October 13, 2011 at 21:45Names of people and interface
The article’s discussion space touches on the issues of distinguishing names of people all over the world, and how this affects the design of input forms, databases, computer ontologies, etc. in the context of the World Wide Web.
Interested audience: authors of HTML content, developers of server application scripts (PHP, JSP, etc.), web project managers and any other people who are somehow related to the design of data entry forms, design of databases and ontologies that affect personal names of people.
Keep in mind the differences in the formation and traditions of using people's names in other countries. Often the creators of sites or programs of one culture do not take into account the national characteristics of the user of another, which makes the latter feel unusual, and puts additional barriers to using the product.
This article does not cover absolutely all cases. This is due to the fact that there are too many different name cultures, all of which cannot be described and taken into account immediately, and to the frequent admissibility of imperfect solutions that correspond only to the cultures of most users, which significantly saves labor resources. Here we will try to focus only on the main examples showing solutions in the design of input forms and building databases. Sometimes it is sometimes necessary to take into account some points in the construction of ontologies, although no specific examples will be presented here.
There are two main cases to consider.
In real life, you probably will not be able to localize for each culture, so even if you rely on the second option, some people will have to use a form that was not intended for their cultural characteristics.
Let's look at examples of how people's names can differ in the world.
In the naming "Björk Guðmundsdóttir" the name itself is Björk. The second word is patronymic, composed of the name of the father (sometimes mothers, but matronyms are rare) and at the end -son (Isl. Son) for men and -dóttir (Isl. Daughter) for women. As a rule, Icelanders do not have a surname; accordingly, the question of their use does not arise.
Regardless of the degree of respect for the object of treatment, Icelanders call it only by name or by name and patronymic. Of course, to name a person "Ms. Gwyudmunddsdouttir" will be incorrect.
Spouses do not change anything in their name, it is possible to borrow a surname in those rare cases, if there is one.
Sort alphabetically by name, not middle name. In order to clarify the repeated entries, some tricks are used, for example, in the phone books, the profession of subscribers is indicated.
The first name and middle name scheme is also used in southern India, Malaysia and Indonesia.
The Malay name "Isa bin Osman" can be broken down by name and patronymic. The word “bin” means “son (of someone),” for women, “binti” is used. In order to appeal to this person, “Mr. Isa”, “Mr. Isa” will do.
In the Chinese name 毛泽东 ("Mao Zedong"), the surname is "Mao", that is, the first when reading from left to right. The personal name is Dong. The middle syllable “Tse” is the name of the generation, and is the same for all its brothers and sisters: 毛泽民 (Mao Zemin), 毛 泽 覃 (Mao Zetan), 毛 泽 紅 (Mao Zhehong) The
Chinese naming system is the basis for all the traditional ways of naming people in East Asia .
Among people who are not close to him, Mao can be referred to as 毛泽东 先生 (“Mao Zedong Xiangsheng”) or 毛先生 (“Mao xiangsheng”), where “xiangsheng” is a kind of analogue of “Mr.” or “Mr.”. Although at the moment not everyone has the name of a generation, especially in mainland China, those who have it will consider it proper to use it together with a personal name. Therefore, a person named 毛泽东 cannot be addressed simply as 东, 泽 东 should be used.
In Japan, Korea, and Hungary, a surname is also put ahead of a personal name or personal names.
Please note that names in the record with hieroglyphs are not separated by spaces. There are many different transcription systems for various Asian languages, called by the names of their creators. Moreover, the transcription of an already transcribed word from one language to another, bypassing the original form, of course, will lead to errors (compare the correct "Takeshi" and screams. "Takeshi").
The Chinese, in contact with representatives of Western civilization, can add an additional personal name that will be more familiar to their new friends. For example, Yao Ming (last name is Yao, personal name is Ming) can be called to foreigners as Fred Yao Ming or Fred Ming Yao.
Spaniards usually have two surnames. For example, the daughter of Antonio Campos Rodríguez (Antonio Campos Rodriguez) and María Martínez Marqués (Maria Martinez Marquez) is called María Campos Martínez (Maria Campos Martinez). The daughter should be contacted by Señorita Campos, not Señorita Martínez.
