Names of people and interface
The reasoning space of the article addresses the issues of distinguishing names of people around the world, and how this affects the design of input forms, databases, ontologies of informatics, 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 connected with the design of data entry forms, database design and ontologies that affect personal names of people.
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It should be remembered about the differences in the formation and traditions of the use of the names of people 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 the use of the product.
This article does not cover absolutely all cases. This is due both to the fact that there are too many different cultures of the name, all of which cannot be described and taken into account at once, and to the frequent admissibility of non-ideal solutions that correspond only to the cultures of most users, which significantly saves labor resources. Here we will try only to focus on the main examples showing solutions in the design of input forms and the construction of databases. Some items sometimes need to be considered 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.
Consider examples of how people's names may differ in the world.
In the naming of “Björk Guydmündsdouttir” (Björk Guðmundsdóttir) the proper name is Björk. The second word is the patronymic, composed of the father’s name (sometimes mothers, but matronyms are rare) and at the end —son (isl. Son) in men and –dóttir (isl. Daughter) in women. As a rule, Icelanders do not have a surname, respectively, there is no question of their use.
Regardless of the degree of respect appealing to the object of treatment Icelanders call it only by name or by name and patronymic. Of course, it would be incorrect to call the person “Ms. Gvjudmundsduttir”.
Spouses do not change anything in their name, possibly borrowing the surname in those rare cases, if there is one.
Sort alphabetically by name, not patronymic. In order to clarify the repetitive entries, some techniques are used, for example, in the phonebooks, subscriber occupations are indicated.
The name and patronymic scheme is also used in southern India, Malaysia and Indonesia.
Malay name "Isa bin Osman" can be divided into name and patronymic. The word "bin" means "son (of someone)", women use "binti". 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 one when reading from left to right. The personal name is "Dun". The middle syllable “Tse” is the name of a generation, and is the same for all its brothers and sisters: 毛泽民 (Mao Tsemin), 毛 泽 覃 (Mao Tsetan), 毛 泽 紅 (Mao Tsehong)
The Chinese naming system is the basis for all traditional naming practices in East Asia.
Among people who are not close to him, Mao may be referred to as 毛泽东 先生 (“Mao Zedong syanshen”) or 毛先生 (“Mao syanshen”), where “syanshen” is a certain analogue “Mr.” or “master”. Although at the moment not everyone has the name of a generation, especially in mainland China, those who have it will consider it appropriate to use it along with a personal name. Therefore, a person by the name of 毛泽东 cannot be addressed simply as 东; you should use 泽 东.
In Japan, Korea and Hungary, the surname is also put in front of a personal name or personal names.
Please note that the names in the recording are not separated by spaces. There are many different transcription systems for various Asian languages, called by the names of their creators. In this case, the transcription of an already transcribed word from one language to another, bypassing the original form, will of course lead to errors (compare the correct Takeshi and eret. 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 (surname - Yao, personal name - Min) can be called foreigners as Fred Yao Ming or Fred Ming Yao.
Spaniards usually have two last names. For example, the daughter Antonio Campos Rodríguez (Antonio Campos Rodriguez) and María Martínez Marqués (Maria Martínez Marquez) are called María Campos Martínez (Maria Campos Martínez). You should contact your daughter Señorita Campos, not Señorita Martínez.
At birth, a Portuguese child can get one or two names and up to four names. Similarly, children get a surname from both parents. Brazilians also have up to four surnames inherited from their ancestors, for example, José Eduardo Santos Tavares Melo Silva.
The Spaniards put the father’s name before the mother’s name, 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.
Patronymic of Icelanders varies by gender of its carrier. However, there are stronger changes. The Russians and the peoples who adopted the Russian tradition, together with the Russian language, the peoples of the countries of the former USSR (Kazakhstan, Tatarstan, Georgia, etc.) use the patronymic used between last name and first name. Patronymic endings vary by gender. Compare: Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin and Naina Yeltsin Iosifovna - at the end of the husband's name there is no ending, while the wife adds “-a." Russian names are inclined, while there are unknowing, permanent names. A distinctive feature of Russian naming is the rarity of matronyms.
The second or middle name is the tradition of English-speaking countries. Sometimes the second is understood by other terms, for example, double names. In the culture of Europe and Western countries, usually one to three additional names are used. The second name is an additional personal name and is not the same as the Russian patronymic, although it may be given in honor of a relative.
