or refer to a "stranger" or any non-close-friend [1] by their given name. A jersey nameplate would absolutely constitute a stranger/formal context, so family name would be expected here. Even if you did not know that pretty universally, jersey nameplates/tags (and nameplates writ large) with only one name will be the family name. 1 - "stranger/non-close-friend" here means someone who you aren't already a) quite familiar with and b) in the age bracket / position in hierarchy c) in an informal friendly context. Any teacher, boss, employee, acquaintance, professional, etc, it'll be family name. Classmates, close friends, family members will usually use given name (in informal context - code switching). As an amusing aside, this is a bit of an in-joke in the anime Mushoku Tensei (Jobless Reincarnation), where the main character is often using surnames and the formal or even Keigo register with his rough-and-tumble party mates and they are like "yo why are you so formal?". But also, Park and Moon are common Korean family names. Because like the near-majority of South Koreans have the Kim surname, you'll often see initials like "H S KIM"
cat_plus_plus 3y ago
For whatever reason, my first name is almost universally mispronounced in America. So early on, I made a decision to let it go and in fact introduce myself by how most English speakers said it. No regrets whatsoever, any time spent sorting phonetics out is time wasted not getting to substance of the matter we want to discuss. I also suspect that if I made a stink about it, many people would avoid me because I have a thing they need to deal with. So I don't get the current trend where everyone is your majesty and god forbid someone mangles your name, your pronoun if you didn't make it obvious by your attire or didn't spell your country with a diacritical mark not found on their keyboard. You still know that it's you and that people are just relating to you in a way which is convinient to them right? Now get to what is it that you need to do together - write some Java code, or talk about your day or whatever.
- earthboundkid 3y ago
  It’s a little bit of a complicated issue. On the one hand, my great-grandfather gave up using a patronym to be an American. That’s a totally normal thing, and it’s weird to complain about it. In Japan, they were often confused about which of my names was personal and which was for my family, and they never quite figured out the deal with my middle name / initial. Cultures are different, and you can’t expect everyone in one country to know everything about another. On the other hand, some people make a big show out of not knowing how to pronounce common Indian names, and that strikes me as silly/microaggressive. Hindi is spelled phonetically in English, so it’s not very hard. On the third hand though, Chinese names are often spelled with a Romanization that wasn’t designed for use by English speakers, so of course they can’t do it. If you want them to not mangle your name, use the Yale Romanization. I think people want there to be a simple answer like “everyone just change your name to John Smith” or “if they can’t pronounce Xi Jinping, they’re racists” but simple answers don’t really apply. We’re all just going to muddle through the best we can.
  - kibwen 3y ago
    > my great-grandfather gave up using a patronym to be an American I'd be interested to hear the story there. When it comes to surnames, AFAIK nearly every US state lets you put basically any arbitrary assembly of English characters as the last name for a child, with even fewer restrictions on the last names for adults.
causi 3y ago
In my opinion you should tailor your speech to your audience. Your audience getting the correct meaning is more important than them hearing the correct words. You should say things in such a way that they'll be correctly interpreted. Not doing so for the sake of pedantry is like feigning shock when a group of young people look at you askance for calling someone "niggardly".
vore 3y ago
This is a little picky, but the explanation of Chinese names given is Han-centric: there’s definitely other kinds of Chinese names too, like Tibetan and Uyghur.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
  > there’s definitely other kinds of Chinese names too, like Tibetan and Uyghur. Xi has a solution for those irregularities.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
kube-system 3y ago
We should all really remove "first name" and "last name" from our vocabularies. They literally refer to written order, but when most (western) people use them, what they actually mean are given and family names.
- diego_sandoval 3y ago
  And they make little sense when someone has two family names (father and mother), because then you have to call them "first last name" and "second last name".
  - kube-system 3y ago
    They make no sense in the context of this article at all, because "last name first" is nonsensical. East asians don't put their "last names first". Their first names are their surnames. Anyone who says "last name first" has the right spirit, but they still are missing the entire point. The beginning of everyone's name is their first name, because that's what "first" means.
geephroh 3y ago
This has appeared many times on HN through the years, but worth referencing again: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/ https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-...
User23 3y ago
Out of curiosity, in Asian countries do they write westerners’ names family first?
mynameisamis 3y ago
I'm from Europe but lived in Singapore for 10 years and worked with people from all over. There were a lot of names that surprised me, like the occasional man with a female name. One was named Wendy, the other one I forgot. I think he was from the Philippines, or maybe Malaysia. Many Asian languages don't have male/female names, so when the parents want to pick a western name for their newborn they don't always consider the gender (maybe that has changed nowadays). Another thing I had not come across before is fake western names. The parents want to give the kid a name that sounds western but don't want to limit themselves to the standard catalogue of names, so instead they pick two names and combine them, or one name and rearrange the letters. So you get folks named Danold, Stevid and so on.
- dehrmann 3y ago
