If I sign up for an account, but the invoice is going to the billing department of my company, why do you care what my real name is?
Otherwise there should be not a lot of reasons to parse and format Asian names, as suggested plenty times over here. If the incoming invoice has to go through legal checks first, the requirement shall be as codified and supplied, whether it's that the name shall be written back to front or in purple on red.
Maybe I'm just overthinking, likely I am.
Because the billing department verifies bills before paying them, and needs to know who to ask about the bill?
And if people really don't want the supplier to know their name, they just type "IT Procurement" into the name field.
I only use POs with my customers. I'm based in Sweden, doing work mostly in Germany, Switzerland, and England, as software sales and contract work. No one has even blinked.
In Swedish it's called a inköpsorder, but often abbreviated PO.
As an example, https://www.betydelse-definition.com/ink%C3%B6psorder has "Inköpsordern (ofta säker man PO som är kort för Purchase Order) är det viktigaste dokumentet i en inköpsverksamhet och är ett avtal mellan två parter. POn definierar vad som köps in och under vilka villkor och förutsättningar."
In English: "The purchase order (often said PO, which is short for Purchase Order) is the most important document in a purchasing operation and is an agreement between two parties. The PO defines what is bought in and under what conditions and requirements."
Looking around, here's a description of purchase order use in the UK: https://gocardless.com/guides/posts/guide-to-purchase-orders...
> Purchase orders are a helpful part of the procurement process, allowing business owners to keep track of incoming orders and to monitor stock levels. It’s a way to see exactly what money is being spent where and at what moment. In some cases, purchase orders are a basic requirement for doing business. Many government agencies and authorities insist upon PO forms being issued before they’ll agree to settle an invoice.
It wasn't hard to find similar examples for other European countries.
There are plenty of situations where you need their full legal name as per passport or other form of identification. In here it's often some form of anti-money laundering laws. The first time I came across it was for a game show where you could win money, but to take the money out of the app, the law required some legal identification.
A simple, unimportant one: how do you politely address the person? In Germany, you'd start a letter with "Sehr geehrte Frau Dr. Musterfrau", which implies knowing the last name, gender and title of the person. You can drop the title, but dropping the gender makes the whole thing impersonal. Using the full name feels off.
In my case, it was to address a resignation notice, so it was a bit of a nitpick with no legal consequences. However in other cultures and scenarios it can matter a lot more.
So I guess it also depends a lot on to which degree the app is localized.
I imagine that it's not France either? French has similar greetings, with the same indecisiveness around the polite/casual pronouns. There's the added challenge of Quebec where casual pronouns are far more commonly used.
There's also the trap of "mademoiselle" which is no longer used because we no longer care about a woman's marital status. It's the same as with Fraulein.
You are right that rules might need to be made by country. The beauty of small scale solutions is that you can sweat small things like this instead of applying Silicon Valley sensibilities to the entire world.
Even this presents problems, as countries like Singapore have multiple overlapping cultures with unique naming conventions. Likewise, India encompasses many languages and even unique naming conventions within those languages.
An example with Italian. Welcome is benvenuto for men and benvenuta for women. Welcome back is either bentornato or bentornata. It's impossible to use them unless we ask for the genre of the customer or use a DB / AI to infer it from the name. We still need a way to let the customer fix any mistake, a mistake which would probably be unwelcome.
So the common workaround is to use words like ciao, which is informal and possibly not well received by older people, or buongiorno which is OK for most of the day but not in the night (good morning vs good evening) or just use the name.
Best solution, if you don't need names to serve your service or because of regulations, don't ask them, use only the email address and make GDPR happier.
That way, you don’t strictly know their gender, you don’t have to ask for it, just what grammar construct they prefer you use.
1, the easy one: there might be more that one inflected form (gendered) in the UI and it could be tedious for the user to select all of them. Of course by choosing one we can automatically set the others.
2, the substantial one: strictly speaking the users don't tell us about their gender but there are strong hints about what they are, given the statistics of the general population and the name they gave us. I'm not sure how the Privacy Authority of a EU country would look at that but IANAL.
Furthermore we're starting to make our app enter the rabbit hole of non binary gender identities and to handle that we would have spend more time and money for maybe no reason.
I give an example that covers all those points:
Of my current customers one is running a service for which they are mandated to collect personal data. They must know the official gender as in the official ID documents of the country. Anything more than that could be nice but it is not necessary and would be probably unexpected by users, maybe even looked at suspiciously.
