A basic guide to using Asian names
asiamediacentre.org.nz
asiamediacentre.org.nz
So I don't get the current trend where everyone is your majesty and god forbid someone mangles your name, your pronoun if you didn't make it obvious by your attire or didn't spell your country with a diacritical mark not found on their keyboard. You still know that it's you and that people are just relating to you in a way which is convinient to them right? Now get to what is it that you need to do together - write some Java code, or talk about your day or whatever.
On the other hand, some people make a big show out of not knowing how to pronounce common Indian names, and that strikes me as silly/microaggressive. Hindi is spelled phonetically in English, so it’s not very hard.
On the third hand though, Chinese names are often spelled with a Romanization that wasn’t designed for use by English speakers, so of course they can’t do it. If you want them to not mangle your name, use the Yale Romanization.
I think people want there to be a simple answer like “everyone just change your name to John Smith” or “if they can’t pronounce Xi Jinping, they’re racists” but simple answers don’t really apply. We’re all just going to muddle through the best we can.
I'd be interested to hear the story there. When it comes to surnames, AFAIK nearly every US state lets you put basically any arbitrary assembly of English characters as the last name for a child, with even fewer restrictions on the last names for adults.
Lots of reasons you might not have your official name written or heard correctly
This isn’t the case. I have a formal background in linguistics and have a vague familiarity with the Indic branch of the Indo-European languages in general, and I still occasionally screw up in pronouncing Hindi (or other Indian languages’) words that are written in informal Latin transliteration. Most notably, whether the sound written <a> denotes [ə] or [aː] is often ambiguous.
In my experience it's extremely hard to get right. At one of my jobs pronunciation of Indian words (mostly food and names) was a fairly common topic of conversation and it was impossible for the non-Indians to get correct. To my American ear it usually sounded exactly the same (even if it wasn't me saying it) but they would always say it wasn't quite right.
For many consonants Hindi has 2 versions (aspirated and non-aspirated). It also has several different kinds of “d” sounds instead of just 1
These sounds typically come in groups of four. For example, there are 4 "T" sounds in Hindi: त थ ट ठ. If you pronounce each of these correctly, Indian ears will hear 4 distinct sounds. Western ears will typically hear the same sound 4 times. If they are listening attentively the second time around, they may be able to distinguish at most 2 different sounds, but not 4. Given this, Western speakers are unlikely to correctly pronounce a word containing one of these sounds. The good news is that even if a Western speaker has incorrect pronunciation, in the vast majority of cases native Hindi speakers would be able to understand what was meant.. so the communication still happens effectively. Furthermore, regardless of language, I like to believe that most native speakers will very much appreciate efforts to speak the language, no matter how mangled the pronunciation is.
Out of curiosity, are these distinguished as alveolar vs retroflex and aspirated vs non-aspirated?
See 00:53 of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXFx3Ly_imY
In that table, त is the first column of the Dental row and थ in the second column of that same row (aspirated?). Similarly, ट is the first column of the Retroflex row and ठ is the second column of that row.
But thanks - now I can read a small bit of Hindi!
- त - /t̪ə/ - voiceless dental plosive
- थ - /t̪ʰə/ - aspirated voiceless dental plosive
- ट - /ʈə/ - Voiceless retroflex plosive
- ठ - /ʈʰə/ - aspirated Voiceless retroflex plosive
t̪ - t with square bracket below is the dental plosive
ʰ - superscript h is the aspirations indicator
So there are three issues for English speakers:
A minor issue: English uses apical plosive /t/ for "t" , while Hindi and related use dental plosive /t̪/. This is a small difference in tongue placement. But these sound similar enough. The bigger issue is English lacks a retroflex plosive (tongue curls), and aspiration is non-phonemic (does not carry a meaningful distinction). English speakers typically aspirate leading plosives and don't aspirate in the middle of words. It's not that native English speakers "can't" hear a difference, it's just way more subtle and likely to be missed unless specifically listening for it.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_dental_and_alveola...
