Comment by johneth | Hacker News Reader

Comment by johneth | Hacker News Reader

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The GOV.UK design system[1] agrees with you:

> "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."

[1] https://design-system.service.gov.uk/patterns/names/

>> "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."

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.

At least in Germany, titles are still rather important. I agree that it's silly but if you have a PhD you're very likely to put "Dr." on your doorbell name plate.

What do you mean by, "important"? That it's impolite to not refer to someone using their preferred title, or that people tend to expect them?

Depends on the person, some people do get insulted if you don't use their title in a formal setting. As said, it's rather silly IMHO.

Never had a Herr Doktor for a supervisor huh?

A doorbell I can understand;[1] it's your own home. But the requirements might be lower if you are signing up for some Lidl customer benefit club.

[1] Well, personally I think that's silly too. But it's a question of degree.

Can confirm. In Germany, recipients of a US visa often complain that their title isn't used on the visa, only their name. Especially PhD visa applicants.

I think that's just out of the necessity of not having to explain who exactly "her Dr Rer Nat" is.

My mom listed our family as my dad's name with "Dr." in front, I think in the phone book. My dad was never happy about that. But we're not German.

not to mention that often the title is Prof. Dr.

We had a go-live delayed because the sponsoring executive needed to demo the app to a board member, and would not do it until the UI showed the full greeting of “Prof. Dr. xxxx”. We had to shoehorn that into the data model at the last minute.

Yeah, professor is an actual title here, you can be a professor without being tenured.

I certainly don't mind being called "Mr.", but I don't see why it can't just be another field, or part of a free-text field.

Like you, I don't mind being called "Mr.", but the problem is that my sister would very much prefer not to put "Miss" (and not to lie) because it results in undesired advances, and my wife would also prefer to not put "Mrs." because it results in discrimination for the opposite reason, and because it results in people asking to talk to me instead. At the same time, you can't drop it entirely, because my aunt will complain loudly if she's not allowed to put the "Dr." honorific that's very important to her identity in a title field.

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.

> would very much prefer not to put "Miss" (and not to lie) because it results in undesired advances, and my wife would also prefer to not put "Mrs." because it results in discrimination for the opposite reason

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?

> and because it results in people asking to talk to me instead.

No, for some reason it seems to result in her being ignored because she's unavailable. Probably preferable to undesired advances, but still not really treating her the same way they'd treat a man.

Isn’t the first problem you mentioned what “Ms” was invented for?

Right, so ask them their full formal name, and how they want to be addressed.

  What is your full name?
    Ner D. P. Onx, BS DDS LCSW

  How would you like to be addressed?
    Mr. Onx

In an industry wide panic we renamed git master to git main, right after realtors renamed the "master bedroom", yet we're all continuing with an abbreviated "Master" or "Mistress".

Nobody said society was rational.

If you plan to only do English forever that's acceptable, but there's _a lot_ of languages where you need to know someone's gender to be able to use their name in a sentence.

Weird thing to look over in a thread about internationalization

You can certainly make titles optional or just part of a name field although, in the case of some titles like Dr., that still doesn't give you what you supposedly need anyway. Personally, if I had a form that didn't need title information for some reason, it's probably a minefield I would just bypass even if there are potential edge cases.

I'd assume in these languages you can get away with either not using the name, or going for a neutral form (same as when you don't know who you're speaking to)

French has that gendered structure too, with workarounds to manage uncertainty.

There's some push to have gender neutral language in Spanish, but it's pretty controversial.

And downright dumb-sounding.

"Todes"

Please stop.

I would say that all gender-related changes are controversial. Otherwise they would have already happened.

There are many Indian languages where verb conjugations are either male or female and there is no neutral option.

By curiosity how do you deal with generic instructions ? Like if you needed to have "you will need to come to this counter to apply for special discounts" printed next to a ticketing machine ?

Generally, male gender is presumed if a neutral form is not available.

Male pronouns are assumed in most such cases, but that is not necessary in the example you provided—the instruction would be the same for both genders, in Hindi at least. "आपको विशेष छूट के लिए आवेदन देने के लिए इस काउंटर पर आना होगा।" It doesn't have any gendered pronouns, most such instructions don't.

That assumption isn't valid.

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.

But aren't we talking about form fields? When would you absolutely need a gendered title from someone in a form field so that you could refer to them in the third person?

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.

[1] https://dictionnaire.lerobert.com/definition/iel

> In any case, I understand your point about there not being many options for gendered pronouns in some languages,

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.

If this is why a website or a form asks for it, and there is no way around it, better just ask for it directly ("How would you prefer to be addressed? He/him, she/her, or neutral?") instead of a choice of 25 historical titles.