  Guessing these weren't native Singaporeans (where English is an official language and British influence is still obvious)? There are also names like Leslie and Ashley that are more associated with women in the US, but have historically been gender-neutral.
  - mynameisamis 3y ago
    > Guessing these weren't native Singaporeans (where English is an official language and British influence is still obvious)? Most of them were probably from other countries, but I know of at least one Singaporean lady with a fake western name. In her case the parents had arranged the syllables of her Chinese name into a European-sounding combination (quite clever IMHO and more authentic than a name from the "catalogue").
- OfSanguineFire 3y ago
  Someething similar to your “fake western names” has been a feature of Brazilian culture going at least back to the early 20th-century. A segment of Brazilians will give a child a name ending in “-son”,[0] even if it is invented out of whole cloth, just because an English sounding name sounds prestigious. A quick online search shows people disparaging this as a practice of the lower classes, but over the decades as some families have grown wealthier, this is widely found among the middle class, too. [0] https://portuguese.stackexchange.com/questions/8634/what-is-the-meaning-of-son-in-male-brazilian-first-names https://portuguese.stackexchange.com/questions/8634/what-is-...
itake 3y ago
Sometimes it's hard to know which Asian culture an Asian is from and under what system they are presenting their name. A Vietnamese national working n the USA may say Thanh Nguyen (with Nguyen being their family name). You basically have to memorize the top last names in every culture or just ask them what they want to be called.
abdullahkhalids 3y ago
Late to the party, but Pakistani names do not always follow the GIVEN FAMILY format. Plenty of Pakistanis have "prefix"-names arising from tribe/caste, eg. Syed, Chaudary. The prime minister in 2012-2013 Raja Pervaiz Ashraf has the prefix name Raja. The prime minister from 2002-2004 Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali, has Mir as a prefix name. Moreover, both Khan and Jamali are tribe names. Plenty follow the FAMILY GIVEN. My name follows another common format. GIVEN FATHER'S-GIVEN. There is no family name.
- smusamashah 3y ago
  Was looking for this comment. This guide is too simplistic. It went in some detail on variation of Indian names and I was expecting the same for Pakistan. Mine was TITLE Muhammad NAME. Some in family also have TITLE at the end of name. First name, last name OR given name, family name on forms never make sense to me.
madmax96 3y ago
The whole situation is really confusing. Some people already ``adjust'' their names for a Western audience, and others don't. So, given the <name 1> <name 2> of a Japanese person, I don't know if <name 1> is the family name or given name. Some people already make the adjustment so that Westerners get it right, some don't. I don't care either way -- I'd just prefer things be consistent so that when I recognize a Japanese name I can call them by the proper name faster :).
- paulddraper 3y ago
  FWIW, family name is almost one syllable (Li, Yang, Wu, etc.) Though that only helps a little because loads of given names are also one syllable. Fun Fact: 300,000 people have the name "Zhang Wei" [1] [1] https://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2020-01/20/c_138721082.htm https://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2020-01/20/c_138721082.htm
  - numpad0 3y ago
    Modern Chinese family names are often one syllable, but China and Japan do not share language nor have much ancestral connections, and Japanese family names are usually not one syllable.
- anotheruser13 3y ago
  You could look up the n most common Japanese family names (myoji ,名字). You probably would get a list like Yamaha, Suzuki, Watanabe, Tanaka, etc. Of course, this wouldn't cover every case, but it might help. 頑張ってください！
jimworm 3y ago
> If you see a three-syllable Chinese name, you can be confident that the two-syllable name is the given name, and the one-syllable name is the family name. Statistically speaking one could be fairly confident, but as a rule it is wrong due to the presence of compound surnames. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_compound_surname https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_compound_surname
sbehere 3y ago
This "basic" guide is probably well-intentioned and useful. It does gloss over a whole range of nuances and diversity of protocols for India. Wonder if similar glossing over is happening for other countries in the list.
fnordpiglet 3y ago
Thailand is a bit over simplified. No one goes by their Pali language name. Only in a very formal or official setting would you call someone their Pali name, which can be absurdly long and difficult to say, even for Thai people. Everyone has a Thai language nickname that is simpler to say and is of their own choosing. Often the Pali names are chosen by monks to be auspicious. They are however their official names and if they sign their name or write it in a document it’ll be the Pali name.
cryptonector 3y ago
I find that knowing how to pronounce someone's name the moment you see it written gets one a modicum of brownie points. It's worth knowing how to do it. At an interview one of the people interviewing me went by just the first letter of their very long name but I asked what the full name was, so he showed me his driver's license then I pronounced it correctly on the first attempt. I got the job offer. I can't tell you that it helped or made no difference, since I didn't take the job and never got to ask. But maybe it helped, and it certainly can't have hurt (unless my interviewer felt I was showing off or something, which seems very doubtful). If you're not sure how to pronounce someone's name, then ask, though I personally would give people brownie points for trying anyways.
peskysamurai 3y ago
It seems strange that for the Sri Lankan Tamil naming convention, they use the name "V. Rudrakumaran"[1] as the example. I'm not sure I would use the name of someone with ties to LTTE as an example. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visvanathan_Rudrakumaran https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visvanathan_Rudrakumaran

