UPDATE: This post has now been updated, reviewed and released as a W3C article. See http://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-personal-names.
People who create web forms, databases, or ontologies in English-speaking countries are often unaware how different people’s names can be in other countries. They build their forms or databases in a way that assumes too much on the part of foreign users.
I’m going to explore some of the potential issues in a series of blog posts. This content will probably go through a number of changes before settling down to something like a final form. Consider it more like a set of wiki pages than a typical blog post.
Scenarios
It seems to me that there are a couple of key scenarios to consider.
A You are designing a form in a single language (let’s assume English) that people from around the world will be filling in.
B You are designing a form in a one language but the form will be adapted to suit the cultural differences of a given locale when the site is translated.
In reality, you will probably not be able to localise for every different culture, so even if you rely on approach B, some people will still use a form that is not intended specifically for their culture.
Examples of differences
To get started, let’s look at some examples of how people’s names are different around the world.
Given name and patronymic
In the name Björk Guðmundsdóttir Björk is the given name. The second part of the name indicates the father’s (or sometimes the mother’s) name, followed by -sson for a male and -sdóttir for a female, and is more of a description than a family name in the Western sense. Björk’s father, Guðmundor, was the son of Gunnar, so is known as Guðmundur Gunnarsson.
Icelanders prefer to be called by their given name (Björk), or by their full name (Björk Guðmundsdóttir). Björk wouldn’t normally expect to be called Ms. Guðmundsdóttir. Telephone directories in Iceland are sorted by given name.
Other cultures where a person has one given name followed by a patronymic include parts of Southern India, Malaysia and Indonesia.
Different order of parts
In the name 毛泽东 [mao ze dong] the family name is Mao, ie. the first name, left to right. The given name is Dong. The middle character, Ze, is a generational name, and is common to all his siblings (such as his brothers and sister, 毛泽民 [mao ze min], 毛泽覃 [mao ze tan], and 毛澤紅 [mao ze hong]).
Among acquaintances Mao may be referred to as 毛泽东先生 [mao ze dong xiān shēng] or 毛先生 [mao xiān shēng]. Not everyone uses generational names these days, especially in Mainland China. If you are on familiar terms with someone called 毛泽东, you would normally refer to them using 泽东 [ze dong], not just 东 [dong].
Note also that the names are not separated by spaces.
The order family name followed by given name(s) is common in other countries, such as Japan, Korea and Hungary.
Chinese people who deal with Westerners will often adopt an additional given name that is easier for Westerners to use. For example, Yao Ming (family name Yao, given name Ming) may write his name for foreigners as Fred Yao Ming or Fred Ming Yao.
Multiple family names
Spanish-speaking people will commonly have two family names. For example, Maria-Jose Carreño Quiñones may be the daughter of Antonio Carreño Rodríguez and María Quiñones Marqués.
You would refer to her as Señorita Carreño, not Señorita Quiñones.
Variant forms
We already saw that the patronymic in Iceland ends in -son or -dóttir, depending on whether the child is male or female. Russians use patronymics as their middle name but also use family names, in the order given-patronymic-family. The endings of the patronymic and family names will indicate whether the person in question is male or female. For example, the wife of Борис Никола́евич Ельцин (Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin) is Наина Иосифовна Ельцина (Naina Iosifovna Yeltsina) – note how the husband’s names end in consosonants, while the wife’s names (even the patronymic from her father) end in a.
Mixing it up
Many cultures mix and match these differences from Western personal names, and add their own novelties.
For example, Velikkakathu Sankaran Achuthanandan is a Kerala name from Southern India, usually written V. S. Achuthanandan which follows the order familyName-fathersName-givenName. In many parts of the world, parts of names are derived from titles, locations, genealogical information, caste, religious references, and so on, eg. the Arabic Abu Karim Muhammad al-Jamil ibn Nidal ibn Abdulaziz al-Filistini.
