Capitalization is particularly useful for Chinese names where names are not written in Chinese symbols (hanzi/漢字) because the romanized names could be ambiguous as to what is the first name; for example: 江劉鋒 JIANG Liufeng (where both Jiang and Liu could be potential Chinese surnames)

On the other hand, it'd be pretty hard for the surname to occur in the middle of the name, where you have the 刘.

Some Chinese do think of it that way.

我是中文学生 :)

Funnily the first thing you learn in Chinese is how to say who you are. But there's very little help with actually picking a Chinese name!

SOH - family name

Kam - 'generational' name (same as for my brothers)

Yung - my given name

For simplicity, I usually add a hyphen (Kam-Yung) in my name to make it easier for people to refer to me in non-formal settings, i.e. I should be called "Kam Yung" or "Mr. Soh".

Calling me "Kam" (it has happened) is nonsensical from my point of view.

But I think emphasizing the given name offers better UX so given name should be all caps and family name should be all lowercase like this: YUNG Kam soh or soh Kam YUNG.

How? You are introducing a custom capitalization convention nobody uses. People expect the UPPERCASED name, if present, to be the surname (or whatever you can sensible put after Mr/Ms). Going against strong conventions is not a good user experience.

Would just Yung be ok?

For me, that's only for family members and very close friends. :-)

It's like a personal nickname that you feel comfortable with if only a close circle of people use.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_name

This stopped for much of the mainland in the last century due to a few revolutions that happened there.

Not at all. Nowadays there are hundreds of millions of people in Mainland China with a single-character given name. Case in point: former tennis player Li Na, former basketball player Yao Ming.

I say "Mainland China" because I notice people from Hongkong and Taiwan have mostly two-character given names.

Any 'always' cases with names are never to be trusted. https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-...

surname = "last" name = family name

It depends, I think. I don't know about all of China, but in some places they alternate the length of the given name by generation (e.g. if you have a two-character given name, you give your children a one-character name, and vice versa).

Mostly in Old, Traditional or Southern part of China.

But ya, it is a matter of preference.

The person commonly known as Sun Yat-sen in the west. His given name is 文, he used it to sign all official documents.