152 points by bear_with_me 3y ago

I have a Indonesian Chinese friend who has strange name. She said her parents made up her name preventing the massacre against Chinese.

dessimus 3y ago
Wow! That was a heavy burden for those parents. Imagine knowing that a misstep in the naming of your child would cause the death of many people.
- robobro 3y ago
  Are you familiar with the Indonesian genocide? It was pretty awful but it seems like the world at large is unaware of what happened.
  - sacrosancty 3y ago
    I think he's joking about the parent saying the name of that individual prevented the massacre.
  - oddmiral 3y ago
    You are right, word should know more about this bloodbath for communist blood bathers.
em500 3y ago
Yes, somewhere around 1966, ethnic Chinese living in Indonesia where pressured/forced to adopt an Indonesian-sounding name: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Indonesian_surname#1966%E2%80%931998 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Indonesian_surname#196...

riffraff 3y ago

let me just state the order of names is not standardized in Europe either, darn Hungarians. (Nobody actually cares, but I do get constant confusion as a foreigner in Budapest because people sometime expect surname-first and sometimes given-first, trying to accomodate for me)

theodric 3y ago
Something I've seen genealogists do, as well as some French-speaking Lebanese, and maybe others that I haven't noticed or encountered, is to put the surname in all caps to disambiguate e.g. 'Harrison Paul JEFFERSON'
- xmcqdpt2 3y ago
  It's common in France and ex French colonies to use "LAST NAME, First Name" on official documents, including resumes.
glandium 3y ago
In France both orders are used, depending on context.
- mjn 3y ago
  Same situation in Greece. Formal documents like identity cards, university diplomas, and even mailboxes, generally put the surname first, while in running text, like a news article, the given name is first. Some formal documents also list the patronymic, in the order: Surname Given Patronymic. In some situations it is less clear which convention applies. For example most of my older relatives use surname-first for their Facebook account name, which is less common with younger people. I have also seen both orders on business cards. I think most Greeks would not expect foreigners to be familiar with or follow these conventions though.
RugnirViking 3y ago
It's not unheard of in the UK either on official documents to put last name first, for example a lot of correspondance from banks etc would be "to mr lastname firstname"

chrismorgan 3y ago

In south Indian names: > Initials are often used to shorten the name. A fun complication to this is that the initial may be more than one letter in English, taking the first consonant as it is in the source language (which uses an alphasyllabary), which may correspond to more than one letter in the Latin script; for example, “Ch. Naveen”.

navigate8310 3y ago
Initials also include Sh. which means Shriman or Shri for males and Smt. which mean Shrimati
- unmole 3y ago
  They aren't initials and shouldn't be used as such.
- chrismorgan 3y ago
  That seems more like an abbreviation, like English titles such as “Mr.” and “Mrs.”?
  - fuzztester 3y ago
    Yes.
SanjayMehta 3y ago
“Ch.” could be short for “Choudhary,” a title. Or for “Chiranjeevi,” usually used on wedding cards before the groom’s name.
- chrismorgan 3y ago
  I know a couple of people in Hyderabad where it’s definitely family name. But yeah, the mixture of initials and abbreviations of titles and such can readily become difficult to penetrate.
- martyvis 3y ago

tkgally 3y ago

The guidance on Japanese names is a bit simplistic. Yes, the Japanese government has announced a surname-first policy, but Japanese people are not bound by that policy. I have hundreds of name cards (meishi) that I have received from Japanese businesspeople, academics, and government officials over the years, and my rough estimate is that more than half who indicated their name in English on the card put their surname last. For more nuanced guidelines, I recommend the Japan Style Sheet published by the Society of Writers, Editors, and Translators in Tokyo. It can be downloaded for free at [1]. An excerpt: “Japanese write their names in their own language surname first, as do Chinese and Koreans. After contact with the West was reestablished in the mid-nineteenth century, many Japanese adopted the practice of giving their surname last in international contexts. Japanese learn in school to reverse their names when writing or speaking in English and their domestic English-language media follow this practice, as do almost all other media around the world. Especially in translations, either name order may be adopted. Writers and editors may also choose a hybrid approach.” (p. 37) [1] https://japanstylesheet.com/download-jss/ https://japanstylesheet.com/download-jss/

freddie_mercury 3y ago
> The guidance on Japanese names is a bit simplistic The title of the page is a "basic guide". Not a "comprehensive guide". And they note that "the person’s preference is the most important thing to consider", which already covers your "but I have name cards in a different format" objection.
- bumbledraven 3y ago
  > The title of the page is a "basic guide". Not a "comprehensive guide". Straw man. Thep post could give more useful advice with a few extra words without being "comprehensive". > And they note that "the person’s preference is the most important thing to consider", which already covers your "but I have name cards in a different format" objection. The post suggests putting Japanese family names first, with a generic, obvious disclaimer at the top about personal preference taking priority. There a lot more to what tkgally (who is a professor emeritus at University of Tokyo and former professional translator, by the way) said about that than "I have name cards in a different format". For one, he estimated 50% of the business cards he received had the family name last. He also linked the guidance from the Japan Style Sheet which provides many additional points in favor of not assuming the family name goes first.