Another customer is running a B2B service. They need only a username and the company email of the users. If they want to welcome them with Benvenuto/a, Bienvenido/a, Bienvenu/ue they would have to ask for a bit of personal data that could put them needlessly into the scope of GDPR.
It's a minefield!
The "addressing people by their first name and using Du instead of Sie" is indeed handled very differently in different companies. I consider myself lucky to work for a company where "Du" and first name is the rule, so I don't have to keep an internal list of colleagues which I can use "Du" with...
Seeing all the title drop down when subscribing to the economist (UK) made it clear to me it is a thing there too, at least in some circles.
This is I think solved with asking how people want to be addressed. It also helps deal with situations where someone's legal name isn't how they are usually referred to.
The other issue is that the full name is used in the address, but only the last name in the greeting. There are no apartment numbers in Germany, so the name in the address must match the name on the mailbox. There can also be a lot of "Herr Müller" working at the same address.
In the end I opted for Mr/Mrs/Other + first and last name, and dropped the title. It's good enough for this purpose, but it shows how tricky something like a name can get, especially if the person filling the form is not aware of all this.
To give a bit of context I help people as a courtesy when the information on my website does not suffice. If readers can't be arsed to say hello before they ask for a few minutes of my time, I quietly wonder who raised them. Imagine walking up to a retail employee and blurting out "I need printer paper" without saying "hello" or "excuse me".
No it doesn't. Just ask how they want to be addressed. You can't encode all the possible variants, not everyone in Germany will want to be addressed in that way even if they are both a woman and a doctor.
I always feel awkward responding to them, because I don't know if I'm typing `Hello $FIRSTNAME` or `Hello $LASTNAME`.
I mean otherwise it's like literally any other communication medium, and you'll have to either take a culturally-appropriate respectful best effort guess at a preferred address, or just ask.
Are you aware that it is polite to start a convo with people from South Asia with a small greeting? They wait for you to ack. If you don't ack, they will not continue.
It is an important part of intercultural communication to continuously adapt to different communication styles.
Why don't people write a tiny chatbot that applies to certain users? When the person says: "Hello." The bot can reply: "Hello!" It seems easy enough.
Which is possibly one of the (admittedly probably very minor) reasons why they were left so far behind economically. Focusing on form over function in communication can be very counterproductive.
Not that I'm saying that saying "Hello, how are you?" to someone is waste of time. However certain people/cultures really go overboard with this and expected outsider to comply with these norms when they have much better things to do is not the most sensible idea.
I'm not claiming to be an expert on the matter, but I have a lot to say on it. (Shocker! Someone on the internet with an opinion! (: )
I believe you may have hit on the crux of the thing, if by accident. From my own perspective, it seems that the proper greeting is the most important matter - it is more important than the work you have in mind. There is no "better things to do", because the relation and respect of the thing leads to those work things.
Maybe giving an few examples would make some kind of sense.
Example 1:
"I am in a rush I can't follow formalities!"
"I don't deal with people who rush."
Example 2:
Imagine someone who pees on the floor in your house because they exclaim that, "It is too much effort to go to the bathroom, access the toilet, and clean up afterward!" Would you invite that person back into your house after that? Would you have a desire to work with them, and keep a beneficial relationship going with them? Maybe? Depending on who they are, or what the circumstance is, but for most circumstances, sensible people would answer with a very firm, "No. Of course not!" because what they did is gross and rude. What they did is plainly disrespectful - it is a disrespect of laziness and indifference. They do solely what benefits themselves and have no interest in how that may impact you. It is contemptuous.
In my mind, a working relationship, is the result of having a relationship with that person. It is something that advances from having a bond with that person. You offer them respect, they return it, and in doing so you can be assured that they aren't a crazy person, or are going to do something that puts you in a terrible spot. The fruit of that respect, that bond, is a relationship that permits you to work with them.
You are entitled to no adaptation from others. Your reactions to their "errors" are your problem, and your responsibility, although of course you can choose to start a fight over whatever you want.
On the other hand, if you do not adapt to them, sometimes they will choose to start a fight over it, or be offended, or whatever. As such, if you want to improve your social outcomes, consider allocating energy to adapting to others.
See? Simple. No centralized decision-making necessary. Each person can ruin their own life however they choose.
Asking for a hello is holding the information until I'm engaged, at which point we should just meet for 5 minutes because it will be faster.
Say, you're in the same town as a friend and want to meet them. The American approach might be to ask, "Hey, I'm in town. Want to hang out?" The sender has done their job of delivering a clear message.