The converse is also true. For example, the way native Swedish speakers pronounce seven (sju - example pronunciations at https://forvo.com/word/sju/ ) is 1) Hard for me to say and 2) No matter how I say it, the response from Swedes is, "You said <X>; it's actually <X1>" where both <X> and <X1> sound exactly the same to me, so I don't hear the distinction they are trying to point out. I assumed the same happens to Western folks when Indians/Hindi speakers try to explain the difference between the various T sounds.
> The bigger issue is English lacks a retroflex plosive (tongue curls), and aspiration is non-phonemic (does not carry a meaningful distinction)
But English words do seem to distinguish meaningfully between what you term 'voiceless' and 'aspirated voiceless' isn't it? For example, there is a difference between 'time' and 'thyme'. Ignoring the difference between 'y' and 'i' for a moment, wouldn't both words be the "same" to English speakers if what you are saying is true? Isn't 'th' just the aspirated version of 't'? (Not contesting what you are saying, just curious to understand.)
Aspiration is not contrastive in English - it's impossible to find two words that differ only by aspiration. Aspirated consonants (in general American English) mainly feature in the onset of a stressed syllable (pin ['pʰɪn], potato [pə̥ˈtʰeɪɾoʊ]) as long as they're not preceded by /s/ (spin ['spɪn]). The important part is that you can determine whether or not a consonant is aspirated only by its position in the word, which is why it's an allophone - a variation of a phoneme which isn't distinctive, but still sounds different. English is my L2 so "thyme" still messes me up, I always try to pronounce it with /θ/ like the first consonant in "thigh".
How people differentiate sounds is actually very interesting. The leading theory is that infants can differentiate all human phonemes (see Jusczyk's Head turn Experiment) but starts categorizing sounds into categories based on what languages are spoken to them by 9-12 months. An interesting language is the (sadly extinct) Ubykh, which had 84 (!) phonemic consonants but only 2 or 3 distinct vowels. For example, speakers percieved /qʲ q qʷ qˤ qˤʷ/ as five different sounds, even though an English-only speaker would probably categorize all of them as just "kinda guttural".
On "sju" (/ɧʉː/) - /ɧ/ is a very odd sound in general. It doesn't really feature in any other languages, and what exactly it should be categorized as is still debated by phoneticians. It also varies a lot by region - Finland Swedes generally don't differentiate the consonants in "sju" and "köpa". So bottom line, we don't know how to pronounce it either :D
But they are the same; both are pronounced (in traditional IPA) as /taɪm/
'th' is only an aspirated 't' for loan words in English. Most English words pronounce 'th' as the fricatives /θ/ or /ð/.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Th_(digraph)
"Thyme" is odd because it used to be spelled "tyme" in Middle English (1066-1400s). I assume it was changed to 'th' to be more similar to Latin and French. Something similar happened to "island" (iland) and "isle" (ile) where a silent 's' was added to make the words closer to the Latin "insula".
First thing I did in my company, which is mostly German, was to abbreviate my name, instead of having multiple people trying their hardest to call me singing I don’t care for, I chose his I’m called in that context.
"You speak English because is the only language you know. I speak English because is the only language you know. We are not the same".
Why Starubucks insist on asking for my name just to mangle it in the cup for posterity?
I have an English nickname just for when I go to Starbucks abroad. It's much easier that way.
My first name is "Ricky" and I very frequently have to correct people (mainly in drive throughs and over the phone) who repeat back to me "Britney" or "Nicky".
Very possible I just suck at enunciating my name and no one has had the heart to tell me all these years.
Reading English phonetically is highly non-trivial. Each vowel can be pronounced different ways depending on factors that are not always easy to understand, particularly for non-native speakers. Same for a lot of consonants. I have no clue which accent I am supposed to have when reading romanised Hindi. East coast American? Estuary English? British RP? Australian? That could be 4 different ways of pronouncing the letter "A". Hell, I am not even sure all Hindi speakers would agree on the pronunciation of a random word because of differing accents.