Americans often write their own name with an initial in the middle, for example, John Q. Public. Sometimes the form adopted in the USA is offered in the form of a common tradition of recording names, even in the United Kingdom, where people can have more than one second name. The Briton will immediately notice such American manners. Koreans, for whom it is typical to have 3 names that are not recorded as initials, will be surprised at the “American” input form. Also note that many people who use 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 last name. In modern Western civilization, the number of wives is growing who want to keep their own surnames after marriage, but in China this practice is normal. In some countries, wives have the choice of whether or not to take the name of the husband. If Malay Zayton marries Isa, she can remain Mrs. Zayton, or she can take the double surname “Zayton Isa”, which implies the appeal “Ms. Isa”.
Hispanic surnames are also different. In the 1996th year, Manuel A. Pérez Quiñones described the names of his family or an appellido: he himself became Pérez Quiñones, because his father’s appeal was Pérez Rodríguez and his mother’s appeal was Quiñones Alamo. Later he met up with the girl with the appetido Padilla Falto. After the wedding, Padilla de Pérez became her appelido, and their children had an appendo of Pérez Padilla. The bottom line is that only siblings have the same appeal.
(Manuel's name was slightly changed: in fact, his Pérez-Quiñones appendix instead of the space variant, which was introduced so that the name formation mechanism was more understandable.)
Also, you can not just rely on the reception of the names from husband to wife, sometimes the grooms take the names of the brides. In this case, it would be better to say "maiden name" or "former name" "nee (the maiden name)".
Many cultures mix the traditions of names that are characteristic of two or more, and also add their own inventions.
For example, Velikkakathu Sankaran Achuthanandan is a Kerala name for South India, usually recorded as “VS Achuthanandan” and is a last name, patronymic name.
In many parts of the world, the various components of a person's name come from the names of settlements, genealogical characteristics, caste, religious status, etc. Here are some examples:
The Indian name “Kogaddu Birapa Timappa Nair” should be considered as a combination of “the name of the village — the name of the father — a personal name — the name”.
The Rajasthan name “Aditya Pratap Singh Chauhan” consists of a personal name, father’s name, surname and caste name.
In another region of India, the name “Madurai Money Iyer” should be interpreted as the set “city name — personal name — caste name”.
The Arabic “Abu Karim Mohammed al-Jamil ibn Nidal ibn Abdulaziz al-Philistini” is translated as “Father Karim, Muhammad (personal name), Handsome, Son of Nidal, Son Abdulaziz, Palestinian, while Karim is the first son of Mohammed. For more information about this 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, the Thais appear to foreigners to them. For example, the nickname of the former Prime Minister Thaksin Chinnavat - Mau (แม้ว). Often nicknames for family and friends are different.
In Vietnam, the name Nguyễn Tấn Dũng (Nguyen Tan Dung) has the meaning “last name - middle name - personal name”. Although this system is similar to the Chinese one, there is a slight difference: even in official situations, the Prime Minister of Vietnam needs to contact “Mr. Dung”, and 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 for both people and alphabetic sorting systems, because the latter is carried out by presentation. For example, the surname 東海 林賢 蔵 (the first three ideograms on the left) can be read either as “Tokairin” or as “Soji”.
Moreover, the various kanji's expressions may coincide, therefore romanization and cyrillization inevitably lead to a loss of meaning: all of the surnames 庄 司, 庄子, 東 海林 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 provide their own name in the usual spelling with a version of the record in the non-geographical map of the kan.
As already mentioned above, a possible way to solve problems is localization for each specific cultural and language environment. Theoretically, this should allow adapting the interface to each specific target audience. Unfortunately, this approach has several drawbacks:
The following are general considerations that may help. Of course, the essence of the problem is too complicated to give comprehensive instructions, and there are no direct answers here.
When developing the design of an input form or a database where users will enter personal data, you need to immediately ask yourself whether it is necessary to separate a personal name and a surname. Everything depends on the tasks that have been set, but, as is obvious, the easiest is to simply leave the full name field.
Note that names in some cultures may be longer than yours, so the input field must be long enough so that the user can see it completely 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 bytes.
If you still prefer to keep parts of the name separately, 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 last 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 an introduction to the existing full name field optional, in which the user can specify the parts of the name that are needed for specific purposes.