In Vietnam, names such as Nguyễn Tấn Dũng follow the order family-middle-given name. Although this seems similar to the Chinese example above, even in a formal situation this Prime Minister of Vietnam is referred to using his given name, ie. Mr. Dung, not Mr. Nguyen.
Further reading
Wikipedia sports a large number of fascinating articles about how people’s names look in various cultures around the world. I strongly recommend a perusal of the follow links.
Akan • Arabic • Balinese • Bulgarian • Czech • Chinese • Dutch • Fijian • French • German • Hawaiian • Hebrew • Hungarian • Icelandic • Indian • Indonesian • Irish • Italian • Japanese • Javanese • Korean • Lithuanian • Malaysian • Mongolian • Persian • Philippine • Polish • Portuguese • Russian • Spanish • Taiwanese • Thai • Vietnamese
Consequences
If designing a form or database that will accept names from people with a variety of backgrounds, you should ask yourself whether you really need to have separate fields for given name and family name.
This will depend on what you need to do with the data, but obviously it will be simpler to just use the full name as the user provides it, where possible.
Note that if you have separate fields because you want to use the person’s given name to communicate with them, you may not only have problems due to name syntax, but there are varying expectations around the world with regards to formality also that need to be accounted for. It may be better to ask separately, when setting up a profile for example, how that person would like you to address them.
If you do still feel you need to ask for constituent parts of a name separately, try to avoid using the labels ‘first name’ and ‘last name’, since these can be confusing for people who normally write their family name followed by given names.
Be careful, also, about assumptions built into algorithms that pull out the parts of a name automatically. For example, the v-card and h-card approach of implied “n” optimization could have difficulties with, say, Chinese names. You should be as clear as possible about telling people how to specify their name so that you capture the data you think you need.
If you are designing forms that will be localised on a per culture basis, don’t forget that atomised name parts may still need to be stored in a central database, which therefore needs to be able to represent all the various complexities that you dealt with by relegating the form design to the localisation effort.
I’ll post some further issues and thoughts about personal names when time allows.
[See part 2.]
« BBC 2.0 – Tibetan emphasis »
July 19th, 2007 at 12:48 pm
Really interesting. What seems obvious in one culture/country/language is not in another one. Thanks for this lesson !
July 19th, 2007 at 1:49 pm
A couple of notes on Russian and Eastern Slavic names:
1. While the order you presented (given name, patronymic, surname) is certainly the most common, it is important to note that the three can come in any order (this is mostly due to the structure of names and the general freedom from word order constraints common to these languages). You will also frequently find names given in surname, given, patronymic order–especially in formal situations.
2. It is also important to note that, unless you are on close terms with a person, it is customary to refer to him or her using the given name, patronymic combination (e.g. Борис Николаевич, not just Борис). The use of Mr. or Mrs. (Господин and Госпожа, respectively) is so infrequent as to be nearly nonexistent.
A great resource that addresses these and other issues surrounding Eastern Slavic names can be found here:
http://www.answers.com/topic/names-in-russian-empire-soviet-union-and-cis-countries
Thanks for the great resource, by the way. I’m excited to see more!
Azuntik
July 19th, 2007 at 2:17 pm
Would it make sense to have two name fields where the first is called ‘Name’, and the second is ‘Preferred mode of address’? That way I could put Robert Hahn in the ‘Name’ field, and ‘Mr. Hahn’ in the ‘Preferred Mode’ field?
When you consider sites that offer personalization, or situations where a sales rep would call you back, the second field comes in handy to keep the conversation going smoothly.
July 19th, 2007 at 2:33 pm
@roberthahn: Yes, I think it may make sense in some / many cases. (I was thinking of writing more thoughts on approaches to particular uses of names in a later post, and that was definitely something I suggest people consider.)
There’s another wrinkle for me in the UK. In some contexts, if I’m contacted out of the blue, I expect to be called Mr. Ishida (otherwise I wonder where I’ve met the person before). But once first contact is made, I want to revert quickly to first names in most cases. I don’t know how relevant that is to form creation though, since that constitutes a kind of first contact.
