When Japanese people write out their names in English, they often use this convention anyway (esp. in papers and the like), since it may not be clear which name order the writer has chosen to use.
So when it's written in a English, write it English style? That's actually very reasonable, as long as Japanese publications write western names in the Japanese order.
It's not difficult to detect in Japanese either, because the set of names used for personal and surnames are different. However, both Japanese and non-Japanese alike don't follow any consistent order when writing their names in English, so neither is 'correct'. In fact it could be called a hypercorrection, similarly to using '-san' when addressing Japanese people in English.
>One person cannot speak for an entire gamut of people.
You're right, in fact the article seems to be mainly about the Japanese Foreign Minister telling other Japanese people to order their names the Japanese way in English. Notice how The Japan Times, a Japanese company, neverless continues writing his name in the English order in the article.
>There may also be great personal meaning or even simple wordplay in their name
There's a lot of personal meaning in my name. However, regardless of the ordering,the meaning and pronounciation of my name is lost the moment I write in the Latin alphabet.
In an Ideal world we would all just leave names in their original script (Which is the convention in Asian academia for non-Asian names), but we don't live in such a world; We live in a world where English speakers in the Midwest struggle to pronounce the foreign names of their own hometowns (See Pekin IL).
I don’t think it’s correct to say we’ve been writing them “incorrectly.” We have been writing the English representation of a name whose canonical representation isn’t even in English characters. The convention often is used by Japanese people themselves (for example, in corporate directories). This is simply a change in the English representation to more closely match the Japanese form.
If someone says to you their name is "John" you know how to write it. Foreign names might be weird sometimes (hi Ireland) but usually they're simple.
In Japan you have to ask everyone how to write their name because there's no standard way of spelling. And every character has (completely) different pronunciations depending on context https://www.thejapanesepage.com/tag/kanji-pronunciation/
historically, Japan officially used Western name order when communicating in Western languages. but this year it was switched, with requests going out to media organizations to update their style guides.
I think you're missing the point. Whether in katakana or in romaji (Latin script), the Japanese don't reverse our names, so there's no reason for us to do that to theirs whatever script is used.
As I said to someone else, transliteration doesn't come into it. After all, the writing system doesn't matter when speaking a name when the pronunciation is known but the orthography isn't; it still must be said in the right order.
Japanese is notorious for not having a fixed set of pronouns, and in many cases people just refer to each other (and to themselves) by their proper names.
Japanese names are written in kanji (Chinese logographic characters with semantic meaning), and pronunciation of kanji is a matter of context. Kanji in names have a variety of possible common pronunciations, meaning that when given the kanji alone the pronunciation can be ambiguous. The extra two fields are presumably for the kana (syllabary characters that are unambiguously pronounced) spelling of the names.
Even then, there are two accepted standards for sorting kana. Japanese is full of these kinds of fun exercises in writing system complexity.
I really hope this become the Standard for all Japanese names in Western Media.
It is annoying when you hear how in Japanese Anime speaks and you have subtitle or online discussion using the name in totally different order. Or other forms of Media when you know that is not how the name was suppose to work.
On Japanese forms that require you to use your name, you provide them with how your name looks in kanji, as well as how they are read (in their syllabic alphabet). When introducing yourself in speaking, you may also mention how your name is written.
It's not a problem in the sense that when you are in a position to ask someone for their name, you are also in a position to ask them for both the orthographic and phonetic versions of their name; it's just not something speakers most other language are familiar with handling.
Also note that most Japanese people you encounter will have names with a couple obvious readings. In the ?? example, Junko should be the most likely reading, followed by Atsuko, seeing as "atsu-" is typically associated with a different kanji. Similarly for Kiyoko and Akiko; in usage out of names, "kiyo-" and "aka"/"aki" are primarily written with other kanji. Since all "native-Japanese" readings for the word are typically written with other kanji, and this kanji is rarely seen in normal text with a native reading, what's left is the most common "Chinese" reading for the word, "jun".