quickthrower2 3y ago

A bit like programming: url.hostname, or hostname url.

hk__2 3y ago
> A bit like programming: url.hostname, or hostname url. What do you mean? A URL contains its hostname.
- quickthrower2 3y ago
  Haskell
- forgotpwd16 3y ago
  Maybe hostname.network or network.hostname? Like assume computers alpha and beta in network alphabet, then there's a choice between alpha/beta.alphabet or alphabet.alpha/beta.

SeanLuke 3y ago

Westernized Chinese names seem to be missing. For example, in Hong Kong it's common to have both Chinese and Western first names. This leads to a complex rule: Using the Western name only: WESTERN-FIRST CHINESE-LAST Using the Chinese name only: CHINESE-LAST CHINESE-FIRST Using both: WESTERN-FIRST CHINESE-LAST CHINESE-FIRST (CHINESE-FIRST can be one or two characters). I think I got that right?

dmurray 3y ago
It's unfortunate that you refer to them as "LAST" and "FIRST" when the whole point of the exercise is to decouple ordering from naming. "Christian name" and "surname" is closer to what you want, but problematic for different reasons. It should be "Western-given", "Chinese-given", "Chinese-family".
joeblubaugh 3y ago
Right, here in Singapore you might see Andrea Tan Zixuan
mbg721 3y ago
I see the dual-first-name thing a lot with consultants, but within the West I think it's typically Western-first, Chinese-first, Chinese-last, isn't it? Which is extra confusing.
- aldonius 3y ago
  That's similar what I see for Chinese-Australian people. They'll get both a Western and a Chinese given name, though legal order probably varies.

kqr 3y ago

When I receive emails from @name I usually open my response with "Dear $name[0]" but I know better than to do that with Asian-sounding names. However, I never knew exactly what to do instead, so I've always chickened out and went with the full "Dear @name" in the same order that I was given the names. I hoped this would enlighten me as to the appropriate way to go, but I clearly overestimated the homogeneity of Asian name conventions!

andrewaylett 3y ago
It's often the case that people will sign off with a form of their name that they're happy to be addressed by. - Andrew
- stavros 3y ago
  That's a good point, thanks andrewaylett!

andrewaylett 3y ago

The most important point: > keep in mind that in all cases, the person’s preference is the most important thing to consider. If in doubt, just ask! I'd be quite interested to read the converse article -- it's true that British names usually go "First Last", it's the exceptions that are hard to deal with. I know several people who go by a middle name, several more who are known by a diminutive that starts with a different letter of the alphabet to their formal name. Or who are known by their last name, because seemingly every other family in the South East of England called their early-80s son "Andrew". But for an article like the one here, the interesting part would be to find out which aspects I think may be less interesting, but are actually surprising to people who haven't grown up with them.

lanstin 3y ago
I would also love to read, “cultural considerations in visiting Norman, Oklahoma” written for the South Asian audience. Or “how to manage your US born workers” for upper class Asians. “Getting along in the US suburbs for the shy Indian tech geek.” To the extent these things exist, they are not easily accessible to English only US born people. Actually, I have just found my next series of Chat GPT questions. That said, the original article was interesting and more details than I had picked up inductively over the years.
- lanstin 3y ago
  GPT-4 said to study up on football, especially the Sooners, try the fried Okra, say please and thank you a lot, and get used to car dependence, vast empty spaces, extreme weather, confusing language styles of seeming friendly but not meaning it, and increased physical distance between even friends.
  - j16sdiz 3y ago
    > study up on football By "football", did you meant that hand-held oval-shaped thing?
    - 3y ago

andrewaylett 3y ago

It's always worth referencing the classic Falsehoods programmers believe abut names: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/ https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-... (I think this is the original "Falsehoods programmers believe about ..."?)

hoseja 3y ago

Is there some website or something where you can enter a Japanese name in unspecified order and receive a guess on which is family name and which is given name?

fenomas 3y ago
Japanese first/last names are largely separate, so it would be pretty safe to just find someone on wikipedia who shares either name and use them as a guide.