> On the third hand though, Chinese names are often spelled with a Romanization that wasn’t designed for use by English speakers, so of course they can’t do it. If you want them to not mangle your name, use the Yale Romanization.
You cannot expect people to know of any specific romanisation scheme. There are different ones, used by different people and in different contexts, and that are often at odds with the spelling of well known names (like famous people or cities).
What's hilarious is people in a non-English speaking country, e.g. Germany or France, using the same romanisation as in English because it's "the correct way" and then getting the phonetics completely wrong.
> I think people want there to be a simple answer like “everyone just change your name to John Smith” or “if they can’t pronounce Xi Jinping, they’re racists” but simple answers don’t really apply. We’re all just going to muddle through the best we can.
Exactly. Ideally, it's best effort on both sides: don't be a dick if they pronounce your name wrong a couple of times and hopefully they won't be idiots either and at least try.
As a non-native English speaker who's spent quite a few years in English-speaking countries, sometimes you roll your eyes and sometimes it's funny, but it is rarely worth fighting about pronunciation issues.
Bold of you to say it's possible to "spell phonetically in English"
That said, if I were in that situation I would double down on it in anything formal - documents, graduation ceremonies, weddings, lawsuits, etc.
Like you I've also kind of given up and usually just roll with it.
I do see where you're coming from re not getting offended but not sure I agree completely with that - I do think there's room for improvement or at least making an effort with unfamiliar names. (but demanding perfection is likewise rude)
This is still a minefield, especially among teenagers and very young adults who latch on to any opportunity to assert their individuality. I have met more than one man who wears female clothing and cosmetics and adopts female mannerisms, yet still insists that he is non-binary or a “non-binary male” and so his pronouns will be “he” or “they”, and you might get chewed out for using the wrong pronoun.
On the other side, I’ve had to deal with changing my assumed name and some people just insist on using my previous assumed name. (Most people know me as Kayodé, not my legal name.) A few people forget from time to time. I can only imagine what it’s like for people who change their legal name instead keeping it for convenience.
Identity is a pain in the ass and it’s just not worth the argument.
EDIT: I was wrong. See below.
> still insists that he is non-binary...so his pronouns will be...
You did. In your comment.
EDIT: I'm sorry, you said their pronouns are "he or they". I misread your original post.
Maybe I'm slow, but "themselves" referring to a single person is weird af.
You know that not everyone is relating to you with good intentions, right? And that their convenience isn’t the most important thing in the world?
How far does your magnanimity extend? Can people just say “hey you, shithead” and you think that shouldn’t affect the interaction?
Did Alok protest?
In Italy I'd be Michele, in Japan, I'd be Maikeru/マイケル, in Ukraine I'd probably be Mykhaylo/Михайло.
I had plenty of experience with people intentionally calling me mean nicknames in my native language. There is zero overlap between this situation and someone who just wants to have a useful interaction.
Neither do I see a problem with someone who would want their name to be pronounced correctly.
My thinking is this is about respect and courtesy. I understand the linguistic limitations of living in a multicultural world but there is no similar limitation on our ability to try and meet other people at least some of the way.
The advice that people react well if you pronounce their name correctly has been widespread since, at the very least, Dale Carnegie's 1936 "How to Win Friends and Influence People" so not really a recent trend.
And of course in some situations other people's treatment of your name can have a major impact on your career - for example, if academics reference papers as "FamilyName et. al. (year)" it might benefit your career a great deal if they identify your family name correctly.
I agree that widespread chosen pronouns are a recent trend, though.
Yes, but it doesn't mean you have to keep forcing the person to try to pronounce your name perfectly when it includes sounds that their native language doesn't have.
If we are just talking about being nice well... exactly same considerations apply. Why burden other people when you can handle the problem yourself. At least for one off interactions, if you deal with someone regularly it's Ok to mention correct pronunciation a couple of times and not make it a huge deal if they find it challenging.
coffee shops are impossible though. I have a coffee shop name, because they are even more wildly out of pocket with what they hear my name is than the median conversation
I've learned to roll with it using a joke that my cousin has it worse because her last name is "Excuseme".