There are more "species" of Japanese personal names, less common, including names written completely in their alphabet, or names where kanji is used only for their phonetic reading so that when written together it forms a native-Japanese word (and hence name), or archaic names with archaic or metaphorical readings, or names of foreign East-Asians that are read as an approximation of how they are pronounced in their respective native language.
Put together, most names have an obvious reading and with enough time in Japanese society you should know the obvious exceptions, but the rules for pronunciation are still sufficiently haphazard and irregular that asking for pronunciation is necessary to be sure. c.f. mispronunciation of Saoirse in English for a related phenomenon. In forms,one still does better by asking for both orthographic/phonetic rather than having a huge rulesets and tables to divine pronunciations from orthography (with necessary mispredictions), except perhaps in interactive contexts like in IMEs.
You may think this all is complex, but when it comes to names, there is always a lot of complexity to it based on historical linguistic and orthographic phenomena, but one is blind to them when one grows up in them. Consider that the pronunciation of many English cities are not what you'd expect from just looking at how they are written, or that York comes from Proto-Celtic Eburos + akom -> Latin Eboracum -> Old English Eoforwic -> Norse Jorvik -> Middle English York. Also consider that in many languages, e.g. Latin, words need to be memorized in more than one form, since historical processes make it that the stems for different tenses cannot be regularly constructed.
> […] canonical hangul version of foreigners' names […]
Like a list of names with their Hangul version? The problem is that you can't know how someone's name is pronounced for sure.
In Japanese I provide the katakana reading for my name myself, because the chance of meeting a native Japanese speaker who can correctly derive the reading of my Dutch name in katakana is remote. Fortunately, in Japan it is already customary to ask for a name's reading in kana, because kanji readings too can be ambiguous.
Names are interesting in that their pronunciation for the same spelling can vary even within a single language depending on where the person is from.
That was imprecision because I was trying to avoid the quick discussion of Japanese orthography. Like most systems in Japan dealing with names, there are separate fields for ??? and ???. (Some systems also have ?????.)
Japanese systems have wide, wide variability in what they do for ??? for people who, ahem, don't have one. Some repeat the ???. Some do so but use half-width kana (?? vs. ??). Some managers who believe that there is such a thing as an "official name" think that one's official name should go in ???, regardless of whether it is ?? or not.
A related problem: what happens when you have two systems which have different behaviors on this? For example, let's say you're a Japanese bank, and your branch employees were instructed in 2012 to update any ??? of foreigners to be the name written on their foreigner registration card, in double-width characters. Let's further suppose that your web tier does Javascript validations when you try to sign up for online banking, and because any engineer can see that DOUBLEWIDTH latin characters are not ??, this means that it is literally impossible for the web tier to match the DB for affected customers.
True story: I once told a customer that their requirement to "sort by last name" was likely impossible to satisfy without reworking the system, given what I knew about their user base. It turned out that I was right: the majority of their staff was Japanese, who expect Japanese lexicographic sort. However, they also had visiting professors from overseas, who largely could not understand Japanese lexicographic sort. (There are actually two common lexicographic sorts in Japanese, based on two ways to order the sounds of Japanese. We use the "table of fifty sounds" method, under which Tanaka comes after Aki but before Sato.)
My customers said "Fine, alright, two sort features. One for Japanese, one for foreigners."
They were less than happy when I told them that foreigners haven't agreed on lexicographic sort, either. (To use one example I'm familiar with, in Spanish, "ch" is one letter, so Chisako comes after Consuela.)
Oh, there is a separate right way to order prefectures. (Which I learned about in an email from a coworker saying "Patrick, come on, use some common sense next time. Have you ever seen prefectures listed lexicographically before?!")
>In Japanese I provide the katakana reading for my name myself
I did the same thing while living in Japan, but mostly because a rigorous, per-syllable transliteration led to a name too long to fit on most official forms, causing an occasional bureaucratic scramble.
This is unexpected and quite interesting. I think we totally gloss over the fact that we've just been writing Japanese (and Korean) names incorrectly.
I've always thought it to be quite odd, and there are exceptions too. Mun Jae-in, Kim Il-Seung, Kim Jong-Il are written correctly, so you might think political figures get a pass, yet Syngman Rhee is backwards.
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