keiferski 3y ago

This would seem easily avoidable if people reverted back to using only last names [1] and an honorific, as was once common in the Western world. Mr. Smith, Ms. Jones, etc. 1. I mean family names here

robobro 3y ago
By last name, you mean family name, right? In Indonesia we always use an honorific followed by a person's preferred name. Very simple!
- keiferski 3y ago
  Yes, family name, my mistake.
JimDabell 3y ago
That doesn’t work if the culture in question doesn’t use family names. For instance Malays use their given name followed by their father’s given name. Would you really refer to somebody as “Mr [their father’s given name]”?
- keiferski 3y ago
  Hmm, well reading the Wikipedia indicates that bin is used, which is similar to Arabic. It doesn’t seem that odd to call someone Mr. bin Osman. However the article does say that it’s considered rude to call someone by their father’s name in Malay culture. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysian_names https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysian_names
- jhbadger 3y ago
  That's actually how Western family names originally worked in part -- that's why things like Richardson and Johnson are common nanes (Richard's son and John's son). Of course other ones also came from professions like Smith, Baker, Cooper (maker of barrels), etc.
tamimio 3y ago
Agree, I do that all the time, I also feel it is a little more respectful to call someone by their family name rather than just name. Additionally, it’s better in terms of privacy in the internet, less phishing and social engineering attacks.

petesergeant 3y ago

Strange that it mentions nicknames for Indonesia, but not for Thailand, where you'd almost exclusively use someone's nickname for addressing them by name. Also, Balinese names[0] are a trip if you're not familiar with them, where people are named by birth order (up to 4 -- after that you stick "again" on the name). 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balinese_name https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balinese_name

asmala 3y ago

In some of these countries, nationality is a weak proxy for what actually matters for name order; ethnicity. Take for example Malaysia. Yes, ~70% of the population are Malay Muslims who (mostly) follow the convention mentioned here. But you also have 20%+ Chinese, ~7% Indians (with considerable ethnic diversity!), and an assortment of native peoples, all who follow their own conventions.

vdddv 3y ago

Should we not simply be following the rules of the language spoken at the time? When speaking English, use the English convention. When speaking Japanese, use the Japanese convention etc.

Longlius 3y ago
The issue is that the convention in many languages is that the name order depends on the origin of the name in question. In Japanese for example, native Japanese names are always spoken in Family-Given order but English names are always spoken Given-Family. So then the problem is now everyone must become an expert in discerning the origin of names just so they can use the correct order.

needle0 3y ago

As a Japanese native I'm torn on this. On one hand, respecting the local ordering & notation seems to be good manners. On the other hand, this creates an ambiguity where some people are writing Asian names in local notation and some others writing in western notation. (This is even true for Japanese people themselves, as mentioned in the other comments.) At least things were consistent when everyone wrote them in western notation; now we can't be sure which part is the family name and which part is the given name, especially if it's from a country that you're not familiar with the order/notation rules. There's the "write the family name in all caps" rule to assist with it, but not everyone follows that rule either.

glandium 3y ago
Fun fact: the Japanese government insists that foreigners use the name they have in their passport in official documents. That includes the middle name. My middle name has thus crept in all over the place. I've barely ever used it in my home country, but now have to use it everywhere (I live in Japan). Anyways, more relevant to OP, as a result, sometimes I'm called by my middle name, as if it were my last name (because the order is last first middle and they must assume that the literal last is the last name...)
- tkgally 3y ago
  I also live in Japan, and I have exactly the same problem. I think the people with the biggest name problems in Japan may be ethnic Chinese. Many use the Japanese readings for their name characters in daily life, but some official purposes require the Chinese readings. Some Chinese also use yet another given name in English. I've had some friends who ran into serious problems proving they were who they were. Addendum: Another problem that some people with Chinese names have in Japan is that the hanzi/kanji in their names do not display properly or at all in Japanese fonts, and even if the characters can be displayed they don’t have well-known Japanese readings, so people using phonetic input don’t know how to type the characters.
  - glandium 3y ago
    While we're here with fun facts. I've been living here for ten years, and haven't needed a registered seal until recently. To register my seal (using katakana) at the city hall, I needed to register my katakana name at the city hall too, which I never needed and had never done. How do you that? By presenting a somewhat official document with your katakana name, which none of the official IDs (resident card or driver's license) have. The document they would accept are a cash card or a passbook from a bank. How did the bank get my katakana name in the first place? I made it up. So what's the point? Who knows.

biztos 3y ago

A fun thing about Thailand is that if your name is David Jones you will often be addressed as Mr. David. (Aka Khun David.) Takes a minute to realize this is not a mistake. [edit:] Also if you use a nickname, say Bunny Colvin, you will be Mr. Bunny.

User23 3y ago
This is common in the American southeast too.
FalconSensei 3y ago
Brazil does this too

mabbo 3y ago

And this is why we need to really rethink the typical patterns on form inputs, which today usually presume a western style name pattern. Just ask people for their full name, and what they would prefer to be called. (Unless you literally cannot provide your services' value without more detail).