But some cultures would just say, "Hey, I'm in town."
That removes the pressure from the other person to say no, I don't want to see you.
You can also bat it back and say, "Joe's is a nice place to eat if you like burgers," which hints that you're available to have lunch together, but it could also mean a polite "ok".
But the ack is there to make sure the other person is paying attention before delivering the message, so they don't misinterpret it.
I don't necessarily think one is better. TCP vs UDP. If it's an important message, an American might still say, "We have to talk."
Mandatory reference to nohello.net/en/
Clickable English: https://nohello.net/en/
Starting a full message with your request/business with a greeting is basic decency with no harm.
Really? Your parents named you the exact same name as a famous politician?
Also it was his grandfather that gave him the name “Harry”, not his parents.
The fragment "Hated the name Harry and got it removed" probably means "[He] hated the name Harry and got it removed", not "[I] hated the name Harry and got it removed". The grammar is acceptable in many contexts.
So:
* honorific surname: Sharifah * given name: Azizah * father's honorific surname: Syed * father's given name: Ahmad Tarmizi * address me as: Zaphod Beeblebrox the 4th
This is the way to go.
"The family/given name format doesn't make much sense here."
It doesn'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's written like that in my birth certificate and then the order is fixed and I can't decide to be Hans, Fritz or Fritz-Hans.
The trade-off in this system is that it is much harder to change your name here then in most other places.
In Bavaria where I live, the informal convention is also last name first, exactly like in Asia.
It's probably a Roman thing. Julius Caesar was actually "Caesar, of the gens Julia", so last-name first.
In Italy we also used to list last-name first, particularly in official and military communications. This has changed significantly in the last 40 years, particularly in everyday bureaucracy, but it's still used by police and other bodies.
In France they seem to prefer <LAST NAME> (yes, all caps) <First name> even for less formal things.
Also this "reversal" had me confused when we hosted a French exchange student without knowing French (I spoke German, but the teachers knew my family were happy to host if they needed). His name was written like "KHALID Mohamed" and he was very polite so he didn't really correct me when I was calling him "Khalid", and since I was unfamiliar with Algerian names I had experience to suggest "Khalid" was more surname-y than firstname-y. It sorted itself out after a day or two though :-)
Julius Caesar has the 'group/last' name first because it doesn't include his first name at all: including it he would be Gaius Julius Caesar. The cognomen (there Caesar), meanwhile, was a bit of an inconsistent mess that in various times and contexts could be personal, hereditary, honorific, given, adopted...
[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_naming_conventions
So Caesar's close relatives were all also called Caesar, which is how it got to be an imperial title. You might think that with the original cognomen locked into place for such families, members would get a second cognomen so that there would be at least one part of their name that could identify them. But apparently not.
The whole part about the Roman naming system indicating heritage became even more complicated when Caracalla (properly named Marcus Aurelius Antoninus) made every free man in the Empire a Roman citizen and now basically everyone was called "Marcus Aurelius" without ever having had any ties to the Aurelii family.
There is very likely no connection. The introduction of surnames in Germany took place in the 15th century (somewhat earlier in German speaking parts of Switzerland). In Franconia, the "ethnic" distinct northern part of which is today Bavaria and which was never a part of the Roman empire, the last-name first custom also occurs in a few places such as Bamberg.
In inscriptions (short): CAIVS IVLIVS CAESAR
In speaking he would (in English;)) rather formally introduce himself as "Gaius of the Iulii, called Caesar".
His mother called him Gaius, his peers called him Caesar once he got or choose?) this name.
His father was 'Gaius Julius Caesar' his grandfather (supposedly the first 'Ceasar') was 'Sextus Julius Caesar'.
The Cognomen is presumable something that evolved as a way to tell apart people belonging to different branches of the same family/clan because the number of first names was very limited.
Initially, it was more of a nickname or even an earned name, like with Caesars contemporary Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus.
Nicer than his other nickname 'adulescentulus carnifex ("teenage butcher") ' I guess..
But yeah, the cognomen seems weird/hard to understand e.g. Pompey's dad was called Strabo but he seems to have never used that name himself, while other like Ceasa, Metellus or Cicero were pretty much just surnames.
Romans probably found their naming system as confusing as we do so they started using nicknames ad hoc.
It was even more awful if you were a woman, you technically didn't even have your own name until the imperial period. You and your sisters would just be called Aemilia I, Aemilia II, III etc (or the 'elder'/'younger'). if your father was belonged to the Aemilius clan for example...
