Foreign Minister Taro Kono to ask media to switch order of Japanese names

Re:Foreign Minister Taro Kono to ask media to switch order o... by thaumasiotes on Tuesday May 21, 2019 @04:01PM (#19974290)

> 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.

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Re:Foreign Minister Taro Kono to ask media to switch order o... by jasonjei on Tuesday May 21, 2019 @05:14PM (#19975127)

「劉」is being used as part of a first name in this case.

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Re:Foreign Minister Taro Kono to ask media to switch order o... by thaumasiotes on Tuesday May 21, 2019 @06:09PM (#19975639)

Yes, but I don't see what the ambiguity is supposed to be. How would you interpret the name such that the 劉 wasn't part of the given name?

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Re:Foreign Minister Taro Kono to ask media to switch order o... by jasonjei on Tuesday May 21, 2019 @06:26PM (#19975766)

On the Uber app, they only provide the given name and not the full surname. I mistakenly thought my driver was surnamed LIU, when his actual surname is JIANG. Just pointing an anecdote when I was in Taiwan

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Re:Foreign Minister Taro Kono to ask media to switch order o... by paulific on Tuesday May 21, 2019 @06:38PM (#19975853)

If you only hear it spoken, or you don't understand the naming convention and start making guesses about what you think is going on. People in countries where middle names are normal also tend to make the assume that one of the syllables is a middle name.

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Re:Foreign Minister Taro Kono to ask media to switch order o... by thaumasiotes on Wednesday May 22, 2019 @01:24AM (#19978041)

> People in countries where middle names are normal also tend to make the assume that one of the syllables is a middle name.

Some Chinese do think of it that way.

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