July 19th, 2007 at 5:22 pm
Another case you haven’t listed is found in some parts of South Asia — a single name, not divided into parts, although it may be written in more than one word.
Take, for instance, Indonesian dictator Suharto. That’s his name: Suharto. People from Java (Javanese) typically use one name.
In Burma, people may have two- or more-word names, where no part of the name is a family name — it’s all one given name, even though it’s more than one word. The vice president of the college I attended is named Ba Win — that’s one name, “Ba Win”, not a surname and a given name. He’s not “Mr. Win” or “Mr. Ba”. Formally, he’s “U Ba Win”, where “U” is a title like “Mr.”
July 19th, 2007 at 5:29 pm
Thanks for this very instructive blog entry. I’m sure that most of us will now think twice when designing a web form
July 19th, 2007 at 5:32 pm
Another issue can be name length. I have a 3-letter last name of Chinese origin. It isn’t terribly uncommon for me to find that this does not meet a minimum length requirement. Makes no sense. It is my last name, and therefore it is long enough to be a last name!
July 19th, 2007 at 6:00 pm
@gex: I know people with two letter surname (eg. Ng), and I even met someone with a single letter for their surname.
On the other side of the scale, I’ve known several people who can’t fit their names into the space available for credit card and driving licence applications.
July 19th, 2007 at 6:06 pm
Correction on Spanish names:
Your example is correct for an unmarried female, therefore you would address her as Señorita Carreño, not Señora.
For married females, the name order is Personal Father’s-family Husband’s-family.
There is also more complicated naming for upper class families, not commonly seen, but it may look something like this:
Jose’ {de Avila} (father’s family) {de Bivar} (mother’s family)
As in French or German, the ‘of’ denotes nobility.
And sometimes when all branches are noble, they may do generational compounding: all the father’s names, both father and mother, and then all the mother’s names, both father and mother, separated by ‘y’.
July 19th, 2007 at 6:07 pm
Don’t forget Mr. O from Korea (that is, one character names), and Welsh names like ffoulkes, with two lower case f’s.
Some people have simply one name, what we in the English world would call a first name or given name.
July 19th, 2007 at 7:11 pm
@Ted: Thanks. I changed it, but in some parts of the Spanish speaking world, her name won’t change.
In other parts, if Maria-Jose Carreño Quiñones married Jorge López Portillo, she may change her name (unofficially) to Maria-Jose Carreño de López. Some women, however, feel that isn’t good because ‘de’ can signify the husband’s possession of the woman.
For more gory and fascinating detail (because, yes, there is much more) on many cultures, follow the links to Wikipedia that I put in the post.
July 19th, 2007 at 7:47 pm
gex,
I’m surprised at your problems, since three-letter surnames are not unheard of even in English, such as May or Hay — I know people with both those surnames.
July 19th, 2007 at 7:49 pm
I work for an HR company as a developer and we deal with first names and last names from all over the world on a daily basis. It might be Eurocentric (or more precisely, Anglocentric) for our company to pigeonhole other cultures into using First Name and Last Name, but really when it comes down to it in practice, it works sufficiently well. Sure it might not be accurate in the context of one’s culture, but when you’re looking for somebody’s criminal record for instance, you want a first name, middle name, last name, maiden name and anything else will go into the AKA category.
I think in general, more names works better than less names. If your culture has additional names (patronymics, maiden names, generational names, etc.), you can always fit those into AKA (even though it’s inaccurate, the police will run through it) while if your culture doesn’t have the concept of last name…well then you’ll have to go with Birthdate or Physical appeareances…
July 19th, 2007 at 8:49 pm
It’s not a “Kerala” name, it’s a Malayalee name from the South Indian state of Kerala or perhaps a Keralite name (though that is less common).
