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.
But the optimistic view is that the name order normalization is motivated primarily by the desire to minimize confusion among speakers of the language in question (in this case, English). Using the Western name order for Japanese names in English could simply be a straightforward way to translate names without requiring a lot of additional explanation to English speakers. That’s the same reason we almost always transliterate the Japanese names in English, and I don’t see much argument to stop doing that.
To me it seems like a better idea is to promulgate the convention of uppercasing the English family name in contexts where different name orders are likely to appear. I believe I have seen that convention on TV broadcasts of the Olympics, and it seems like a good idea.
This is fantastic. Living in both the English and Japanese-speaking worlds, it'll be nice not having to go through mental gymnastics to remember how to call somebody in whichever language. I think consistency is preferable; it's surely not impossible for people to be educated on name order.
Doing it for some languages and not others is inconsistent and certainly confusing as well, if said languages share the same cultural conventions when it comes to people's names, as it is the case here.
Again, having the Japanese following Western rules instead of their own as an exception compared to Chinese, Korean, etc, makes no sense. If we're arguing for adapting to Western order, then do it for the Chinese and others too.
>I use "GivenName FamilyName" when speaking English and "FamilyName GivenName" when speaking Japanese. I assumed this was the default.
I only notice this in Japanese Anime and Movie DUP and I thought it was very strange. In writing in English, GivenName : FamilyName makes sense because that is how all English speaking countries work, but when you speaks it in that order, it all went off.
In Hong Kong most people have a Christian / English name so it isn't much of a problem. Although this tradition will likely erode away for obvious reasons.
Right. I am not disagreeing with you. I am pointing out that Chinese/Japanese both adopt Western name ordering for Western names in an effort to demonstrate that Chinese or Japanese name ordering should be adhered in English. Would you kindly inform me what I said is wrong?
Sir Kazuo. With some exceptions - Japanese people "normalize" their names to English name order of Given Name, Family Name when writing or speaking in English. Some choose not to, usually out of national pride, but it is most common to normalize the name to the target language.
I don't know, name systems seem to quickly betray their origin in little sentences of specificity in the languages used at the time, before they became systematized according to common western practice (if that even happened, depending on culture).
John? John who? Oh, "John the Smith" with time, the is dropped - the name is carried forward despite people's profession, people post-facto come up with systems for "First" and "Last" names, but the order remains.
In Japanese, grammar flows the other way, "Ken of the mountain field" is written "Yama no Ta no Ken", "Yamada Ken" because of grammar though, the surname still comes first.
And the biggest one is Patronymic names that maintain the untouched grammar of specifying who you mean based on who's kid they are "Ori, Eric's daughter." = "Ori Ericsdottir", "Mateo's Luis" "Luis de Mateo", "O'Connor" "ibn `Amr" etc. etc.
I really don't see how it "It disregards the cultural history of names". As far as I'm concerned the order of the names is just a minor grammatical difference.
Japan seems content with "Japan" for now but they have been trying to get English speakers to say Japanese names with the family name first recently, but it hasn't really caught on outside of state organs. Note this NHK article about the funeral of "Abe Shinzo" attended by current PM "Kishida Fumio." https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20220712_31/ (NHK is a state-run public broadcaster.)
I do wonder why we say Chinese and Korean names in the proper "backwards" order but have historically flipped Japanese names.
I think taking people names as an example is extreme because when Japanese people give a name to a baby, they choose both a phonological sign and a kanji-based transcription: phonologically, they tend to pick quite a common name (like christian names in the west, contrasting it with the native-american names that are a lot more specific to the person), but try to be clever and original when it comes to writing it with kanjis.
And I'm not even sure Amazon has an additional input field just for the sake of sorting names. Isn't this a common practice in the country ? (if I have to call a customer, how am I supposed to greet her if I can't pronounce her name ?)
That's one part but another is names that use kyuujitai (pre-simplified kanji forms) or names that use unusual readings because if you're named after your father's (father's father's....) name then the pronunciation of your name might not have evolved the same way the reading of the kanji has in actual words. Also regional uses that get replaced by standardised uses in words but not names. Or someone just made it up generations ago and it caught on. Or your ancestor didn't know how to write and just picked a kanji they thought was right.
Even in English this happens, look at all the variations of Robert (Rob, Bob, Robb, Robbie, Bobbie, ...) or similar names.
> By comparison, at the moment, East Asian people typically re-order their names to fit Western norms in Western contexts, which by the the opposite token implies that the name ordering isn't that important, and doesn't carry any significance to the person who wears the name.
As mentioned in the article, only the Japanese do this. (Well, Hungarians do too, but they're not even West Asian.) East Asians except for the Japanese do not reorder their names. Normal practice for a Chinese person would be to use an English name in English contexts.
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.
There are also differences with how surname/given name ordering translates between languages. For example, a Chinese name like Xi Jinping has Xi as the surname and is rendered in that order in both Chinese and English. A Japanese name like Shinzo Abe is rendered in Japanese as Abe Shinzo with Abe as the surname.
It's fundamentally impossible to sort lists of people from different cultures, because collation differs.
Say you have the last-names ?? (SATO) and ?? (NAKAMURA). In Japanese, collation is based on the kana sounds, so ?? -> ? (SA) and ?? -> ? (NA). But the ??? (gojuon) ordering of the kana has ? before ?, so ?? should be before ??.
Good luck attempting to do a culturally-neutral ordering of ??, ?? and JONES - someone is going to be confused.
It is notable that in English, Chinese names are generally written given-family, but in French the original family-given order is preserved. I'm curious how other languages handle this -- any takers?
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