At birth, a Portuguese child can receive one or two names and up to four surnames. Similarly, children receive a surname from both parents. Brazilians also have up to four surnames inherited from their ancestors, such as José Eduardo Santos Tavares Melo Silva.
The Spaniards put the surname of the father before the surname of the mother, the Portuguese and Brazilians - on the contrary, but the order may change. Also, short words may appear between the names, such as de or e between the words: Carreño de Quiñones, Tavares e Silva.
The patronymic of Icelanders differs by the gender of its carrier. However, there are more powerful changes. The Russians and the peoples of the countries of the former USSR (Kazakhstan, Tatarstan, Georgia, etc.), who adopted the Russian tradition of the name along with the Russian language, use the middle name used between the surname and name. Patronymic endings vary by gender of carrier. Compare: Boris Nikolaevich Yeltsin and Naina Iosifovna Yeltsin - there is no ending at the end of the husband’s name, while the wife adds “-a”. Russian names are inclined, while there are non-declining, permanent surnames. A distinctive feature of Russian naming is the rarity of matronyms.
A middle or middle name is a tradition of English-speaking countries. Sometimes the second refers to other terms, for example, double names. In the culture of Europe and Western countries, one to three additional names are commonly used. The second name is an additional personal name and is not identical to the Russian patronymic, although it can be given in honor of a relative.
Americans often write their own name with an initial in the middle, such as John Q. Public. Sometimes a form accepted in the USA is suggested as a common tradition of spelling names, even in the United Kingdom, where people can have more than one middle name. The Briton will immediately notice such American manners. Koreans, for whom it is typical to have 3 names that cannot be written as initials, will be surprised at the “American” input form. Also keep in mind that many people using initials in their name may prefer to place them at the beginning of the name.
Members of the same family do not always have the same surname. In modern Western civilization, the number of wives is growing who want to keep their own names after marriage, but in China this practice is normal. In some countries, wives have a choice whether or not to take the husband’s name. If Malay Zayton marries Isa, she can remain Ms. Zayton, or take the double surname “Zayton Isa”, which implies the conversion “Ms. Isa”.
Hispanic surnames also differ. In 1996, Manuel A. Pérez Quiñones described the names of his family or appellido: he himself became Pérez Quiñones, because his father's appellidos were Pérez Rodríguez, and his mother's appellidos were Quiñones Alamo. He later met a girl with the Padilla Falto appellido. After the wedding, her appelido became Padilla de Pérez, and their children had the appellido Pérez Padilla. The bottom line is that only siblings have the same appellido.
(The name Manuel has been slightly changed: in fact, his appellido Pérez-Quiñones instead of the space option that was introduced in order to make the naming mechanism more understandable.)
Also, you can’t just rely on accepting the name from husband to wife, sometimes grooms take the names of the brides. In this case, it would be better to say "maiden name" or "former name" "nee (s) (hereinafter maiden name)."
Many cultures mix the tradition of names characteristic of two or more, and also add their own inventions.
For example, “Velikkakathu Sankaran Achuthanandan” is the Kerala name of southern India, usually written as “VS Achuthanandan” and is a “last name, middle name, first name” construction.
In many parts of the world, various components of a person’s name come from the names of the settlements, genealogical features, caste, religious status, etc. Here are a few examples: The
Indian name "Kogaddu Birappa Timappa Nair" should be considered as a combination of "village name - father's name - personal name - last name."
The Rajasthan name Aditya Pratap Singh Chauhan consists of a personal name, father's name, last name and caste name.
In another region of India, the name "Madurai Money Ayer" should be interpreted as the set "city name - personal name - caste name".
The Arabic “Abu Karim Muhammad al-Jamil Ibn Nidal Ibn Abdulaziz al-Filistini” translates as “Karim's Father, Muhammad (personal name), Handsome, Son Nydahl, Son of Abdulaziz, Palestinian,” with Karim being the first son of Muhammad. For more information on a similar tradition of rich and long names, see the Wikipedia article .
