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A comment on Ask HN: How to handle Asian-style “Family name first” when designing interfaces.

Re:Ask HN: How to handle Asian-style “Family name first” whe... by joegibbs on Wednesday August 30, 2023 @11:37PM (#37332178)
Could you just have a single field for name and allow anything in that field? The only downside is you can't do something like "Hi ${FIRST_NAME}" in your emails, but the upside is that it basically handles any name or name order, e.g. Indonesian single names, Spanish names with the mother's surname included, etc.
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Re:Ask HN: How to handle Asian-style “Family name first” whe... by kaeresten_dit on Wednesday August 30, 2023 @11:52PM (#37332255)
That's probably a good way to deal with interface issue, but do you really need their family names? It is a perhaps a good time to look at which data is needed vs what data collection from users is normalized
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Re:Ask HN: How to handle Asian-style “Family name first” whe... by hairofadog on Thursday August 31, 2023 @12:05AM (#37332326)
Re: hi {first name}, I’ve had pretty good luck with a name field and then a “nickname” field that explicitly asks, “how would you like us to greet you?”
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Re:Ask HN: How to handle Asian-style “Family name first” whe... by masklinn on Thursday August 31, 2023 @01:28AM (#37332820)
> The only downside is you can't do something like "Hi ${FIRST_NAME}" in your emails

Which might be an upside, because there are cultures and contexts where it’s incredibly rude. You’re a glorified ledger, not a family member or life-long friend.

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Re:Ask HN: How to handle Asian-style “Family name first” whe... by nicbou on Thursday August 31, 2023 @03:14AM (#37333562)
And in others the formality feels off and a tell-tale sign that the sender is not from here.

I get a lot of mail from foreign readers. Indians and Pakistanis are pretty formal, and most Africans even more so. On the other hand, some people from those same countries will write stream of consciousness emails that look like a text message to their dad.

The Western countries are a lot less formal, but and frequently drop the polite form which I was raised to use with all strangers.

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