Only that... it didn't? The vast majority of bureaucracy and even many private entities in Italy use and strongly prefer the "Surname Birthname" format.
I believe that it's mostly the English speaking world that is strict with having "first name" first and "last name" last.
It's not an Asian cultural feature to have family name first, but it's an English speaking thing to have it last.
OP isn't trying to use his software in Asia specifically. He's just adapting to non US market.
In languages like Japanese or Hungarian, that's what family name first means.
Some additional observations from the German-speaking world (both Vienna and rural Austria):
- yes, we also often refer to people, even in everyday speech, as LastName FirstName
- often when referring to someone by name they are also given a definite article (equivalent of English "the"), e.g. "die Maria" or "der Gruber Hansi"
- some people I'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/duke/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 "full name" in an everyday business context. So "Full Name" might not always be "Legal Name".
Also in a South Asian/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.
* yes, technically the aristocracy is abolished but they still live in their castles and know each other's pedigrees...
But those informal regional order conventions? I read them as formalized disrespect for the individual: "you're not Hans who happens to be a Müller, you're a Müller who happens to be Hans. And the Müllers, they are part of us, so subsume!" Those regional things can be quite peculiar: a childhood memory of my mother (northern Germany) is that as a child she was sometimes referred to as given name + name of the family farm, I suspect not in that order. With that farm's name still being the name of the family that ran ran it before her family took over, at some point between the thirty years war and the industrial revolution.
That has a very "part of the crew, part of the ship" feeling to it. Work the land, become the land, you're named for the land that you work! With marital status, who your father was, your family's occupation, and where you're working, all in a name, résumés needn't be a thing.
Another difference between northern and southern Germany is the Munich-Du and the Hamburg-Sie. In standard German we use the formal pronoun Sie with the last name in formal situations and the informal pronoun Du with the given name in informal situations. Nowadays in semi-formal situations, like between colleagues at work, it's completely informal but two or three decades ago it wasn't. Officially the workplace was supposed to be formal and often it was, but in many cases a mixture between formal and informal forms was common.
In the north people tended to use the formal Sie but in conjunction with the given name, like Markus, können sie bitte das Auto holen." (Marcus, can thee get the car, please.), whereas in Bavaria the opposite combination of informal Du combined with the family name was prevalent, like *"Du, Frau Müller, kannst Du bitte das Auto holen." (You, Mrs. Miller, can you get the car please.)
Two notes:
First, you'd use "thou" here, as it's the nominative case, and the correct conjugation would be "canst".
Secondly, "thee" and "thou" were very much the form used to speak to a close friend or social inferior in early modern English. "You" functioned more like French "vous" or German "Sie"- as either a plural formation or a formal address of a social superior.
With that in mind, it would probably be more accurate to say that they should be rendered "Marcus, can you get the car, please?" and "Mrs. Miller, canst thou get the car, please?" And notice the parallel between "canst thou" and "kannst Du"!
I disambiguate my grandparents via the name of the farmhouse they live in, rather than the last names. I am from austria. But I dunno how common that is.
> This is the way to go.
Agreed. Does anyone know of any reason to care about first/last, apart from it being part of My First SQL Database and sating our inner desire to create pointless taxonomies?
In an ebook management system I've been developing, I use a full_name and a sort_name field for authors/editors/contributors, because books are a reasonable thing to want to sort by author names.
For example, in my studies I had cause to read many books by Hans Urs von Balthasar. Nobody ever referred to him as "von Balthasar," just "Balthasar," but his books were always sorted by the "von."
I'm pretty sure I've seen a by-name sorting scheme that excludes these sorts of prefixes for alphabetisation purposes. Of course, then you have to second guess whether you are using such a sorting system :)
It's never not going to.
So, our software has a whole pile of names... FML, preferred, mailing, formal, sort name, and probably a few others I'm forgetting. It's a mess.
I don't think there's an easy fix to this. Not everyone has a first and a last name, but in many places, cultural conventions (or legal practice) assume that you do.
Another reason is being able to generate various forms automatically: i.e. from "Fstname:William Robert, Lstname:Smith" to generate "William Robert Smith", "W.R. Smith", "Bill Smith", or just "Bill" without storing any of these variants separately.
Of course this may fail if "William" prefers to be called "Will", not "Bill"...
Everybody has a First name and Last name (unless they are mononymic), even if this doesn’t correspond semantically to what the writer of the form anticipated.