Sometimes the division of a name into parts is done with 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, addressing, for example, by name in some contexts will be welcomed, the person of another national culture may perceive it negatively and vice versa. Varying the attitude towards shouting by name can also be in one nation. In this case, it would be better at the very beginning to ask the user how to call him.
This additional value will also be useful to determine the nickname of the Thais.
Since Japanese names are read in different ways, an additional field will be required to sort Japanese names in which they can enter the explanation of their name. The information from this field will be used to sort the Japanese names.
If you break the name fields, make sure that each input field has a clear signature. Do not rely on the fact that the user will accurately enter the last name after the personal name.
Be careful about the assumptions of algorithms that automatically break a full name into parts. For example, v-card or h-card name optimization can work poorly with Chinese names. It is necessary to inform the user as accurately as possible how to specify your data.
There are names that are one character long. People with similar short names may have problems with applications that reject the entered data as a name with initials. If you need to follow the initials input, add a message to users, rather than filter the input.
Do not make the input mandatory: the population of South India, Malaysia, Indonesia and many other countries have only a personal name. Users will have to enter some kind of “Mr.”, “.” Trash in the fields or, much worse, not to use your product at all.
Do not forget to allow the user to use punctuation marks in names: hyphens, apostrophes, etc. The user may need to enter text with spaces, such as adding prefixes and suffixes: “de” from the French, “background” from the Germans, “Ml.” (“Junior”) from the Americans; also sequences of letters, separated by a space, may be valid names: "Rose Mary".
Members of the same family may have different surnames. Not only women can change their surnames after marriage, so the name of the field for entering a surname at birth is better to choose without focusing on the floor: “Previous name”, not “Maiden name”.
If you are developing input forms that will be localized in each specific cultural environment, do not forget that the name, broken into pieces, will probably have to be stored in a centralized database, which will require you to present all the intricate parts in a form accessible for storage and retrieval.
Many users do not use the Latin alphabet or use sets with many additional characters. This seems obvious, but it is still fraught with several consequences for designers, which are often forgotten.
If a form is being developed 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 in both forms.
Remember that even English names can contain non-ASCII letters (for example, Zoë).
On the other hand, there are situations (you need to specify a login, the system supports only ASCII), in which it will be impossible to resolve national characters.
What users specify in the input form most often depends on the page language. If the page is translated into their native language, it is most possible to get a name written not only in Latin.
In relation to letters, ASCII stands for a set of basic letters of the English alphabet, that is, ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ and the same composition of lowercase letters.
If you need only Latin, please inform the user about this in the input form interface. Do not forget to instruct and translators.
The choice of data entry and storage depends on the purpose of collecting information and using it.
Please note that the Japanese may need a field for the transcription of the name in the Japanese syllable alphabet, which will require the addition of a third field in the example above.
When using characters outside the ASCII set, do not forget about the encoding of the page, application, and database.
People names are not always sorted by last name. For example, Thais and Icelanders use sorting by personal name.
Also different methods of sorting and in hispanid. 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 counted, sometimes not.
The level of formalism varies in different countries, and this must be taken into account when addressing the user. In the Western cultural environment, it is customary to address 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 a petition and a personal name (“Mr. Richard”) or only surnames (“Ishida!”) Is acceptable in some parts of the world, but not in all (for example, in Britain).
In Germany, titles and titles are important, so it’s better to appeal not to Herr Schmidt, but Herr Professor Doktor Schmidt.
In cultures like Japanese, there are nominal suffixes expressing reverence, position or rank. It is better to refer to someone as "Tanaka-san" or "Tanaka-sama" (depending on the degree of respect). The head of the department named Tanaka expects your Tanaka-bucho appeal (literally "the head of the department Tanaka"). Although you can add -san to personal names, in a work environment such an appeal will look weird.
The information above provides only a brief summary of the difficulties that a developer may face. 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 about the formation of the names of people in different parts of the world. It is recommended to 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
Prepared based on w3.org article and online encyclopedia information.
Interested audience: authors of HTML content, developers of server application scripts (PHP, JSP, etc.), web project managers and any other people who are somehow connected with the design of data entry forms, database design and ontologies that affect personal names of people.
')
It should be remembered about the differences in the formation and traditions of the use of the names of people 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 the use of the product.
