from Hacker News

A basic guide to using Asian names

by bear_with_me on 9/19/23, 4:59 AM with 199 comments

• by cat_plus_plus on 9/19/23, 2:31 PM

  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.

• by tkgally on 9/19/23, 9:16 AM

  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/

• by asmala on 9/19/23, 10:13 AM

  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.

• by andrewaylett on 9/19/23, 9:43 AM

  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.

• by sdm on 9/19/23, 11:13 AM

  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.

• by needle0 on 9/19/23, 10:21 AM

  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.

• by mynameisamis on 9/19/23, 4:45 PM

  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.

• by SeanLuke on 9/19/23, 9:19 AM

  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?

• by itake on 9/19/23, 4:47 PM

  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.

• by mabbo on 9/19/23, 10:28 AM

  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).

• by petesergeant on 9/19/23, 10:09 AM

  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

• by chrismorgan on 9/19/23, 9:08 AM

  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”.

• by andrewaylett on 9/19/23, 9:50 AM

  It's always worth referencing the classic Falsehoods programmers believe abut names: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-...

  (I think this is the original "Falsehoods programmers believe about ..."?)

• by jhvkjhk on 9/19/23, 8:32 AM

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

• by madmax96 on 9/19/23, 6:05 PM

  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 :).

• by vdddv on 9/19/23, 10:21 AM

  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.

• by riffraff on 9/19/23, 9:07 AM

  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)

• by numpad0 on 9/19/23, 11:43 AM

  There were discussions on this topic here, just 19 days ago: 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.

• by kqr on 9/19/23, 9:27 AM

  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!

• by kube-system on 9/19/23, 3:20 PM

  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.

• by abdullahkhalids on 9/19/23, 5:54 PM

  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.

• by karaterobot on 9/19/23, 2:26 PM

  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.

• by mathieuh on 9/19/23, 11:10 AM

  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?

• by geephroh on 9/19/23, 4:30 PM

  This has appeared many times on HN through the years, but worth referencing again:

  https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-...

• by cryptonector on 9/19/23, 7:38 PM

  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.

• by biztos on 9/19/23, 10:23 AM

  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.

• by fnordpiglet on 9/19/23, 7:10 PM

  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.

• by keiferski on 9/19/23, 10:07 AM

  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

• by jimworm on 9/19/23, 6:12 PM

  > 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

• by peskysamurai on 9/19/23, 11:30 PM

  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

• by causi on 9/19/23, 2:30 PM

  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".

• by sbehere on 9/19/23, 6:43 PM

  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.

• by tamimio on 9/19/23, 12:57 PM

  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.

• by hoseja on 9/19/23, 10:02 AM

  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?

• by vore on 9/19/23, 2:50 PM

  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.

• by User23 on 9/19/23, 4:43 PM

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

• by quickthrower2 on 9/19/23, 9:18 AM

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

• by boomboomsubban on 9/19/23, 2:31 PM

  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.