Many people don’t have a Family name and this creates user confusion when filling out forms.
However, I don't do this. If I want someone's name so I can talk to them, I just ask them "what do you want us to call you?" with a single field (and if they enter "Captain HugePenis" then I cheerfully start the email "Hello Captain HugePenis,"). I only use Given/Family if I need their official name for bureaucracy reasons, and then it's very much "what's your name as it is written in your passport/id?", and I don't use it to address them, because it's very easy to get wrong.
What you call them is always better done as a separate single field, rather than trying to concatenate the official name fields.
Then, if I started getting spam to that name, I knew who sold me out.
It was especially useful for physical spam mail that wasn't coming to an email address. I discovered quite quickly which magazine gave all my info to every company that wanted it.
Yes, there are people with only one. There is/was a fairly well-known example in UK network infrastructure circles. That's a problem in either system if you make the fields required.
Given/family removes ambiguity for a larger number of humans than first/last, but you're always going to run into something from the Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names list so unless you can get away with just a single "name" field (and you can't always) it's the better option of the two.
My partner has only given names. When forms ask for their “Family name”, my internal thought process goes like this:
1. WTF do I write here?
2. Why are they asking for Family name? Oh they are probably just Anglophone and assume this is how names are.
3. It’s okay, just lie on the form then.
Then I choose their final given name and write it in the family name field.
This kind of enforced microdishonesty grates on the user over time. It certainly makes me grumpy!
First and last name is better because it’s not imposing a structure that may not exist. The burden of that false structure goes on the service rather than the user.
Your partner and billion others from their cultural sphere with single-field name system is a testament that concatenated two-field name system is the problem and is actually not working due to the falsehoods, not that the first/last nomenclature is better than given/family which is much less ambiguous.
I dunno. The former places the cognitive load on the user. The latter places no additional cognitive load on either party.
After all, what exactly do you mean by "Family Name" and how sure are you that meaning you have is shared by even a significant minority of cultures and people? How many countries have passports that label each name in the name field as a "given" name or a "family name"? How many countries have their revenue service care about whether a "given" name is to be used or a "family" name?
OTOH, to figure out which name is first and which name is last, all the user has to do is look at their ID, which they have presumably seen thousands of times already.
First/last at least has the benefit that, to the user filling in the form, they don't have to think about it - the first name on the ID goes first, the last name on their ID goes last. They can leave out anything in the middle because the form didn't ask them for it!
The problem isn't the NAME, the problem is the addressing of that person which can be only be solved by by adding a field for addressing, and where it can't be solved (titles, honorifics, etc), then given/family name won't solve it either.
It adds cognitive load because I've not seen a system where first/last name is not a synonym for given/family name, except it also indicates the system designer is not aware of alternative ordering for names and is forcing me to decide between correct order/incorrect semantic vs. incorrect order/correct semantic, so it's always a game of guessing what the system will subsequently try to display my name as if I enter it in a certain way.
Use that. I'd be surprised if if is different to the one used by your country's revenue service.
If the taxman in your country both knows who you are and has a name for you, that's the correct name, regardless of whether unspoken rules about given/family/calling names exist or not.
With that said, the idea behind that recommendation is that, the "first" and "last" names in American mind corresponds to, or SHALL correspond to, the European idea of given names(Gates III or John or Jong-Il) and family names(father's name, name of their home communal village of The Vincis, or whatever for greater identities of an individual) respectively, rather than simply being the 1st and 2nd items of your `struct name` in either cases of American name orders and Asian name orders in use, and hence relevant forms for names SHALL be so marked clearly to avoid systems falsely identifying you with your community identifier that comes first in your culture. Doing this makes sense for this context and purpose.
So the “pre-marriage” name is referred to as: - “nazwisko panieńskie” (maiden name) - or “nazwisko rodowe” (literally this is “family name”)
"This article doesn't provide all the answers – the best answer will vary according to the needs of the application, and in most cases, it may be difficult to find a 'perfect' solution."
Also, in (South) Korea, depending upon the person's preference, they may choose to do family name first or last. It's crazy. I don't know why. (Can someone explain it to me?) As a result, most will write their romanized family name in all uppercase. Then, it can easily be identified as first or last. The easiest place to see it is in movie credits. When the screen is full of romanized Korean names, you see a mix of family name in all upper as first or last.
South Indian names can be incredibly long. Many people will shorten to use a single character from either first or last name.