This article does not cover absolutely all cases. This is due both to the fact that there are too many different cultures of the name, all of which cannot be described and taken into account at once, and to the frequent admissibility of non-ideal solutions that correspond only to the cultures of most users, which significantly saves labor resources. Here we will try only to focus on the main examples showing solutions in the design of input forms and the construction of databases. Some items sometimes need to be considered 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 (say, English), which will be used by people from all over the world.
- You perform the design of the form in the same language, but over time this element will be adapted to the 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.
Descriptions of Differences
Consider examples of how people's names may differ in the world.
Name and Surname
In the naming of “Björk Guydmündsdouttir” (Björk Guðmundsdóttir) the proper name is Björk. The second word is the patronymic, composed of the father’s name (sometimes mothers, but matronyms are rare) and at the end —son (isl. Son) in men and –dóttir (isl. Daughter) in women. As a rule, Icelanders do not have a surname, respectively, there is no question of their use.
Regardless of the degree of respect appealing to the object of treatment Icelanders call it only by name or by name and patronymic. Of course, it would be incorrect to call the person “Ms. Gvjudmundsduttir”.
Spouses do not change anything in their name, possibly borrowing the surname in those rare cases, if there is one.
Sort alphabetically by name, not patronymic. In order to clarify the repetitive entries, some techniques are used, for example, in the phonebooks, subscriber occupations are indicated.
The name and patronymic scheme is also used in southern India, Malaysia and Indonesia.
Malay name "Isa bin Osman" can be divided into name and patronymic. The word "bin" means "son (of someone)", women use "binti". In order to appeal to this person, "Mr. Isa", "Mr. Isa" will do.
Differences in the location of the components
In the Chinese name 毛泽东 (“Mao Zedong”), the surname is “Mao”, that is, the first one when reading from left to right. The personal name is "Dun". The middle syllable “Tse” is the name of a generation, and is the same for all its brothers and sisters: 毛泽民 (Mao Tsemin), 毛 泽 覃 (Mao Tsetan), 毛 泽 紅 (Mao Tsehong)
The Chinese naming system is the basis for all traditional naming practices in East Asia.
Among people who are not close to him, Mao may be referred to as 毛泽东 先生 (“Mao Zedong syanshen”) or 毛先生 (“Mao syanshen”), where “syanshen” is a certain analogue “Mr.” or “master”. Although at the moment not everyone has the name of a generation, especially in mainland China, those who have it will consider it appropriate to use it along with a personal name. Therefore, a person by the name of 毛泽东 cannot be addressed simply as 东; you should use 泽 东.
In Japan, Korea and Hungary, the surname is also put in front of a personal name or personal names.
Please note that the names in the recording are not separated by spaces. There are many different transcription systems for various Asian languages, called by the names of their creators. In this case, the transcription of an already transcribed word from one language to another, bypassing the original form, will of course lead to errors (compare the correct Takeshi and eret. 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 (surname - Yao, personal name - Min) can be called foreigners as Fred Yao Ming or Fred Ming Yao.
Multiple surnames
Spaniards usually have two last names. For example, the daughter Antonio Campos Rodríguez (Antonio Campos Rodriguez) and María Martínez Marqués (Maria Martínez Marquez) are called María Campos Martínez (Maria Campos Martínez). You should contact your daughter Señorita Campos, not Señorita Martínez.
At birth, a Portuguese child can get one or two names and up to four names. Similarly, children get a surname from both parents. Brazilians also have up to four surnames inherited from their ancestors, for example, José Eduardo Santos Tavares Melo Silva.
The Spaniards put the father’s name before the mother’s name, 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
Patronymic of Icelanders varies by gender of its carrier. However, there are stronger changes. The Russians and the peoples who adopted the Russian tradition, together with the Russian language, the peoples of the countries of the former USSR (Kazakhstan, Tatarstan, Georgia, etc.) use the patronymic used between last name and first name. Patronymic endings vary by gender. Compare: Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin and Naina Yeltsin Iosifovna - at the end of the husband's name there is no ending, while the wife adds “-a." Russian names are inclined, while there are unknowing, permanent names. A distinctive feature of Russian naming is the rarity of matronyms.
Second name
The second or middle name is the tradition of English-speaking countries. Sometimes the second is understood by other terms, for example, double names. In the culture of Europe and Western countries, usually one to three additional names are used. The second name is an additional personal name and is not the same as the Russian patronymic, although it may be given in honor of a relative.
