<story><title>Ask HN: How to handle Asian-style “Family name first” when designing interfaces?</title><text>Our app is designed to be used across the Asia Pacific.&lt;p&gt;We have members who follow western naming conventions as well as members following common asian naming conventions.&lt;p&gt;Turns out there can be alot of variation on what is the convention.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.asiamediacentre.org.nz&amp;#x2F;features&amp;#x2F;a-guide-to-using-asian-names&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.asiamediacentre.org.nz&amp;#x2F;features&amp;#x2F;a-guide-to-using...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;How would you handle different naming conventions, so users see their name in the order they would like?&lt;p&gt;Family, Given&lt;p&gt;Given, Family</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>weinzierl</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&amp;quot;Just have a single &amp;quot;name field&amp;quot; and maybe preferred name, which is not the same.&amp;quot;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;This is the way to go.&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;&amp;quot;The family&amp;#x2F;given name format doesn&amp;#x27;t make much sense here.&amp;quot;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;It doesn&amp;#x27;t make much sense in many places all over the world. In Germany technically speaking our given names are a set and we can have many of them. While it is practically necessary to write them out in a certain order in our documents, from a legal standpoint they are all equal. There is no first and second given name and most certainly no middle name. Consequence is that  in everyday life today I can be Hans and tomorrow Fritz. I can be Hans Fritz or Fritz Hans too, but not Hans-Fritz (with a hyphen) except if it&amp;#x27;s written like that in my birth certificate and then the order is fixed and I can&amp;#x27;t decide to be Hans, Fritz or Fritz-Hans.&lt;p&gt;The trade-off in this system is that it is much harder to change your name here then in most other places.&lt;p&gt;In Bavaria where I live, the informal convention is also last name first, exactly like in Asia.</text></item><item><author>muzani</author><text>Just have a single &amp;quot;name field&amp;quot; and maybe preferred name, which is not the same. The family&amp;#x2F;given name format doesn&amp;#x27;t make much sense here.&lt;p&gt;Indian name: Sathiavelllu Arunachalam, known as SA or Seth&lt;p&gt;SE Asian ethnic Chinese names: Harry Lee Kuan Yew, (English name) (Surname) (Given name). Hated the name Harry and got it removed, though many Chinese are referred to by an English name.&lt;p&gt;Indonesian name: Fatimah Azzahra (given name only)&lt;p&gt;Malaysian name: Sharifah Azizah binti Syed Ahmad Tarmizi, (honorific surname: Sharifah) (given name: Azizah) (patronym) (father&amp;#x27;s honorific surname: Syed) (father&amp;#x27;s given name: Ahmad Tarmizi)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>FearNotDaniel</author><text>Agreed. Currently consulting for an org which is having this very debate; the consensus is leaning towards replacing FirstName&amp;#x2F;LastName with FullName (i.e how are you generally identified) and PreferredName (how do you like to be addressed).&lt;p&gt;Some additional observations from the German-speaking world (both Vienna and rural Austria):&lt;p&gt;- yes, we also often refer to people, even in everyday speech, as LastName FirstName&lt;p&gt;- often when referring to someone by name they are also given a definite article (equivalent of English &amp;quot;the&amp;quot;), e.g. &amp;quot;die Maria&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;der Gruber Hansi&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;- some people I&amp;#x27;ve encountered with a background in the German aristocracy (not Austrian, where such titles are technically abolished) have extremely long legal names with multiple prince&amp;#x2F;duke&amp;#x2F;von X und Y etc clauses. This will be their full legal name that appears in the passport and must be used when booking flights etc, but is not what they would use as &amp;quot;full name&amp;quot; in an everyday business context. So &amp;quot;Full Name&amp;quot; might not always be &amp;quot;Legal Name&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;Also in a South Asian&amp;#x2F;Indian diaspora context, it is very common for people to be addressed by a semi-formal nickname that does not appear anywhere in their legal name. Come to think of it, I know one or two Austrian aristos* who use the same approach.&lt;p&gt;* yes, technically the aristocracy is abolished but they still live in their castles and know each other&amp;#x27;s pedigrees...</text></comment>
<story><title>Ask HN: How to handle Asian-style “Family name first” when designing interfaces?</title><text>Our app is designed to be used across the Asia Pacific.&lt;p&gt;We have members who follow western naming conventions as well as members following common asian naming conventions.&lt;p&gt;Turns out there can be alot of variation on what is the convention.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.asiamediacentre.org.nz&amp;#x2F;features&amp;#x2F;a-guide-to-using-asian-names&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.asiamediacentre.org.nz&amp;#x2F;features&amp;#x2F;a-guide-to-using...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;How would you handle different naming conventions, so users see their name in the order they would like?&lt;p&gt;Family, Given&lt;p&gt;Given, Family</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>weinzierl</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&amp;quot;Just have a single &amp;quot;name field&amp;quot; and maybe preferred name, which is not the same.&amp;quot;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;This is the way to go.&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;&amp;quot;The family&amp;#x2F;given name format doesn&amp;#x27;t make much sense here.&amp;quot;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;It doesn&amp;#x27;t make much sense in many places all over the world. In Germany technically speaking our given names are a set and we can have many of them. While it is practically necessary to write them out in a certain order in our documents, from a legal standpoint they are all equal. There is no first and second given name and most certainly no middle name. Consequence is that  in everyday life today I can be Hans and tomorrow Fritz. I can be Hans Fritz or Fritz Hans too, but not Hans-Fritz (with a hyphen) except if it&amp;#x27;s written like that in my birth certificate and then the order is fixed and I can&amp;#x27;t decide to be Hans, Fritz or Fritz-Hans.&lt;p&gt;The trade-off in this system is that it is much harder to change your name here then in most other places.&lt;p&gt;In Bavaria where I live, the informal convention is also last name first, exactly like in Asia.</text></item><item><author>muzani</author><text>Just have a single &amp;quot;name field&amp;quot; and maybe preferred name, which is not the same. The family&amp;#x2F;given name format doesn&amp;#x27;t make much sense here.&lt;p&gt;Indian name: Sathiavelllu Arunachalam, known as SA or Seth&lt;p&gt;SE Asian ethnic Chinese names: Harry Lee Kuan Yew, (English name) (Surname) (Given name). Hated the name Harry and got it removed, though many Chinese are referred to by an English name.&lt;p&gt;Indonesian name: Fatimah Azzahra (given name only)&lt;p&gt;Malaysian name: Sharifah Azizah binti Syed Ahmad Tarmizi, (honorific surname: Sharifah) (given name: Azizah) (patronym) (father&amp;#x27;s honorific surname: Syed) (father&amp;#x27;s given name: Ahmad Tarmizi)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>zamalek</author><text>&amp;gt; &amp;quot;Just have a single &amp;quot;name field&amp;quot; and maybe preferred name, which is not the same.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; This is the way to go.&lt;p&gt;Agreed. Does anyone know of any reason to care about first&amp;#x2F;last, apart from it being part of My First SQL Database and sating our inner desire to create pointless taxonomies?</text></comment>