Just have a single free text field. That should work for all cultures. Allow for 64 chars minimum (hello Spaniards!) and possibly 128 chars. Also, you might try a second field for "nick name". Lots of people with very long names use a shorter form in less formal settings.
In Korean, the family name comes first, then the given name. (There are no middle names.) It is almost always a single-character surname (Kim, Lee, etc.) and a two-character given name, though there are exceptions, with a small minority of surnames being two characters, and a small minority of given names being one character.
Romanization rules have changed over the years. The first president of the modern Republic of Korea was Syngman Rhee, with his given name Syngman first (with no spaces or hyphens) and family name Rhee last. Then take Park Chung Hee, the third president, in office in the 60s and 70s; his family name is Park, and his given name is Chung Hee. A few presidents later, you have Roh Tae-woo, in office around the 90s, with family name Roh and given name Tae-woo; notice the hyphenation. The current president is Yoon Suk Yeul, back to not having a hyphen to join the two characters of his given name.
Sometimes it depends on when it was that someone was first issued a passport, because the government is loathe to change the way someone's romanized name is spelled after the first issuance.
I was confused for a long time when I saw the name of Namkoong Min, I thought they wrote it reversed for some reason. Now that he's in the news again, I realized Namkoong 남궁 is the family name -- never seen one like this before.
Either in the format:
- given-name middle-name surname
- surname, given-name (note there is no comma here) middle-name or middle initial
> "Use single or multiple fields depending on your user’s needs. Not everyone’s name fits the first-name, last-name format. Using multiple name fields mean there’s more risk that a person’s name will not fit the format you’ve chosen and that it is entered incorrectly."
and
> "Avoid asking users for their title. It’s extra work for them and you’re asking them to potentially reveal their gender and marital status, which they may not want to do."
and
> "If your service stores personal information, you should allow users to update their details, including their name. Allowing users to change their name helps your service respect their personal identity. It also means they can continue using your service without having to start over. People change their name for many reasons. For example, because of a change in marital status, family situation or gender. Avoid making it hard for users to change their name. As well as causing them distress, it may make them reluctant to use your service."
We as technical nerds often forget how people actually interact with technology and assume way too much attention, familiarity and ability to understand UI patterns.
We often think of accessibility in terms of screen readers, but that’s just a fraction of the story…
Add varied devices, slow connections, very bad performance etc.
I’m craving for things like simplicity, performance, robustness and accessibility.
This looks like a holistic, carefully crafted design system. I’m looking forward to study it.
I'm always a bit surprised when I see some e.g. tech conferences still insisting on title as a mandatory field (or really asking at all). It's not just the gender and the marital status but some people attach a lot of significance to all manner of honorifics.
When I last registered for some conference put on by The Economist, it must have had 25 titles to choose from including a whole bunch of aristocratic and clergy-related titles.
Seems a lot easier just not to bother today.
[1] Well, personally I think that's silly too. But it's a question of degree.
I agree with the recommendation that it's best just to have a big name field and allow users to be "Dr. Firstname Lastname" if they want that, or "Firstname Lastname" if they don't want a title, or "Englishname Surname Givename" if they want that.
The push-back usually becomes that you can't trivially parse it a single name field later to use part of the name conversationally as if you know the person closely and send them spam with "Hey <nickname>, we haven't heard from you in a while, did you know that we now offer blah?". Instead, be honest, if you can't even take the time to understand the name syntax of an entire country, you don't know that user closely.
The opposite reason being that she desires advances? Unless you are implying an open marriage, that doesn’t sound right. Can you clarify what you mean?
What is your full name?
Ner D. P. Onx, BS DDS LCSW
How would you like to be addressed?
Mr. OnxNobody said society was rational.
Weird thing to look over in a thread about internationalization
French has that gendered structure too, with workarounds to manage uncertainty.
"Todes"
Please stop.
In some languages in order to say anything about anything you have to apply either the masculine or feminine form of the verbs and adjectives, so there's no way around picking one of the two, so if you don't know, you must guess or assume.
And if we look at languages with three grammatical genders, for some of them the neutral option is exclusive to inanimate objects, and using these neutral-gender forms of verbs and adjectives involving any person is explicitly insultingly dehumanizing, you wouldn't even use it to refer to an animal, much less to any person unless you want to make a point of intentionally disrespecting them as "it", saying that they are not worthy to be considered a person. In these languages[1] we do see the neutral gender option applied towards nonbinary and transgender people, but it's done by transphobes as a way of dehumanizing them in conversations.