Thai people have a nickname that they call each other in informal situations. The nickname is not originally associated with the real name. Since the nickname consists of one or two syllables, and it is easier to pronounce, Thais are introduced to foreigners precisely to them. For example, the nickname of former Prime Minister Thaksin Chinnavat is Mau (แม้ว). Often nicknames for family and friends vary.
In Vietnam, the name Nguyễn Tấn Dũng (Nguyen Tan Dung) has the meaning "surname - middle name - personal name". Although such a system is similar to the Chinese one, there is a slight difference: even in official situations, the Prime Minister of Vietnam needs to be contacted by “Mr. Dung,” not “Mr. Nguyen,” that is, by name.
Ideographic writing in Japanese names creates problems: you can read the name out loud in more than one way. This creates difficulties both for people and for alphabetical sorting systems, because the latter is carried out by prose. For example, the last name 東海 林賢 蔵 (the first three ideograms on the left) can be read either as “Tokayrin” or as “Soji”.
Moreover, the pronunciations of different kanji may coincide, so romanization and cyrillization inevitably lead to a loss of meaning: all of the names 庄 司, ,子, 東 路 and 小路 are read as “Soji”.
Some Japanese names use outdated and obsolete ideograms, which will be difficult to read.
Because of the problems discussed, the Japanese prefer to equip their own name in the usual spelling with a version of the entry in the non-ideographic syllable alphabet of the kan.
As already mentioned above, a possible way to solve problems is localization for each specific cultural-language environment. Theoretically, this should allow you to adapt the interface to each specific target audience. Unfortunately, this approach has several drawbacks:
The following are general suggestions that may help. Of course, the essence of the problem is too complex to provide comprehensive guidance, and there are no direct answers.
When developing the design of an input form or database where users will enter personal data, one must immediately ask whether it is necessary to separate a personal name and surname. It all depends on the tasks, but, obviously, the simplest way is to simply leave the full name field.
Note that the names in some cultures may be longer than yours, so the input field must be long enough so that the user can see it fully as you type. Also, do not limit the name fields in the databases. In particular, a four-character Japanese name will not fit into four bytes when encoding UTF-8, it will need 12.
If you still prefer to keep the parts of the name separate, try to avoid the names “Personal Name” and “Last Name” in non-localized input forms, since it will be more convenient for some to write the name, followed by personal names.
For some cultures, this will not be very acceptable (for example, for Icelanders who do not have a surname as such), but in general this is the most suitable solution.
In case you want to define parts of the name for alphabetical sorting, contacts, etc. consider introducing to the existing field the full name of the additional, in which the user can specify the parts of the name that are needed for special purposes.
Sometimes dividing a name into parts is done for the purpose of using one of them in circulation: “I'm afraid I can't do that, Dave.” This can be used both in the interface and in email alerts. Of course, an appeal, for example, by name in some contexts will be welcomed, but a person of another national culture can perceive it negatively and vice versa. The attitude to the shout by name can vary in one nation. In this case, it would be better at the very beginning to ask the user what to call him.
This additional meaning will also be useful for determining the nickname of Thais.
Since Japanese names are read in different ways, sorting the Japanese names will require an additional field in which they can enter the pronunciation of their name. The information from this field will be used to sort Japanese names.
If you break up the name fields, make sure that each input field has a clear signature. Do not rely on the fact that the user will definitely enter the last name after the personal name.
Be careful about the assumptions of the algorithms that automatically split the full name into parts. For example, optimizing v-card or h-card names may not work well with Chinese names. It is necessary to inform the user as accurately as possible how to indicate their data.
There are one character long names. People with similar short names may have problems with applications that reject input as a name with initials. If you need to track the entry of initials, add a message to users, rather than filter the entry.
Do not make the last name mandatory: the people of South India, Malaysia, Indonesia and many other countries have only a personal name. Users will have to enter some kind of garbage like “Mr.”, “.” into the fields or, much worse, do not use your product at all.