Likewise we don’t expect English speakers (or Chinese Spanish French German or any other language) to be able to say her Pali name. (In Thailand they use Pali, the dead language used in the Buddhist canon, for names) She also has a Thai language nickname as all Thais do, but it’s challenging and so she decided to adopt a simpler English name among native English speakers upon arrival.
I think it’s laudable to try to pronounce names in every language across all of humanity with alacrity, but it’s unreasonable to expect everyone can and will. Certainly in my travels there’s a great deal less sensitivity to other languages and cultures than we seem to expect in the US and to some extent in parts of Europe. It’s an unreasonable standard. However in some contexts, particularly roles of trust and respect, you should always ask and try, and I think in general it’s a polite human thing to do.
But any expectation of success and remembering is completely unreasonable. In the first case, the brain just isn’t adapted to the sounds no matter how much they respect you and your culture. The second case, it’s like memorizing random nonsense words - it’s not nonsense to you, but to the person who grew up in a totally different culture and language, it certainly is. That’s not disrespectful, that’s a simple fact of reality. IMO the disrespectful thing is to be upset with humans being human - the attempt is the act of respect - anything beyond that is a measure of some intellectual capability that not everyone has.
That confused everyone who were sure they heard him wrong, so he went by Mark instead.
Seemed very sensible and made introductions easy.
For more nuanced guidelines, I recommend the Japan Style Sheet published by the Society of Writers, Editors, and Translators in Tokyo. It can be downloaded for free at [1]. An excerpt:
“Japanese write their names in their own language surname first, as do Chinese and Koreans. After contact with the West was reestablished in the mid-nineteenth century, many Japanese adopted the practice of giving their surname last in international contexts. Japanese learn in school to reverse their names when writing or speaking in English and their domestic English-language media follow this practice, as do almost all other media around the world. Especially in translations, either name order may be adopted. Writers and editors may also choose a hybrid approach.” (p. 37)
The title of the page is a "basic guide". Not a "comprehensive guide".
And they note that "the person’s preference is the most important thing to consider", which already covers your "but I have name cards in a different format" objection.
Straw man. Thep post could give more useful advice with a few extra words without being "comprehensive".
> And they note that "the person’s preference is the most important thing to consider", which already covers your "but I have name cards in a different format" objection.
The post suggests putting Japanese family names first, with a generic, obvious disclaimer at the top about personal preference taking priority. There a lot more to what tkgally (who is a professor emeritus at University of Tokyo and former professional translator, by the way) said about that than "I have name cards in a different format". For one, he estimated 50% of the business cards he received had the family name last. He also linked the guidance from the Japan Style Sheet which provides many additional points in favor of not assuming the family name goes first.
Edit: cellphone keypad
> keep in mind that in all cases, the person’s preference is the most important thing to consider. If in doubt, just ask!
I'd be quite interested to read the converse article -- it's true that British names usually go "First Last", it's the exceptions that are hard to deal with. I know several people who go by a middle name, several more who are known by a diminutive that starts with a different letter of the alphabet to their formal name. Or who are known by their last name, because seemingly every other family in the South East of England called their early-80s son "Andrew".
But for an article like the one here, the interesting part would be to find out which aspects I think may be less interesting, but are actually surprising to people who haven't grown up with them.
To the extent these things exist, they are not easily accessible to English only US born people. Actually, I have just found my next series of Chat GPT questions.
That said, the original article was interesting and more details than I had picked up inductively over the years.
By "football", did you meant that hand-held oval-shaped thing?
- *Hospitality*: Oklahomian's will make a great fuss about their level of hospitality, and will often invite you to visit them in their home, using a phrase like "show up whenever! welcome to the neighborhood!" This is not a genuine invitation, and actually appearing in someone's home without a formal invite will be considered highly rude. This is an American phenomenon known as "chit-chat".