In such languages usually the proper way to behave if you don't know the gender or if that's a mixed gender group is to default to masculine grammatical gender; because there's no polite way to avoid choosing; and, I might guess that there's also probably some aspect that historical patriarchal social reasons it might have been traditionally considered that misgendering someone male-to-female is more offensive than misgendering someone female-to-male, so that's how that default might have come to be.
[1] edit - I know about some of these languages, I'm not asserting that this applies for all such languages, perhaps there are some of them where the social norms are different, it's very hard to generalize globally.
In any case, I understand your point about there not being many options for gendered pronouns in some languages, but you're also assuming that there aren't movements to change that. French is a good example where even though its heavily gendered, things are evolving to the point that Le Robert even includes 'iel' as a pronom personnel [1]. Sure its use is contentious, but so are gendered pronouns even in English are still contentious for some people, but it exists and people do use it.
No, I explicitly did not mention pronouns, my post was about all the language groups where merely changing pronouns is barely scratching the surface as core grammar features rely on grammatical gender. Like, no offense intended, but French is not an example of a "heavily gendered language" - I'd consider French on the very low end of the grammatical gender complexity scale, where indeed suggestions such as yours might be plausible. For example, consider Hebrew or Slavic languages which have verbs and adjectives denoting the gender of the subject/object. Consider grammatical gender in Hindi or Welsh. And I'm not even talking about more complicated systems like you might see in Bantu languages.
> Dear <usually title> <usually last name>,
The sw dev looked up a bunch of titles - Sir, Dame, Lord, Duke, Earl, Baron, Prince, Princess, Reverend, Bishop... - and decided the DB field could be 8 letters.
Of course it broke for the first Archbishop.
Yeah, probably. I sometimes will list degrees in a longer bio but that's mostly because it may turn out I went to school with someone. They're not very relevant to anything I'd be talking about at a conference. I'd never put degrees and class years next to my name unless it were an alumni thing.
As I say, PhDs in a non-academia setting are what you see something of a split on with some people displaying them liberally and others never mentioning them.
Lots of people (this will seem ridiculous to anyone who’s worked with academics, but) seem to mix up PhD’s, lecturers, and don’t know about the grueling path from there to full-on tenured professor.
Like what? Doesn't that argument work the other way around, that lots of people have equivalent or higher degrees than medicos, but only the latter are called doctors at their place of work?
All I can think is things like EngD, but I'd think those holders are as likely as PhDs to use the 'Doctor' from it, it's really just the term the university happened to use in awarding it.
I have no particular stake in the question though. Totally understand that people are proud of their achievement.
I just meant that I can't think of anything else at that level that we don't use (sometimes/to the same not-100% extent) an honourific for. In many countries (not North America I know) medicine is a lesser qualification (Bachelor of each Medicine & Surgery, MBBS or BMBS) but we still use it, so it seemed to me the argument up thread works there (Masters aren't called doctors) but not as far as I can think of anything at PhD level?
>Yeah certainly, and even at university most lecturers I had I think were 'just call me (first name)'.
Of course not all lecturers have doctorates and you also get into the very academia "Professor" sensitivity.
Good for them. In reality, it's not just a degree, it's the final degree.
It's the degree you start working towards only after you get just a degree.
Having been yelled at by colleagues for opting to not include Dr. on my own freaking business cards - here here.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/titles-included-i...
My personal favourite is if you change your first name to “Sir” and you are not actually a “Knight”, then you get the note “THE REFERENCE TO SIR IS TO THE HOLDER’S NAME AND NOT TO THE HOLDER’S TITLE” printed in your passport.
Context: I wanted “Dr.” to be added to my passport.
I do wonder what would happen if I used a tile that was not used in the UK.
If you set your title to "Graf" in the passport form:
> By Royal Warrant of 27 April 1932, the use in England and Wales of foreign titles of nobility was discontinued.
> You must include the observation: THE HOLDER IS ALSO KNOWN AS (foreign title).
If you instead set your given name to "Graf", these instructions would not apply, as you are not claiming it's your title. Nor would it be evident to the passport office or any other English speaker that your given name implied a title, so provided your supporting documents corroborate that "Graf" is your given name, they'd issue a passport in that name.
However, if you used not "Graf", but a title recognised in the English language:
> A person may call themselves any name they want, as long as it is not for fraudulent purposes
> You may receive an application supported by documents (for example, a birth certificate or a change of name deed) that shows a customer is using a name that includes a description of a title (for example, Lord, Princess, Earl or Baron as a forename).