Arnavion 3y ago
I think most online forms I encounter these days have a single name field, though government forms are usually the exception. Separate first and last name fields was definitely very common 10-20 years ago but web devs seem to have learned since then.

mathieuh 3y ago

If for some reason I were mentioned in a written communication from a surname-first country I would absolutely expect to have my surname first and I wouldn't care. I would also expect my name to be transliterated into other writing systems should that be required. Is this really an important issue for people from surname-first countries?

numpad0 3y ago
This is just my gut feeling, but it smells like someone might be wanting to purge invalid Japanese names from an existing database of Asians, and it's not working out at all.

sdm 3y ago

This is a bit wrong for Thailand as it doesn't mention nicknames. Or rules for using the given name vs. nicknames. Unless in very formal context it's normal to use nicknames not given names. In day to day life nicknames are by far more commonly used than given names. Family names are almost never used expect in legal documents or formal setting. It's common for people who have been friends for years to not know each other's family names as they are so rarely used in day to day life. It's also common also for friends/coworkers to not know each other's given names -- though less so than family names. Especially as you would never call someone you're friends with by their given name as it would be a bit rude. Usually in offices (unless very old fashioned) or with friends and family you'd use nicknames exclusively.

mabbo 3y ago
Since you know more about this subject, I have a question on this topic that I've wondered for over two decades. In 2001, I did a month long exchange program to Thailand. A group of eight Canadians stayed with eight Thais, and the year before they stayed with us. Incredible program. All the Thais, as you mention, had nicknames. But many of the nicknames were English words that weren't really used as names in the West. I lived with a guy named 'Knight'. Another guy was 'Farm'. Were these names Anglicized versions of Thai nicknames? Or were the actual nicknames just sometimes pulled at random from an English dictionary?
- seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  If Thailand is like China, they were English names chosen by kids in English class. Not their real nicknames, just the names they use when speaking and writing English, and chosen with all the tact and creativity of a middle schooler without much knowledge about standard English names in the west. Also, since Chinese names often have meaning, they often go for English names with meaning as well (although unrelated to their Chinese name). A famous English name in expat in China circles is Rainy.
  - mabbo 3y ago
    > A famous English name in expat in China circles is Rainy. Funny that. A friend of mine since high school - who is white and has never been to Asia - has the first name Rainey. Not a nickname. I've never met anyone else with the name!

numpad0 3y ago

There were discussions on this topic here, just 19 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37332126 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37332126 The hivemind consensus among most popular recommendations was to have a nickname field, followed by a full name field only if must, and don't try to validate names, Asian or not. Which is btw exactly how most social medias are built right now.

tamimio 3y ago

Russia is in Asia, Turkey is in Asia, Yemen is in Asia too among other countries, I think the article should be more specific than just limiting a whole continent in few countries.

karaterobot 3y ago

There are two issues, and the guidance about what order to use given names or surnames is only one part. I don't intuitively know which name is which, and it's impossible to guess whether the order given to me represents either the correct order, which I should preserve, or the incorrect order, which I should reverse. There is nothing inherent in a name that tells me what what is what; that's entirely cultural knowledge learned, traditionally, by making mistakes and being corrected. So, all else equal, it makes more sense to me to just repeat the name I've been given (by the news, for example) as it's at least conceivable they've already done the research and are using it correctly. I've also only rarely met people who even get angry if you get their name wrong, and those people seem to be angry about other things too. I can see why a public official would want to set the record straight. I have never seen a real person in the world care about this issue, including myself when I am misnamed.

boomboomsubban 3y ago

This seems like the perfect place to ask. I was recently watching an international sporting event. I watched games from South Korea and Japan, and with both countries I couldn't figure out if the Latin script name on their backs was their family name or given name. With South Korea I guessed it was their given name, someone had either Park or Moon as a name but a different name on their back. But with Japan I couldn't tell. Anyone know how they commonly handle jerseys? Searching "Japanese jersey name" was unhelpful.

mk_stjames 3y ago
How I approached this question: Googled pictures of the Japanese National baseball team, and then googled their wikipedia, noted that the english wikipedia article lists their names in western naming order (first first, family second). Matched some of the players names to the names on their jerseys in the photos. They have names on their jerseys like "Nakano" (#7) and "Okamoto" (#25) and "Nakamura" (#27) - these are their family names.
kortex 3y ago
As a really rough rule of thumb, in both Japanese and South Korean cultures, it would be fairly improper to address or refer to a "stranger" or any non-close-friend [1] by their given name. A jersey nameplate would absolutely constitute a stranger/formal context, so family name would be expected here. Even if you did not know that pretty universally, jersey nameplates/tags (and nameplates writ large) with only one name will be the family name. 1 - "stranger/non-close-friend" here means someone who you aren't already a) quite familiar with and b) in the age bracket / position in hierarchy c) in an informal friendly context. Any teacher, boss, employee, acquaintance, professional, etc, it'll be family name. Classmates, close friends, family members will usually use given name (in informal context - code switching). As an amusing aside, this is a bit of an in-joke in the anime Mushoku Tensei (Jobless Reincarnation), where the main character is often using surnames and the formal or even Keigo register with his rough-and-tumble party mates and they are like "yo why are you so formal?". But also, Park and Moon are common Korean family names. Because like the near-majority of South Koreans have the Kim surname, you'll often see initials like "H S KIM"