- *Dress:* Oklahomians have rigid norms around clothing and dress, specifically around sportswear. There are two kinds of sportswear and wearing one in place of the other is considered highly rude. Sports items like sneakers, shorts, t-shirts, and even sports jerseys are considered appropriate wear for almost all occasions ("casual"), but not for actual sporting, unless of a specific cut called "activewear" (lycra, spandex, etc). Wearing activewear in a social setting and casual wear in an active setting are both considered highly rude.
- *Children:* Oklahomians have very strict norms of childcare. Under no circumstances should you allow your children under the age of 12 to leave your home without supervision. This includes walking or riding a bicycle in your neighborhood. Young children under 10--even while under adult supervision--are not allowed in public places after 8pm. Expect to get comments or looks if you take your children to a park or shopping mall after dark. After 10pm expect police intervention.
Seriously? The police will intervene if you, with your children, are at the mall after 10pm?
You're not going to get arrested but it wouldn't be surprising to get a "wellness check" from a suspicious police officer if children are playing at the park after 10pm.
English males calling each other by their family name (or hereditary place name) is a long-standing public school (US: private school) tradition. Upper middle class and above.
Long ago, if brothers attended the school at the same time, the suffixes "major" or "minor" were appended if clarification was needed: Jones major, Jones minor. Three brothers, the third was minimus. Don't know if this still happens.
Family names are almost never used expect in legal documents or formal setting. It's common for people who have been friends for years to not know each other's family names as they are so rarely used in day to day life.
It's also common also for friends/coworkers to not know each other's given names -- though less so than family names. Especially as you would never call someone you're friends with by their given name as it would be a bit rude. Usually in offices (unless very old fashioned) or with friends and family you'd use nicknames exclusively.
In 2001, I did a month long exchange program to Thailand. A group of eight Canadians stayed with eight Thais, and the year before they stayed with us. Incredible program.
All the Thais, as you mention, had nicknames. But many of the nicknames were English words that weren't really used as names in the West. I lived with a guy named 'Knight'. Another guy was 'Farm'.
Were these names Anglicized versions of Thai nicknames? Or were the actual nicknames just sometimes pulled at random from an English dictionary?
A famous English name in expat in China circles is Rainy.
Funny that. A friend of mine since high school - who is white and has never been to Asia - has the first name Rainey. Not a nickname.
I've never met anyone else with the name!
However, the influence of western media in recent years caused this to slowly shift into English words in the past twenty or so years. So nowadays it's not uncommon to find someone named "Night", "Nick", "Note", "Buddy", etc. There was also a brief period where people named their kids based on a Korean star they like (though not as popular as English-sounding names).
(And yes, getting referred to by first name on a website is always very weird to me :)
At least things were consistent when everyone wrote them in western notation; now we can't be sure which part is the family name and which part is the given name, especially if it's from a country that you're not familiar with the order/notation rules. There's the "write the family name in all caps" rule to assist with it, but not everyone follows that rule either.
I think the people with the biggest name problems in Japan may be ethnic Chinese. Many use the Japanese readings for their name characters in daily life, but some official purposes require the Chinese readings. Some Chinese also use yet another given name in English. I've had some friends who ran into serious problems proving they were who they were.
Addendum: Another problem that some people with Chinese names have in Japan is that the hanzi/kanji in their names do not display properly or at all in Japanese fonts, and even if the characters can be displayed they don’t have well-known Japanese readings, so people using phonetic input don’t know how to type the characters.
And therefore, from your example, Japanese reading against Chinese reading, Chinese name in Japanese font, American name used for English against everything else, none of that is not just do not cross-validate but also seem somewhat fraudulent because everyone has some ideas about each of those strings.
(which, by the way, explains why made-up transliteration is fine; so long you're consistently a Linus Torvalds going by a close enough Ri-nasu To-baruzu, and no other versions exist, and it traces back to your passport, it cross validates as a coherent enough identity)
And Chinese names would be like "Ms. 3Jane Tessier-Ashpool" that seem to read "Saint-John Thomas Haywood" who's going by just "Junko Mary", nope, that isn't going to work on any official forms. I can only imagine how complicated it will be for them.