> You must include the observation: THE REFERENCE TO (description of title) IS TO THE HOLDER’S NAME AND NOT TO THE HOLDER’S TITLE.
People can write whatever they want, there, in whatever order they want. We only allow 255 characters, though, because we use classic VARCHAR, and index the field.
Some Spanish (as in Catalan) names can be downright legendary.
I support non-Roman character sets.
Not only.
Argentinian national hero Manuel Belgrano had as full name Manuel José Joaquín del Corazón de Jesús Belgrano González.
Chilean painter Pablo Picasso's full name is Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso.
I have this problem that some software which doesn't readily discern what should be first name and what should be last name gives me a list of all Johns followed by all Lisas and then Peters, which is less than helpful. Other software thinks it got it right but then for Hungarian names, it gives me all Istváns followed by all Józsefs, which, again, is less than optimal.
Having a "sort key for bloody sorting" field may be a way to go, I personally would use it, but making it user friendly is a bitch, and heuristics will get it wrong more often than not. Sorry but I've run out of nice words for this problem.
(A bibliographer enters the chat, I cower in fear)
Introducing a hyphen isn't great: it doesn't match my legal name and it's awkward because some people do have a hyphenated surname plus another surname.
I've also met several people whose legal name doesn't include a surname.
You presumably have a formal name: A B C D, with A and B being your two given names, C and D being your two surnames.
So what does it say on your ID?
Your birth certificate if you have no ID?
Does your countries revenue service address you as "Dear A B", "Mr C D", "Dear A", "Mr D" or something else altogether?
Yes, that's right. That is my full legal name.
> So what does it say on your ID? Your birth certificate if you have no ID?
Same as my full legal name: A B C D.
> Does your countries revenue service address you as "Dear A B", "Mr C D", "Dear A", "Mr D" or something else altogether?
Well, there is no such thing as "my country" because I'm a dual citizen. Born in Spain, currently living in Canada as a naturalized citizen. That is where the troubles begin, because while in Spain IT systems typically assume people have two surnames, in North America they often assume a single surname.
So far it has not a problem when dealing with the various levels of the Canadian government, but for example my bank addresses me as A B C-D due to limitations in their IT infrastructure.
Incidentally, in Spain we are typically addressed as A C or Mr. C for brevity, while A B C D would be reserved for formal communications.
I hope this answers your questions.
> Same as my full legal name: A B C D.
Right, so your Firstname is A and your Lastname is D. There's no ambiguity there.
You're sorted for those forms that ask for firstname/lastname, not for those forms that ask for given/family name.
You are offering your own unique technical solution to a cultural problem that has already been solved, and while I admire your confidence, I must explain why it is incorrect.
I don't have a "last name", I have two surnames. The notion of "last name" implicitly assumes that there is one and only one surname.
As I already hinted at, people in Spain customarily use their first surname as their "last name". That's why 90% of communications address me as A C, even while living in Canada.
It is my understanding that the same rule is used in all of Latin America, including Brazil.
To take a famous example: the full name of Rafael Nadal is Rafael Nadal Parera: one given name and two surnames, with the first surname taking precedence.
I would also mention that I feel your pain to a degree. My wife has an extremely uncommon female name, but the spelling is very close to a common male name. Many times she has run into people "fixing" her name for her without saying anything only for it to cause issues months later, or people calling her by the name they assumed she meant to type. It's incredibly aggravating to deal with. Lots of missed emails. Lots of phone calls of helpful people informing her of the "error".
At times, I wish the entire naming system were replaced with something that had no room for error or miscommunication. Everyone is called Larry or something.
I had a friend with a single letter first name and the booking forms would never accept it, so he would add another couple of letters, but then at the airport he would be fucked because his ticket never matched his ID.
And how did you come by such a name?
- one "full name" field. (English speakers would use Firstname Lastname) - one "how should we call you?" name. (English speakers would use their first name, in some other cultures people would preferred to be called by their last name)
To clarify the purpose of the two
Indian name: Sathiavelllu Arunachalam, known as SA or Seth
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.
Indonesian name: Fatimah Azzahra (given name only)
Malaysian name: Sharifah Azizah binti Syed Ahmad Tarmizi, (honorific surname: Sharifah) (given name: Azizah) (patronym) (father's honorific surname: Syed) (father's given name: Ahmad Tarmizi)