Do not forget to allow the user to use punctuation in names: hyphens, apostrophes, etc. The user may need to enter text with spaces, such as adding prefixes and suffixes: “de” for the French, “background” for the Germans, “Ml.” ("Junior") among Americans; also sequences of letters, separated by a space, may be correct names: "Rosa Maria".
Members of the same family may have different surnames. Not only women can change their surnames after marriage, therefore it is better to choose the name of the input field of the surname at birth without focusing on gender: “Previous name”, and not “Maiden name”.
If you develop input forms that will be localized in each specific cultural environment, do not forget that the name, broken into parts, will probably have to be stored in a centralized database, which will require you to present all the confused parts in an accessible form for storage and retrieval.
Many users do not use the Latin alphabet or use sets with many additional characters. This seems obvious, but still fraught with several consequences for designers, which are often forgotten.
If you are developing a form in English, you need to decide whether the user is expected to enter a name in national characters (for example, 小 林康宏), only in Latin (Yasuhiro Kobayashi), or both.
Remember that even English names can contain letters that are not in ASCII encoding (for example, Zoë).
On the other hand, there are situations (it is necessary to set a login, the system supports only ASCII) in which it will be impossible to allow national characters.
What users specify in the input form most often depends on the language of the page. If the page is translated into their native language, it is most possible to get a name spelled not only in Latin.
In terms of letters, ASCII encoding means a set of basic letters of the English alphabet, that is, ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ and the same composition of lowercase letters.
If you need only Latin, inform the user about this in the interface of the input form. Do not forget to instruct and translators.
The choice of data entry and storage form depends on the purposes of collecting information and its use.
Please note that the Japanese may need a field to transcribe the name in the Japanese syllabic, which will require the addition of the third field in the example above.
When using non-ASCII characters, be sure to encode the page, application, and database.
Names of people are not always sorted by last name. For example, Thais and Icelanders use sorting by personal name.
Sorting methods also differ in Hispanidad. María-Jose Carreño Quiñones from one place will look for herself as Carreño Quiñones, and her full namesake, living in another place where another sorting system is adopted, will start with Quiñones.
The small words "background", "de", "van" add complexity. Sometimes prefixes are taken into account, sometimes not.
The level of formalism varies in different countries, and this must be taken into account when contacting the user. In the Western cultural environment, it is customary to apply by personal name, but in the United Kingdom an appeal at the first meeting by personal name will show the interlocutor that you have already seen him somewhere.
On the other hand, the use of the appeal and personal name (“Mr. Richard”) or only a surname (“Ishida!”) Is acceptable in some parts of the world, but not in all (for example, in Britain).
Titles and titles are important in Germany, so it’s better not to contact Herr Schmidt, but Herr Professor Doktor Schmidt.
In cultures like the Japanese, there are nominal suffixes expressing reverence, position, or rank. It is better to turn to someone like "Tanaka-san" or "Tanaka-sama" (depending on the degree of respect). A department manager named Tanaka expects you to contact Tanaka-bucho (lit. “Tanaka department head”). Although you can add -san to your personal names, in a production environment, this kind of call will look strange.
The information above provides only a brief summary of the difficulties that a developer may encounter. In reality, even in the sphere of one culture, the situation may turn out to be even more confused and complicated. The English-language Wikipedia provides many detailed articles on the formation of the names of people in different parts of the world. It is recommended that you read and understand these articles.
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
Based on an article on w3.org and information online encyclopedias.
Interested audience: authors of HTML content, developers of server application scripts (PHP, JSP, etc.), web project managers and any other people who are somehow related to the design of data entry forms, design of databases and ontologies that affect personal names of people.
Keep in mind the differences in the formation and traditions of using people's names in other countries. Often the creators of sites or programs of one culture do not take into account the national characteristics of the user of another, which makes the latter feel unusual, and puts additional barriers to using the product.
This article does not cover absolutely all cases. This is due to the fact that there are too many different name cultures, all of which cannot be described and taken into account immediately, and to the frequent admissibility of imperfect solutions that correspond only to the cultures of most users, which significantly saves labor resources. Here we will try to focus only on the main examples showing solutions in the design of input forms and building databases. Sometimes it is sometimes necessary to take into account some points in the construction of ontologies, although no specific examples will be presented here.