cat_plus_plus 3y ago

For whatever reason, my first name is almost universally mispronounced in America. So early on, I made a decision to let it go and in fact introduce myself by how most English speakers said it. No regrets whatsoever, any time spent sorting phonetics out is time wasted not getting to substance of the matter we want to discuss. I also suspect that if I made a stink about it, many people would avoid me because I have a thing they need to deal with. So I don't get the current trend where everyone is your majesty and god forbid someone mangles your name, your pronoun if you didn't make it obvious by your attire or didn't spell your country with a diacritical mark not found on their keyboard. You still know that it's you and that people are just relating to you in a way which is convinient to them right? Now get to what is it that you need to do together - write some Java code, or talk about your day or whatever.

earthboundkid 3y ago
It’s a little bit of a complicated issue. On the one hand, my great-grandfather gave up using a patronym to be an American. That’s a totally normal thing, and it’s weird to complain about it. In Japan, they were often confused about which of my names was personal and which was for my family, and they never quite figured out the deal with my middle name / initial. Cultures are different, and you can’t expect everyone in one country to know everything about another. On the other hand, some people make a big show out of not knowing how to pronounce common Indian names, and that strikes me as silly/microaggressive. Hindi is spelled phonetically in English, so it’s not very hard. On the third hand though, Chinese names are often spelled with a Romanization that wasn’t designed for use by English speakers, so of course they can’t do it. If you want them to not mangle your name, use the Yale Romanization. I think people want there to be a simple answer like “everyone just change your name to John Smith” or “if they can’t pronounce Xi Jinping, they’re racists” but simple answers don’t really apply. We’re all just going to muddle through the best we can.
- kibwen 3y ago
  > my great-grandfather gave up using a patronym to be an American I'd be interested to hear the story there. When it comes to surnames, AFAIK nearly every US state lets you put basically any arbitrary assembly of English characters as the last name for a child, with even fewer restrictions on the last names for adults.

causi 3y ago

In my opinion you should tailor your speech to your audience. Your audience getting the correct meaning is more important than them hearing the correct words. You should say things in such a way that they'll be correctly interpreted. Not doing so for the sake of pedantry is like feigning shock when a group of young people look at you askance for calling someone "niggardly".

vore 3y ago

This is a little picky, but the explanation of Chinese names given is Han-centric: there’s definitely other kinds of Chinese names too, like Tibetan and Uyghur.

NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
> there’s definitely other kinds of Chinese names too, like Tibetan and Uyghur. Xi has a solution for those irregularities.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

kube-system 3y ago

We should all really remove "first name" and "last name" from our vocabularies. They literally refer to written order, but when most (western) people use them, what they actually mean are given and family names.

diego_sandoval 3y ago
And they make little sense when someone has two family names (father and mother), because then you have to call them "first last name" and "second last name".
- kube-system 3y ago
  They make no sense in the context of this article at all, because "last name first" is nonsensical. East asians don't put their "last names first". Their first names are their surnames. Anyone who says "last name first" has the right spirit, but they still are missing the entire point. The beginning of everyone's name is their first name, because that's what "first" means.

geephroh 3y ago

This has appeared many times on HN through the years, but worth referencing again: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/ https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-...

User23 3y ago

Out of curiosity, in Asian countries do they write westerners’ names family first?

mynameisamis 3y ago

I'm from Europe but lived in Singapore for 10 years and worked with people from all over. There were a lot of names that surprised me, like the occasional man with a female name. One was named Wendy, the other one I forgot. I think he was from the Philippines, or maybe Malaysia. Many Asian languages don't have male/female names, so when the parents want to pick a western name for their newborn they don't always consider the gender (maybe that has changed nowadays). Another thing I had not come across before is fake western names. The parents want to give the kid a name that sounds western but don't want to limit themselves to the standard catalogue of names, so instead they pick two names and combine them, or one name and rearrange the letters. So you get folks named Danold, Stevid and so on.

