5 ms·

A Russian friend living in Japan noted that, at least as of a decade ago, a decent number of government services (for citizens) allowed something like 6 charact

A Russian friend living in Japan noted that, at least as of a decade ago, a decent number of government services (for citizens) allowed something like 6 characters max for the entire name. This is because Japanese names are normally written compactly in Kanji, but it becomes a problem when your name is 15 Katakana or 25 Latin characters long.

Joker_vD 3mo ago
"Константин Константинович Константинопольский" is a somewhat popular example of what one's design (graphical, computer system, whatever) should realistically allow for.
- YeGoblynQueenne 3mo ago
  Ah... "Constantin Constantinovitch Constantino... pushkin"? Don't want to check it out online, just curious how well I can read Cyrillic as a native Greek speaker.
  - Joker_vD 3mo ago
    "Constantinopolsky", it's "Constantinopol" plus "-sky" which is for forming adjectives, so essentially it means "Constantinopolean".
    - YeGoblynQueenne 3mo ago
      Aha! Thanks! My eyes get very confused with the ин and the ий. I expect и to be the consonant and н the vowel but it seems like they're ... not?
      - Joker_vD 3mo ago
        Yeah, they're opposite. I suggest taking a look at the rows 10 and 16 of the table at [0]: as you can see, those letters originally had their horizontal stroke differently slanted, but in time, the slant... slanted further, and turned "Ν" (GREEK CAPITAL LETTER NU) into "Н" (CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER EN), and "Η" (GREEK CAPITAL LETTER ETA) into "И" (CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER I). You know, looking at that table, this alphabet is surprisingly fitting for modern Polish phonology, it even has nasal vowels. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Cyrillic_alphabet#Alphabet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Cyrillic_alphabet#Alphab...
        YeGoblynQueenne 3mo ago
        >> Yeah, they're opposite. I suggest taking a look at the rows 10 and 16 of the table at [0]: as you can see, those letters originally had their horizontal stroke differently slanted, but in time, the slant... slanted further, and turned "Ν" (GREEK CAPITAL LETTER NU) into "Н" (CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER EN), and "Η" (GREEK CAPITAL LETTER ETA) into "И" (CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER I). Weird! >> You know, looking at that table, this alphabet is surprisingly fitting for modern Polish phonology, it even has nasal vowels. Oh dear. Now I need to look those up.
nxc18 3mo ago
Even something as simple as buying a movie ticket can require submitting a name using only Japanese characters.
- mc3301 3mo ago
  It has always been ridiculous, but getting more and more since everything much match each other perfectly. MyNumber, bank, credit card, residence card and passport... There are a few services I outright can't use because my name doesn't fit in their system, and this is after weeks of phone calls with real people. (Note, it's Rakuten iDeco I'm talking about here)
tkgally 3mo ago
When I moved to Japan in 1983, not much was computerized and I was able to use my preferred short version of my name--eight letters or five katakana, surname last in both cases--for nearly everything. But over the years more and more places started requiring that names be input into labeled fields, which would reverse the given-name surname order. And many places started to insist on the same name as on my passport--nineteen letters, eleven or twelve katakana, depending on how I wrote it. Many input forms don't allow so many characters, none that I have encountered distinguish first from middle names, and there's usually no way to link that long name to the short name that I have been using for work and in daily life for more than forty years. It's a constant annoyance, not just for me but for other people.
makeitdouble 3mo ago
This also usually applies to bank accounts, they have a character limit of around 16 characters for the whole name in most banks. Of course it's not explicited in most places as 16 chars for a standard Japanese name is an exception, and some applications will silently cut when sending to their backend. It's as fun as you can imagine it to be.

Joker_vD 3mo ago

"Константин Константинович Константинопольский" is a somewhat popular example of what one's design (graphical, computer system, whatever) should realistically allow for.

YeGoblynQueenne 3mo ago
Ah... "Constantin Constantinovitch Constantino... pushkin"? Don't want to check it out online, just curious how well I can read Cyrillic as a native Greek speaker.
- Joker_vD 3mo ago
  "Constantinopolsky", it's "Constantinopol" plus "-sky" which is for forming adjectives, so essentially it means "Constantinopolean".
  - YeGoblynQueenne 3mo ago
    Aha! Thanks! My eyes get very confused with the ин and the ий. I expect и to be the consonant and н the vowel but it seems like they're ... not?
    - Joker_vD 3mo ago
      Yeah, they're opposite. I suggest taking a look at the rows 10 and 16 of the table at [0]: as you can see, those letters originally had their horizontal stroke differently slanted, but in time, the slant... slanted further, and turned "Ν" (GREEK CAPITAL LETTER NU) into "Н" (CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER EN), and "Η" (GREEK CAPITAL LETTER ETA) into "И" (CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER I). You know, looking at that table, this alphabet is surprisingly fitting for modern Polish phonology, it even has nasal vowels. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Cyrillic_alphabet#Alphabet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Cyrillic_alphabet#Alphab...
      - YeGoblynQueenne 3mo ago
        >> Yeah, they're opposite. I suggest taking a look at the rows 10 and 16 of the table at [0]: as you can see, those letters originally had their horizontal stroke differently slanted, but in time, the slant... slanted further, and turned "Ν" (GREEK CAPITAL LETTER NU) into "Н" (CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER EN), and "Η" (GREEK CAPITAL LETTER ETA) into "И" (CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER I). Weird! >> You know, looking at that table, this alphabet is surprisingly fitting for modern Polish phonology, it even has nasal vowels. Oh dear. Now I need to look those up.

nxc18 3mo ago

Even something as simple as buying a movie ticket can require submitting a name using only Japanese characters.

mc3301 3mo ago
It has always been ridiculous, but getting more and more since everything much match each other perfectly. MyNumber, bank, credit card, residence card and passport... There are a few services I outright can't use because my name doesn't fit in their system, and this is after weeks of phone calls with real people. (Note, it's Rakuten iDeco I'm talking about here)

tkgally 3mo ago

When I moved to Japan in 1983, not much was computerized and I was able to use my preferred short version of my name--eight letters or five katakana, surname last in both cases--for nearly everything. But over the years more and more places started requiring that names be input into labeled fields, which would reverse the given-name surname order. And many places started to insist on the same name as on my passport--nineteen letters, eleven or twelve katakana, depending on how I wrote it. Many input forms don't allow so many characters, none that I have encountered distinguish first from middle names, and there's usually no way to link that long name to the short name that I have been using for work and in daily life for more than forty years. It's a constant annoyance, not just for me but for other people.

makeitdouble 3mo ago

This also usually applies to bank accounts, they have a character limit of around 16 characters for the whole name in most banks. Of course it's not explicited in most places as 16 chars for a standard Japanese name is an exception, and some applications will silently cut when sending to their backend. It's as fun as you can imagine it to be.