Cases
There are two main cases to consider.
- You perform the design of the form in a single language (for example, English), which will be used by people from all over the world.
- You perform the design of the form in one language, but over time, this element will be adapted to various cultural characteristics of the sphere of the end-user language.
In real life, you probably will not be able to localize for each culture, so even if you rely on the second option, some people will have to use a form that was not intended for their cultural characteristics.
Difference Descriptions
Let's look at examples of how people's names can differ in the world.
First and last name
In the naming "Björk Guðmundsdóttir" the name itself is Björk. The second word is patronymic, composed of the name of the father (sometimes mothers, but matronyms are rare) and at the end -son (Isl. Son) for men and -dóttir (Isl. Daughter) for women. As a rule, Icelanders do not have a surname; accordingly, the question of their use does not arise.
Regardless of the degree of respect for the object of treatment, Icelanders call it only by name or by name and patronymic. Of course, to name a person "Ms. Gwyudmunddsdouttir" will be incorrect.
Spouses do not change anything in their name, it is possible to borrow a surname in those rare cases, if there is one.
Sort alphabetically by name, not middle name. In order to clarify the repeated entries, some tricks are used, for example, in the phone books, the profession of subscribers is indicated.
The first name and middle name scheme is also used in southern India, Malaysia and Indonesia.
The Malay name "Isa bin Osman" can be broken down by name and patronymic. The word “bin” means “son (of someone),” for women, “binti” is used. In order to appeal to this person, “Mr. Isa”, “Mr. Isa” will do.
Differences in component arrangement
In the Chinese name 毛泽东 ("Mao Zedong"), the surname is "Mao", that is, the first when reading from left to right. The personal name is Dong. The middle syllable “Tse” is the name of the generation, and is the same for all its brothers and sisters: 毛泽民 (Mao Zemin), 毛 泽 覃 (Mao Zetan), 毛 泽 紅 (Mao Zhehong) The
Chinese naming system is the basis for all the traditional ways of naming people in East Asia .
Among people who are not close to him, Mao can be referred to as 毛泽东 先生 (“Mao Zedong Xiangsheng”) or 毛先生 (“Mao xiangsheng”), where “xiangsheng” is a kind of analogue of “Mr.” or “Mr.”. Although at the moment not everyone has the name of a generation, especially in mainland China, those who have it will consider it proper to use it together with a personal name. Therefore, a person named 毛泽东 cannot be addressed simply as 东, 泽 东 should be used.
In Japan, Korea, and Hungary, a surname is also put ahead of a personal name or personal names.
Please note that names in the record with hieroglyphs are not separated by spaces. There are many different transcription systems for various Asian languages, called by the names of their creators. Moreover, the transcription of an already transcribed word from one language to another, bypassing the original form, of course, will lead to errors (compare the correct "Takeshi" and screams. "Takeshi").
The Chinese, in contact with representatives of Western civilization, can add an additional personal name that will be more familiar to their new friends. For example, Yao Ming (last name is Yao, personal name is Ming) can be called to foreigners as Fred Yao Ming or Fred Ming Yao.
Multiple surnames
Spaniards usually have two surnames. For example, the daughter of Antonio Campos Rodríguez (Antonio Campos Rodriguez) and María Martínez Marqués (Maria Martinez Marquez) is called María Campos Martínez (Maria Campos Martinez). The daughter should be contacted by Señorita Campos, not Señorita Martínez.
At birth, a Portuguese child can receive one or two names and up to four surnames. Similarly, children receive a surname from both parents. Brazilians also have up to four surnames inherited from their ancestors, such as José Eduardo Santos Tavares Melo Silva.
The Spaniards put the surname of the father before the surname of the mother, the Portuguese and Brazilians - on the contrary, but the order may change. Also, short words may appear between the names, such as de or e between the words: Carreño de Quiñones, Tavares e Silva.