Americans often write their own name with an initial in the middle, for example, John Q. Public. Sometimes the form adopted in the USA is offered in the form of a common tradition of recording names, even in the United Kingdom, where people can have more than one second name. The Briton will immediately notice such American manners. Koreans, for whom it is typical to have 3 names that are not recorded as initials, will be surprised at the “American” input form. Also note that many people who use 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 last name. In modern Western civilization, the number of wives is growing who want to keep their own surnames after marriage, but in China this practice is normal. In some countries, wives have the choice of whether or not to take the name of the husband. If Malay Zayton marries Isa, she can remain Mrs. Zayton, or she can take the double surname “Zayton Isa”, which implies the appeal “Ms. Isa”.
Hispanic surnames are also different. In the 1996th year, Manuel A. Pérez Quiñones described the names of his family or an appellido: he himself became Pérez Quiñones, because his father’s appeal was Pérez Rodríguez and his mother’s appeal was Quiñones Alamo. Later he met up with the girl with the appetido Padilla Falto. After the wedding, Padilla de Pérez became her appelido, and their children had an appendo of Pérez Padilla. The bottom line is that only siblings have the same appeal.
(Manuel's name was slightly changed: in fact, his Pérez-Quiñones appendix instead of the space variant, which was introduced so that the name formation mechanism was more understandable.)
Also, you can not just rely on the reception of the names from husband to wife, sometimes the grooms take the names of the brides. In this case, it would be better to say "maiden name" or "former name" "nee (the maiden name)".
Mixing styles
Many cultures mix the traditions of names that are characteristic of two or more, and also add their own inventions.
For example, Velikkakathu Sankaran Achuthanandan is a Kerala name for South India, usually recorded as “VS Achuthanandan” and is a last name, patronymic name.
In many parts of the world, the various components of a person's name come from the names of settlements, genealogical characteristics, caste, religious status, etc. Here are some examples:
The Indian name “Kogaddu Birapa Timappa Nair” should be considered as a combination of “the name of the village — the name of the father — a personal name — the name”.
The Rajasthan name “Aditya Pratap Singh Chauhan” consists of a personal name, father’s name, surname and caste name.
In another region of India, the name “Madurai Money Iyer” should be interpreted as the set “city name — personal name — caste name”.
The Arabic “Abu Karim Mohammed al-Jamil ibn Nidal ibn Abdulaziz al-Philistini” is translated as “Father Karim, Muhammad (personal name), Handsome, Son of Nidal, Son Abdulaziz, Palestinian, while Karim is the first son of Mohammed. For more information about this 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, the Thais appear to foreigners to them. For example, the nickname of the former Prime Minister Thaksin Chinnavat - Mau (แม้ว). Often nicknames for family and friends are different.
In Vietnam, the name Nguyễn Tấn Dũng (Nguyen Tan Dung) has the meaning “last name - middle name - personal name”. Although this system is similar to the Chinese one, there is a slight difference: even in official situations, the Prime Minister of Vietnam needs to contact “Mr. Dung”, and 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 for both people and alphabetic sorting systems, because the latter is carried out by presentation. For example, the surname 東海 林賢 蔵 (the first three ideograms on the left) can be read either as “Tokairin” or as “Soji”.
Moreover, the various kanji's expressions may coincide, therefore romanization and cyrillization inevitably lead to a loss of meaning: all of the surnames 庄 司, 庄子, 東 海林 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 provide their own name in the usual spelling with a version of the record in the non-geographical map 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 and language environment. Theoretically, this should allow adapting 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 into a single database, difficulties will arise in synthesizing the storage scheme.
- In addition, a situation may arise when the emphasis on determining the required naming scheme by user’s location does not work: there may be foreigners who adapt to a foreign cultural environment, as well as foreign elements. For example, Singaporeans have Chinese, Malay, and South Indian roots. More than one name usage is also likely. Therefore, your interface should remain flexible.
The following are general considerations that may help. Of course, the essence of the problem is too complicated to give comprehensive instructions, and there are no direct answers here.
Smash or not smash?
When developing the design of an input form or a database where users will enter personal data, you need to immediately ask yourself whether it is necessary to separate a personal name and a surname. Everything depends on the tasks that have been set, but, as is obvious, the easiest is to simply leave the full name field.