I always choose the clergy titles! (Monarch ones are never available)

In Discordian beliefs, everyone (even non-Discordians) is a pope, so this is perfectly legitimate.

What if they want to be addressed by those titles? Mr/Ms is always in the list so what is to be complained about here?

Couldn't people enter whatever is the equivalent of the nominative gendered singular form of the full name if they cared?

Just to add (as clergy myself) that clerical titles are in current use, are not limited to one faith tradition, and space ought to be allowed for them.

I'm privy to Software <D&D/Video Game Class Name> for titles.

Hmm, Software Barbarian, I like it.

So how would you fill this email template:

> Dear <usually title> <usually last name>,

When I worked for an ecommerce retailer in the UK, we had a title field, with some preset choices and a freeform other option.

The sw dev looked up a bunch of titles - Sir, Dame, Lord, Duke, Earl, Baron, Bishop, Prince, Princess, Reverend - and decided the DB field could be 8 letters.

Of course it broke for the first Archbishop.

On the other hand, HM Passport Office absolutely loves titles:

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.

You also get this with Lord and I'd assume Baron, count, Duke, viscount or their feminine equivalents.

I do wonder what would happen if I used a tile that was not used in the UK.

Move to Britain, change your given name to Graf (that's German for the title of count/earl), and get a passport. I'm curious to see what the result would be, myself.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/titles-included-i...

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.

How about just changing your name to Earl?

Already (implicitly) mentioned in the gp.

That seems good though, you want people checking it in an airport or whatever to get it right, believe that's your name, not insist that your name is just middle-last because the first (Sir) is honourific.

This has to be one of the best design systems I ever looked at...

As a UK citizen, I am routinely impressed by our government website. It is one of the few things this country does right, in my opinion. I know some people who work on the UI, and they put painstaking attention into every tiny detail to make things as accessible as possible. The goal is that it should be universally navigable by anyone, regardless of technical competence, disability or background.

As a web developer I’m impressed by the consistency, practical beauty and the respect of users.

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.

Title is the one that always confuses me since titles are basically non-existent here. It seems really like a really important thing in the Anglosphere and I have no idea why. I just always pick "Dr" when I'm forced to pick one. So far it has never made any difference.

(PhD) Dr. is a funny one in the Anglosphere and also at least parts of continental Europe (and possibly elsewhere). It's sort of a big deal in academia and some percentage of other people feel pretty attached to the title. For others, the attitude is more it's just a degree and lots of people have advanced degrees that we don't go around using honorifics for.

I didn't even know that I could put my Bachelor of Engineering degree next to my name, and from what I can tell on the Internet, putting it next to my name would be considered pretentious.

>putting it next to my name would be considered pretentious.

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.

I've got a Bachelor of Science, so I'd be toast0, BS. Which seems appropriate, because putting a title like that feels like BS. It's in Computer Engineering, so I could be toast0, BSCE. But that feels pretentious.

Rincewind the Wizzard, BMgc, Unseen University.

Oh, MSEE would, I guess, finally solve the awkward question of “what do you use as a title if you have a masters degree,” haha.

It is the last degree, after all.

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.

> For others, the attitude is more it's just a degree and lots of people have advanced degrees that we don't go around using honorifics for.

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.

The impression I get from some people I know with PhDs (or equivalent from schools that use different names) is that, in a non-academic/research setting, they feel that emphasizing their degree can come across as a sort of superior attitude working alongside a lot of talented people with various degrees (or lack thereof)—especially to the degree that whatever their thesis was in however many years ago may have next to nothing with what they do today.

I have no particular stake in the question though. Totally understand that people are proud of their achievement.

Yeah certainly, and even at university most lecturers I had I think were 'just call me (first name)'.

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?

I don't think so. As you say, not any sort of Masters degree. And even though the standard JD for lawyers has "doctor" in it, no one calls anyone with a standard 3 year law degree "doctor." Obviously there are aristocratic and clerical titles as well--in addition to various certifications (though those don't usually have a prefix-type title--mostly positions like Judge do).

>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.

> For others, the attitude is more it's just a degree

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.

A friend of mine got a PhD, and then got three more degrees (so far) afterwards.

> It's sort of a big deal in academia and some percentage of other people feel pretty attached to the title.

Having been yelled at by colleagues for opting to not include Dr. on my own freaking business cards - here here.

My wife picked "Baroness" once from a drop down, and now we always know that they sold her info when we get junk mail addressed to "Baroness So-and-so."

It's always been a point of amusement for me; some sites get these incredibly long lists of titles, but you can only pick one. So, despite it all, folks like Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would still be put out. And for example, when you pick "Reverend Mother" out of an airline website's dropdown list, they don't actually say "Reverend Mother" when they call your name over the PA.

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