While some people use their second first name (it's rare but not unheard of), I don't know anyone who uses their third first name. In all but very official documents, you simply use one of your first name and your last name and that's it.
If I put my last name first and then my 3 first names, the female first name will come last. Let's just say no one has ever called me that, and I won't answer to it.
I thought my family name with an honorific should be first when in Japan, but last night I saw some advice saying that people with western style names should use the given name first when speaking there. (That didn't quite sound "fair" for all the Japanese people use their given name first in western contexts.) Now I suspect the advice was out of date, but overall I agree that knowing when to go back and forth can be a point of confusion, especially with differing explanations available online.
There were a lot of names that surprised me, like the occasional man with a female name. One was named Wendy, the other one I forgot. I think he was from the Philippines, or maybe Malaysia. Many Asian languages don't have male/female names, so when the parents want to pick a western name for their newborn they don't always consider the gender (maybe that has changed nowadays).
Another thing I had not come across before is fake western names. The parents want to give the kid a name that sounds western but don't want to limit themselves to the standard catalogue of names, so instead they pick two names and combine them, or one name and rearrange the letters. So you get folks named Danold, Stevid and so on.
There are also names like Leslie and Ashley that are more associated with women in the US, but have historically been gender-neutral.
Most of them were probably from other countries, but I know of at least one Singaporean lady with a fake western name. In her case the parents had arranged the syllables of her Chinese name into a European-sounding combination (quite clever IMHO and more authentic than a name from the "catalogue").
[0] https://portuguese.stackexchange.com/questions/8634/what-is-...
This is also a great tip for generating names in fantasy or sci-fi settings.
Using the Western name only: WESTERN-FIRST CHINESE-LAST
Using the Chinese name only: CHINESE-LAST CHINESE-FIRST
Using both: WESTERN-FIRST CHINESE-LAST CHINESE-FIRST
(CHINESE-FIRST can be one or two characters). I think I got that right?
"Christian name" and "surname" is closer to what you want, but problematic for different reasons.
It should be "Western-given", "Chinese-given", "Chinese-family".
A Vietnamese national working n the USA may say Thanh Nguyen (with Nguyen being their family name).
You basically have to memorize the top last names in every culture or just ask them what they want to be called.
Just ask people for their full name, and what they would prefer to be called. (Unless you literally cannot provide your services' value without more detail).
Also, Balinese names[0] are a trip if you're not familiar with them, where people are named by birth order (up to 4 -- after that you stick "again" on the name).
> Initials are often used to shorten the name.
A fun complication to this is that the initial may be more than one letter in English, taking the first consonant as it is in the source language (which uses an alphasyllabary), which may correspond to more than one letter in the Latin script; for example, “Ch. Naveen”.
Or for “Chiranjeevi,” usually used on wedding cards before the groom’s name.
If I'm not mistaken, some of those can't be interpreted at all because they're ambiguous.
(I think this is the original "Falsehoods programmers believe about ..."?)
Some people already ``adjust'' their names for a Western audience, and others don't. So, given the <name 1> <name 2> of a Japanese person, I don't know if <name 1> is the family name or given name. Some people already make the adjustment so that Westerners get it right, some don't.
I don't care either way -- I'd just prefer things be consistent so that when I recognize a Japanese name I can call them by the proper name faster :).
Though that only helps a little because loads of given names are also one syllable.
Fun Fact: 300,000 people have the name "Zhang Wei" [1]
[1] https://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2020-01/20/c_138721082.htm
(Nobody actually cares, but I do get constant confusion as a foreigner in Budapest because people sometime expect surname-first and sometimes given-first, trying to accomodate for me)
In some situations it is less clear which convention applies. For example most of my older relatives use surname-first for their Facebook account name, which is less common with younger people. I have also seen both orders on business cards. I think most Greeks would not expect foreigners to be familiar with or follow these conventions though.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_names
"Hungarian is one of the few national languages in Europe to use the Eastern name order, like Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese and some Basque nationalists."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_name#Eastern_name_ord...
The hivemind consensus among most popular recommendations was to have a nickname field, followed by a full name field only if must, and don't try to validate names, Asian or not. Which is btw exactly how most social medias are built right now.