dehrmann 3y ago
Guessing these weren't native Singaporeans (where English is an official language and British influence is still obvious)? There are also names like Leslie and Ashley that are more associated with women in the US, but have historically been gender-neutral.
- mynameisamis 3y ago
  > Guessing these weren't native Singaporeans (where English is an official language and British influence is still obvious)? Most of them were probably from other countries, but I know of at least one Singaporean lady with a fake western name. In her case the parents had arranged the syllables of her Chinese name into a European-sounding combination (quite clever IMHO and more authentic than a name from the "catalogue").
OfSanguineFire 3y ago
Someething similar to your “fake western names” has been a feature of Brazilian culture going at least back to the early 20th-century. A segment of Brazilians will give a child a name ending in “-son”,[0] even if it is invented out of whole cloth, just because an English sounding name sounds prestigious. A quick online search shows people disparaging this as a practice of the lower classes, but over the decades as some families have grown wealthier, this is widely found among the middle class, too. [0] https://portuguese.stackexchange.com/questions/8634/what-is-the-meaning-of-son-in-male-brazilian-first-names https://portuguese.stackexchange.com/questions/8634/what-is-...

itake 3y ago

Sometimes it's hard to know which Asian culture an Asian is from and under what system they are presenting their name. A Vietnamese national working n the USA may say Thanh Nguyen (with Nguyen being their family name). You basically have to memorize the top last names in every culture or just ask them what they want to be called.

abdullahkhalids 3y ago

Late to the party, but Pakistani names do not always follow the GIVEN FAMILY format. Plenty of Pakistanis have "prefix"-names arising from tribe/caste, eg. Syed, Chaudary. The prime minister in 2012-2013 Raja Pervaiz Ashraf has the prefix name Raja. The prime minister from 2002-2004 Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali, has Mir as a prefix name. Moreover, both Khan and Jamali are tribe names. Plenty follow the FAMILY GIVEN. My name follows another common format. GIVEN FATHER'S-GIVEN. There is no family name.

smusamashah 3y ago
Was looking for this comment. This guide is too simplistic. It went in some detail on variation of Indian names and I was expecting the same for Pakistan. Mine was TITLE Muhammad NAME. Some in family also have TITLE at the end of name. First name, last name OR given name, family name on forms never make sense to me.

madmax96 3y ago

The whole situation is really confusing. Some people already ``adjust'' their names for a Western audience, and others don't. So, given the <name 1> <name 2> of a Japanese person, I don't know if <name 1> is the family name or given name. Some people already make the adjustment so that Westerners get it right, some don't. I don't care either way -- I'd just prefer things be consistent so that when I recognize a Japanese name I can call them by the proper name faster :).

paulddraper 3y ago
FWIW, family name is almost one syllable (Li, Yang, Wu, etc.) Though that only helps a little because loads of given names are also one syllable. Fun Fact: 300,000 people have the name "Zhang Wei" [1] [1] https://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2020-01/20/c_138721082.htm https://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2020-01/20/c_138721082.htm
- numpad0 3y ago
  Modern Chinese family names are often one syllable, but China and Japan do not share language nor have much ancestral connections, and Japanese family names are usually not one syllable.
anotheruser13 3y ago
You could look up the n most common Japanese family names (myoji ,名字). You probably would get a list like Yamaha, Suzuki, Watanabe, Tanaka, etc. Of course, this wouldn't cover every case, but it might help. 頑張ってください！

jimworm 3y ago

> If you see a three-syllable Chinese name, you can be confident that the two-syllable name is the given name, and the one-syllable name is the family name. Statistically speaking one could be fairly confident, but as a rule it is wrong due to the presence of compound surnames. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_compound_surname https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_compound_surname

sbehere 3y ago

This "basic" guide is probably well-intentioned and useful. It does gloss over a whole range of nuances and diversity of protocols for India. Wonder if similar glossing over is happening for other countries in the list.

fnordpiglet 3y ago

Thailand is a bit over simplified. No one goes by their Pali language name. Only in a very formal or official setting would you call someone their Pali name, which can be absurdly long and difficult to say, even for Thai people. Everyone has a Thai language nickname that is simpler to say and is of their own choosing. Often the Pali names are chosen by monks to be auspicious. They are however their official names and if they sign their name or write it in a document it’ll be the Pali name.

cryptonector 3y ago

I find that knowing how to pronounce someone's name the moment you see it written gets one a modicum of brownie points. It's worth knowing how to do it. At an interview one of the people interviewing me went by just the first letter of their very long name but I asked what the full name was, so he showed me his driver's license then I pronounced it correctly on the first attempt. I got the job offer. I can't tell you that it helped or made no difference, since I didn't take the job and never got to ask. But maybe it helped, and it certainly can't have hurt (unless my interviewer felt I was showing off or something, which seems very doubtful). If you're not sure how to pronounce someone's name, then ask, though I personally would give people brownie points for trying anyways.

peskysamurai 3y ago

It seems strange that for the Sri Lankan Tamil naming convention, they use the name "V. Rudrakumaran"[1] as the example. I'm not sure I would use the name of someone with ties to LTTE as an example. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visvanathan_Rudrakumaran https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visvanathan_Rudrakumaran