Changing forms of words
The patronymic of Icelanders differs by the gender of its carrier. However, there are more powerful changes. The Russians and the peoples of the countries of the former USSR (Kazakhstan, Tatarstan, Georgia, etc.), who adopted the Russian tradition of the name along with the Russian language, use the middle name used between the surname and name. Patronymic endings vary by gender of carrier. Compare: Boris Nikolaevich Yeltsin and Naina Iosifovna Yeltsin - there is no ending at the end of the husband’s name, while the wife adds “-a”. Russian names are inclined, while there are non-declining, permanent surnames. A distinctive feature of Russian naming is the rarity of matronyms.
Second name
A middle or middle name is a tradition of English-speaking countries. Sometimes the second refers to other terms, for example, double names. In the culture of Europe and Western countries, one to three additional names are commonly used. The second name is an additional personal name and is not identical to the Russian patronymic, although it can be given in honor of a relative.
Americans often write their own name with an initial in the middle, such as John Q. Public. Sometimes a form accepted in the USA is suggested as a common tradition of spelling names, even in the United Kingdom, where people can have more than one middle name. The Briton will immediately notice such American manners. Koreans, for whom it is typical to have 3 names that cannot be written as initials, will be surprised at the “American” input form. Also keep in mind that many people using initials in their name may prefer to place them at the beginning of the name.
Name Inheritance
Members of the same family do not always have the same surname. In modern Western civilization, the number of wives is growing who want to keep their own names after marriage, but in China this practice is normal. In some countries, wives have a choice whether or not to take the husband’s name. If Malay Zayton marries Isa, she can remain Ms. Zayton, or take the double surname “Zayton Isa”, which implies the conversion “Ms. Isa”.
Hispanic surnames also differ. In 1996, Manuel A. Pérez Quiñones described the names of his family or appellido: he himself became Pérez Quiñones, because his father's appellidos were Pérez Rodríguez, and his mother's appellidos were Quiñones Alamo. He later met a girl with the Padilla Falto appellido. After the wedding, her appelido became Padilla de Pérez, and their children had the appellido Pérez Padilla. The bottom line is that only siblings have the same appellido.
(The name Manuel has been slightly changed: in fact, his appellido Pérez-Quiñones instead of the space option that was introduced in order to make the naming mechanism more understandable.)
Also, you can’t just rely on accepting the name from husband to wife, sometimes grooms take the names of the brides. In this case, it would be better to say "maiden name" or "former name" "nee (s) (hereinafter maiden name)."
Mixing styles
Many cultures mix the tradition of names characteristic of two or more, and also add their own inventions.
For example, “Velikkakathu Sankaran Achuthanandan” is the Kerala name of southern India, usually written as “VS Achuthanandan” and is a “last name, middle name, first name” construction.
In many parts of the world, various components of a person’s name come from the names of the settlements, genealogical features, caste, religious status, etc. Here are a few examples: The
Indian name "Kogaddu Birappa Timappa Nair" should be considered as a combination of "village name - father's name - personal name - last name."
The Rajasthan name Aditya Pratap Singh Chauhan consists of a personal name, father's name, last name and caste name.
In another region of India, the name "Madurai Money Ayer" should be interpreted as the set "city name - personal name - caste name".
The Arabic “Abu Karim Muhammad al-Jamil Ibn Nidal Ibn Abdulaziz al-Filistini” translates as “Karim's Father, Muhammad (personal name), Handsome, Son Nydahl, Son of Abdulaziz, Palestinian,” with Karim being the first son of Muhammad. For more information on a similar tradition of rich and long names, see the Wikipedia article .
Thai people have a nickname that they call each other in informal situations. The nickname is not originally associated with the real name. Since the nickname consists of one or two syllables, and it is easier to pronounce, Thais are introduced to foreigners precisely to them. For example, the nickname of former Prime Minister Thaksin Chinnavat is Mau (แม้ว). Often nicknames for family and friends vary.