July 20th, 2007 at 6:43 am
One problem that I experience is the frequent limitation of name characters to A to Z. My name has an apostrophe. My name is O’Meara…not Omeara. Most name forms do not allow me to spell my name using the apostrophe. An error is returned if I try. I understand that the spelling of my family name has changed over time but that is the way it is spelled today. I am surely not a linguist but I understand that O’ Ó Mc Mac Ne Ni Nic – along with various accent marks – are all part of Gaelic names. The names can include male and female forms of single and double patronymics as well as clan affiliations. Rarely do forms allow these full and preferred name representations.
July 20th, 2007 at 11:48 am
May I add that site developers should also consider address formats? For those of us outside the USA, it is frustrating when a form has a mandatory field for ZIP code, even if the country selected is, say, Hong Kong, which has no such codes. You can try to enter “0000″ or soemthing similar, but some forms are “smart” and require the correct US format. By this stage I have generally given up and taken my internet shopping elsewhere.
July 20th, 2007 at 11:53 am
Hi, a small correction on Icelandic names:
They do not end with -sson or -sdóttir, but rather -son or -dóttir (e. -son or -daughter). The extra s you added comes from the name of the father.
Björk’s father’s name is Guðmundur, which changes to Guðmunds according to our grammar rules and then dóttir is added.
It is, however, most common for names to end with an s when used in this context. But there are exceptions. A perfectly valid name is e.g. Björk Arnardóttir (just like Guðmundur->Guðmunds, her fathers name is Örn->Arnar).
(For fun: The name can be said as ‘Björk, daughter of Guðmundur’, which is in Icelandic said ‘Björk, dóttir Guðmunds’ – hence Björk Guðmundsdóttir).
July 20th, 2007 at 12:17 pm
@Jon: Yes. I simplified that example slightly, so that the detail didn’t obscure the main point. Thanks for the explanation. For all the names, there are more details in the Wikipedia links I provided.
July 21st, 2007 at 12:51 am
Here is another real world example: VISA always call me Jean even tough my full first name is Jean-Michel. In french, Michel is not a middle name and it is never initialed. Jean-Michel is a compound name, as a lot of people have in Quebec. We’re a Canadian province yet we have our own differences that VISA Canada can’t understand!
This is a very good and informative post, thanks!
July 22nd, 2007 at 6:24 pm
This gets even more complicated on cultures that don’t enforce the strict use of the family name (Brazillian Portuguese).
for example:
João Andrade de Souza – here you have what can be called one last name: “Andrade de Souza” is a composite name, that is treated as one.
However, the son of “João Andrade de Souza” and “Maria Aquino dos Santos” can be “Diego Andrade dos Santos” or “Diego Aquino de Souza”. This way you do not know for sure which one is the fathers name and which is the mother’s name (in Brazil most people share both, different from China, for instance).
In such situation you are better off either writing it as the full last name (“Andrade dos Santos” or “Aquino de Souza”) or separating connective words: “Mr. Andrade dos Santos” – full last name, or “Mr. Andrade” or even “Mr. dos Santos”.
July 23rd, 2007 at 3:57 pm
Very interesting and informative. This should be another design aspect to be considered when designing a new application. Especially when the whole world is your audience and user..
July 24th, 2007 at 10:46 pm
Here’s a question…
For backends and administration of sites it can be VERY useful to give the ability to sort by first or last name. What workarounds are there in this case?
If we use just a Full Name field the sorting could be pretty useless.
July 26th, 2007 at 3:19 am
Thanks for the article. Very timely. You recommend not using “First name” and “Last name” as labels, and you seem to use “Given name” and “Family name” as a preference. Is this what you would recommend generally?
(Not recommend in a W3C way, of course, but in an ordinary everyday ‘perfect enough’ way?)
July 26th, 2007 at 7:58 am
@Jonathan: Yes, if you are going to ask for a name in two parts, I suggest you call those family and given, rather than first and last. But I’m also trying to point out, of course, that people’s names in many parts of the world don’t easily fit into two parts, and if they do, don’t necessarily equate to family and given names.