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 zamalek on Thursday August 31, 2023 @08:05AM (#37335867)

> "Just have a single "name field" and maybe preferred name, which is not the same."

> 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?

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Re:Ask HN: How to handle Asian-style “Family name first” whe... by rsynnott on Thursday August 31, 2023 @08:38AM (#37336235)

Sorting. Though I don't think there's a culture-agnostic way to do this, either.

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Re:Ask HN: How to handle Asian-style “Family name first” whe... by Semiapies on Thursday August 31, 2023 @09:23AM (#37336780)

Not universally, no. The closest for English-language use is to put a spurious comma between family and given name (e.g., "Cixin, Liu" for Cixin Liu).

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.

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Re:Ask HN: How to handle Asian-style “Family name first” whe... by smeej on Thursday August 31, 2023 @09:43AM (#37337045)

Even this has some culturally confusing elements, doesn't it?

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."

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Re:Ask HN: How to handle Asian-style “Family name first” whe... by rsynnott on Thursday August 31, 2023 @10:07AM (#37337354)

> 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 :)

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Re:Ask HN: How to handle Asian-style “Family name first” whe... by TRiG_Ireland on Thursday August 31, 2023 @03:31PM (#37342500)

I believe that the von should be included in sorting in some languages and not in others. It's a Dutch/German difference, though I cannot recall which is which.

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Re:Ask HN: How to handle Asian-style “Family name first” whe... by Semiapies on Thursday August 31, 2023 @09:58AM (#37337234)

Even this has some culturally confusing elements, doesn't it?

It's never not going to.

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Re:Ask HN: How to handle Asian-style “Family name first” whe... by ysavir on Thursday August 31, 2023 @08:25AM (#37336087)

Largely cultural, I think, and being able to use each as might be appropriate within the culture. For example, using "Hi, <first name>" when sounding casual, but using "Dear Ms <last name>" when trying to sound formal. Nothing that's likely to be mission-critical, but a natural inclination based on cultural upbringing that we may not even realize is affecting our product design.

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Re:Ask HN: How to handle Asian-style “Family name first” whe... by mastax on Thursday August 31, 2023 @08:12AM (#37335959)

Interfacing with external systems which require first/last, I suppose.

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Re:Ask HN: How to handle Asian-style “Family name first” whe... by streetnoodles on Thursday August 31, 2023 @10:11AM (#37337405)

This, we recently had to break up our "name" field into first/last name because we work with banks that require first/last name as separate fields. When we reference an account it has to match their records exactly.

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Re:Ask HN: How to handle Asian-style “Family name first” whe... by alistairSH on Thursday August 31, 2023 @10:21AM (#37337587)

This. Many US government agencies (and therefore their forms and APIs) use FML.

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.

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Re:Ask HN: How to handle Asian-style “Family name first” whe... by Tainnor on Thursday August 31, 2023 @09:40AM (#37336995)

For one thing, delivery drivers and similar can get confused if they don't know which part of the name they should expect on the doorbell... (especially if both parts of your name are uncommon)

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.

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Re:Ask HN: How to handle Asian-style “Family name first” whe... by trimethylpurine on Thursday August 31, 2023 @09:43AM (#37337044)

If you mean for yourself, yes. Do you want to have an easy time when you interact with a reality that assumes things about you, or do you want to spend a lot of time and effort accomplishing basic tasks as an outlier in a system that doesn't expect you? If you mean for your database, it depends on purpose. The same reality applies. Think about integration, for example.

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Re:Ask HN: How to handle Asian-style “Family name first” whe... by IlliOnato on Thursday August 31, 2023 @10:13AM (#37337453)

People already mentioned sorting.

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"...

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Re:Ask HN: How to handle Asian-style “Family name first” whe... by Akronymus on Friday September 01, 2023 @06:53AM (#37349106)

Having to interact with other systems that expect first and last names to exist.

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