In Vietnam, the name Nguyễn Tấn Dũng (Nguyen Tan Dung) has the meaning "surname - middle name - personal name". Although such a system is similar to the Chinese one, there is a slight difference: even in official situations, the Prime Minister of Vietnam needs to be contacted by “Mr. Dung,” not “Mr. Nguyen,” that is, by name.
Ambiguity of writing
Ideographic writing in Japanese names creates problems: you can read the name out loud in more than one way. This creates difficulties both for people and for alphabetical sorting systems, because the latter is carried out by prose. For example, the last name 東海 林賢 蔵 (the first three ideograms on the left) can be read either as “Tokayrin” or as “Soji”.
Moreover, the pronunciations of different kanji may coincide, so romanization and cyrillization inevitably lead to a loss of meaning: all of the names 庄 司, ,子, 東 路 and 小路 are read as “Soji”.
Some Japanese names use outdated and obsolete ideograms, which will be difficult to read.
Because of the problems discussed, the Japanese prefer to equip their own name in the usual spelling with a version of the entry in the non-ideographic syllable alphabet of the kan.
Implications for the design of input forms
As already mentioned above, a possible way to solve problems is localization for each specific cultural-language environment. Theoretically, this should allow you to adapt the interface to each specific target audience. Unfortunately, this approach has several drawbacks:
- If it is necessary to centralize information from several types of input in a single database, there will be difficulties in synthesizing the storage scheme.
- In addition, a situation may arise when the emphasis on determining the necessary naming scheme by user location does not work: foreigners who adapt to someone else’s cultural environment, as well as foreign elements, are possible. For example, Singaporeans have Chinese, Malay, and South Indian roots. More than one use of names is also likely. Therefore, your interface should remain flexible.
The following are general suggestions that may help. Of course, the essence of the problem is too complex to provide comprehensive guidance, and there are no direct answers.
To smash or not to smash?
When developing the design of an input form or database where users will enter personal data, one must immediately ask whether it is necessary to separate a personal name and surname. It all depends on the tasks, but, obviously, the simplest way is to simply leave the full name field.
Note that the names in some cultures may be longer than yours, so the input field must be long enough so that the user can see it fully as you type. Also, do not limit the name fields in the databases. In particular, a four-character Japanese name will not fit into four bytes when encoding UTF-8, it will need 12.
Ways to divide names into parts
If you still prefer to keep the parts of the name separate, try to avoid the names “Personal Name” and “Last Name” in non-localized input forms, since it will be more convenient for some to write the name, followed by personal names.
For some cultures, this will not be very acceptable (for example, for Icelanders who do not have a surname as such), but in general this is the most suitable solution.
In case you want to define parts of the name for alphabetical sorting, contacts, etc. consider introducing to the existing field the full name of the additional, in which the user can specify the parts of the name that are needed for special purposes.
Sometimes dividing a name into parts is done for the purpose of using one of them in circulation: “I'm afraid I can't do that, Dave.” This can be used both in the interface and in email alerts. Of course, an appeal, for example, by name in some contexts will be welcomed, but a person of another national culture can perceive it negatively and vice versa. The attitude to the shout by name can vary in one nation. In this case, it would be better at the very beginning to ask the user what to call him.
This additional meaning will also be useful for determining the nickname of Thais.
Since Japanese names are read in different ways, sorting the Japanese names will require an additional field in which they can enter the pronunciation of their name. The information from this field will be used to sort Japanese names.
If you break up the name fields, make sure that each input field has a clear signature. Do not rely on the fact that the user will definitely enter the last name after the personal name.
Be careful about the assumptions of the algorithms that automatically split the full name into parts. For example, optimizing v-card or h-card names may not work well with Chinese names. It is necessary to inform the user as accurately as possible how to indicate their data.
There are one character long names. People with similar short names may have problems with applications that reject input as a name with initials. If you need to track the entry of initials, add a message to users, rather than filter the entry.
Do not make the last name mandatory: the people of South India, Malaysia, Indonesia and many other countries have only a personal name. Users will have to enter some kind of garbage like “Mr.”, “.” into the fields or, much worse, do not use your product at all.