However, I never knew exactly what to do instead, so I've always chickened out and went with the full "Dear @name" in the same order that I was given the names.
I hoped this would enlighten me as to the appropriate way to go, but I clearly overestimated the homogeneity of Asian name conventions!
- Andrew
The beginning of everyone's name is their first name, because that's what "first" means.
Plenty of Pakistanis have "prefix"-names arising from tribe/caste, eg. Syed, Chaudary. The prime minister in 2012-2013 Raja Pervaiz Ashraf has the prefix name Raja.
The prime minister from 2002-2004 Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali, has Mir as a prefix name. Moreover, both Khan and Jamali are tribe names.
Plenty follow the FAMILY GIVEN.
My name follows another common format. GIVEN FATHER'S-GIVEN. There is no family name.
First name, last name OR given name, family name on forms never make sense to me.
So, all else equal, it makes more sense to me to just repeat the name I've been given (by the news, for example) as it's at least conceivable they've already done the research and are using it correctly.
I've also only rarely met people who even get angry if you get their name wrong, and those people seem to be angry about other things too. I can see why a public official would want to set the record straight. I have never seen a real person in the world care about this issue, including myself when I am misnamed.
Is this really an important issue for people from surname-first countries?
https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-...
At an interview one of the people interviewing me went by just the first letter of their very long name but I asked what the full name was, so he showed me his driver's license then I pronounced it correctly on the first attempt. I got the job offer. I can't tell you that it helped or made no difference, since I didn't take the job and never got to ask. But maybe it helped, and it certainly can't have hurt (unless my interviewer felt I was showing off or something, which seems very doubtful).
If you're not sure how to pronounce someone's name, then ask, though I personally would give people brownie points for trying anyways.
Takes a minute to realize this is not a mistake.
[edit:] Also if you use a nickname, say Bunny Colvin, you will be Mr. Bunny.
1. I mean family names here
In Indonesia we always use an honorific followed by a person's preferred name. Very simple!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlzm7-gvTRg
Thought that was obvious from the context in the article, which is about political leaders.
I'm a native Chicagoan, currently living in Texas. The US southern of calling one's (elders?) Miss <Firstname>/Mr <Firstname> confuses me, since I don't know the conventions....
Statistically speaking one could be fairly confident, but as a rule it is wrong due to the presence of compound surnames.
Xi has a solution for those irregularities.
What do you mean? A URL contains its hostname.
I was recently watching an international sporting event. I watched games from South Korea and Japan, and with both countries I couldn't figure out if the Latin script name on their backs was their family name or given name.
With South Korea I guessed it was their given name, someone had either Park or Moon as a name but a different name on their back. But with Japan I couldn't tell.
Anyone know how they commonly handle jerseys? Searching "Japanese jersey name" was unhelpful.
Googled pictures of the Japanese National baseball team, and then googled their wikipedia, noted that the english wikipedia article lists their names in western naming order (first first, family second). Matched some of the players names to the names on their jerseys in the photos.
They have names on their jerseys like "Nakano" (#7) and "Okamoto" (#25) and "Nakamura" (#27) - these are their family names.
1 - "stranger/non-close-friend" here means someone who you aren't already a) quite familiar with and b) in the age bracket / position in hierarchy c) in an informal friendly context. Any teacher, boss, employee, acquaintance, professional, etc, it'll be family name. Classmates, close friends, family members will usually use given name (in informal context - code switching).
As an amusing aside, this is a bit of an in-joke in the anime Mushoku Tensei (Jobless Reincarnation), where the main character is often using surnames and the formal or even Keigo register with his rough-and-tumble party mates and they are like "yo why are you so formal?".
But also, Park and Moon are common Korean family names. Because like the near-majority of South Koreans have the Kim surname, you'll often see initials like "H S KIM"
The Park/Moon thing really threw me. Are either ever a given name? As it made no sense that the name wasn't on the jersey. Maybe I was just mistaken and the player was on the bench.