Other comments
Do not forget to allow the user to use punctuation in names: hyphens, apostrophes, etc. The user may need to enter text with spaces, such as adding prefixes and suffixes: “de” for the French, “background” for the Germans, “Ml.” ("Junior") among Americans; also sequences of letters, separated by a space, may be correct names: "Rosa Maria".
Members of the same family may have different surnames. Not only women can change their surnames after marriage, therefore it is better to choose the name of the input field of the surname at birth without focusing on gender: “Previous name”, and not “Maiden name”.
If you develop input forms that will be localized in each specific cultural environment, do not forget that the name, broken into parts, will probably have to be stored in a centralized database, which will require you to present all the confused parts in an accessible form for storage and retrieval.
Character Support
Many users do not use the Latin alphabet or use sets with many additional characters. This seems obvious, but still fraught with several consequences for designers, which are often forgotten.
If you are developing a form in English, you need to decide whether the user is expected to enter a name in national characters (for example, 小 林康宏), only in Latin (Yasuhiro Kobayashi), or both.
Remember that even English names can contain letters that are not in ASCII encoding (for example, Zoë).
On the other hand, there are situations (it is necessary to set a login, the system supports only ASCII) in which it will be impossible to allow national characters.
What users specify in the input form most often depends on the language of the page. If the page is translated into their native language, it is most possible to get a name spelled not only in Latin.
In terms of letters, ASCII encoding means a set of basic letters of the English alphabet, that is, ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ and the same composition of lowercase letters.
If you need only Latin, inform the user about this in the interface of the input form. Do not forget to instruct and translators.
The choice of data entry and storage form depends on the purposes of collecting information and its use.
- Are you going to use the person’s name as an identifier in the system? In this case, there is no difference, ASCII or national spelling.
- Do you want to contact the user by name on the welcome page or in correspondence? In the case of the formation of a page translated into their native language, it will be more logical to use the name in their national spelling.
- Is it important for your organization to be able to understand the records and read their names? Then request a Latin transcription.
- Will their name be indexed by search engines? Or do you want to contact users in the newsletters by name, but carry out internal operations in English? Then in the input form, request in separate fields both national spelling and transcription.
Please note that the Japanese may need a field to transcribe the name in the Japanese syllabic, which will require the addition of the third field in the example above.
When using non-ASCII characters, be sure to encode the page, application, and database.
On a note
Sort mark
Names of people are not always sorted by last name. For example, Thais and Icelanders use sorting by personal name.
Sorting methods also differ in Hispanidad. María-Jose Carreño Quiñones from one place will look for herself as Carreño Quiñones, and her full namesake, living in another place where another sorting system is adopted, will start with Quiñones.
The small words "background", "de", "van" add complexity. Sometimes prefixes are taken into account, sometimes not.
Formalism
The level of formalism varies in different countries, and this must be taken into account when contacting the user. In the Western cultural environment, it is customary to apply by personal name, but in the United Kingdom an appeal at the first meeting by personal name will show the interlocutor that you have already seen him somewhere.
On the other hand, the use of the appeal and personal name (“Mr. Richard”) or only a surname (“Ishida!”) Is acceptable in some parts of the world, but not in all (for example, in Britain).
Titles and titles are important in Germany, so it’s better not to contact Herr Schmidt, but Herr Professor Doktor Schmidt.
In cultures like the Japanese, there are nominal suffixes expressing reverence, position, or rank. It is better to turn to someone like "Tanaka-san" or "Tanaka-sama" (depending on the degree of respect). A department manager named Tanaka expects you to contact Tanaka-bucho (lit. “Tanaka department head”). Although you can add -san to your personal names, in a production environment, this kind of call will look strange.
Additional Information
The information above provides only a brief summary of the difficulties that a developer may encounter. In reality, even in the sphere of one culture, the situation may turn out to be even more confused and complicated. The English-language Wikipedia provides many detailed articles on the formation of the names of people in different parts of the world. It is recommended that you read and understand these articles.
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
Based on an article on w3.org and information online encyclopedias.