Note that names in some cultures may be longer than yours, so the input field must be long enough so that the user can see it completely 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 bytes.
Ways to divide names into parts
If you still prefer to keep parts of the name separately, 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 last 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 an introduction to the existing full name field optional, in which the user can specify the parts of the name that are needed for specific purposes.
Sometimes the division of a name into parts is done with 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, addressing, for example, by name in some contexts will be welcomed, the person of another national culture may perceive it negatively and vice versa. Varying the attitude towards shouting by name can also be in one nation. In this case, it would be better at the very beginning to ask the user how to call him.
This additional value will also be useful to determine the nickname of the Thais.
Since Japanese names are read in different ways, an additional field will be required to sort Japanese names in which they can enter the explanation of their name. The information from this field will be used to sort the Japanese names.
If you break the name fields, make sure that each input field has a clear signature. Do not rely on the fact that the user will accurately enter the last name after the personal name.
Be careful about the assumptions of algorithms that automatically break a full name into parts. For example, v-card or h-card name optimization can work poorly with Chinese names. It is necessary to inform the user as accurately as possible how to specify your data.
There are names that are one character long. People with similar short names may have problems with applications that reject the entered data as a name with initials. If you need to follow the initials input, add a message to users, rather than filter the input.
Do not make the input mandatory: the population of South India, Malaysia, Indonesia and many other countries have only a personal name. Users will have to enter some kind of “Mr.”, “.” Trash in the fields or, much worse, not to use your product at all.
Other notes
Do not forget to allow the user to use punctuation marks in names: hyphens, apostrophes, etc. The user may need to enter text with spaces, such as adding prefixes and suffixes: “de” from the French, “background” from the Germans, “Ml.” (“Junior”) from the Americans; also sequences of letters, separated by a space, may be valid names: "Rose Mary".
Members of the same family may have different surnames. Not only women can change their surnames after marriage, so the name of the field for entering a surname at birth is better to choose without focusing on the floor: “Previous name”, not “Maiden name”.
If you are developing input forms that will be localized in each specific cultural environment, do not forget that the name, broken into pieces, will probably have to be stored in a centralized database, which will require you to present all the intricate parts in a form accessible 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 it is still fraught with several consequences for designers, which are often forgotten.
If a form is being developed 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 in both forms.
Remember that even English names can contain non-ASCII letters (for example, Zoë).
On the other hand, there are situations (you need to specify a login, the system supports only ASCII), in which it will be impossible to resolve national characters.
What users specify in the input form most often depends on the page language. If the page is translated into their native language, it is most possible to get a name written not only in Latin.
In relation to letters, ASCII stands for a set of basic letters of the English alphabet, that is, ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ and the same composition of lowercase letters.
If you need only Latin, please inform the user about this in the input form interface. Do not forget to instruct and translators.
The choice of data entry and storage depends on the purpose of collecting information and using it.
- Are you going to use the name of the person 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 employees of your organization to have the opportunity 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 mailings by name, but do you carry out internal operations in English? Then in the input form, request in separate fields both the national spelling and the transcription.
Please note that the Japanese may need a field for the transcription of the name in the Japanese syllable alphabet, which will require the addition of a third field in the example above.
When using characters outside the ASCII set, do not forget about the encoding of the page, application, and database.
On a note
Sort mark
People names are not always sorted by last name. For example, Thais and Icelanders use sorting by personal name.
Also different methods of sorting and in hispanid. 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 counted, sometimes not.
Formalism
The level of formalism varies in different countries, and this must be taken into account when addressing the user. In the Western cultural environment, it is customary to address 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 a petition and a personal name (“Mr. Richard”) or only surnames (“Ishida!”) Is acceptable in some parts of the world, but not in all (for example, in Britain).
In Germany, titles and titles are important, so it’s better to appeal not to Herr Schmidt, but Herr Professor Doktor Schmidt.
In cultures like Japanese, there are nominal suffixes expressing reverence, position or rank. It is better to refer to someone as "Tanaka-san" or "Tanaka-sama" (depending on the degree of respect). The head of the department named Tanaka expects your Tanaka-bucho appeal (literally "the head of the department Tanaka"). Although you can add -san to personal names, in a work environment such an appeal will look weird.
Additional Information
The information above provides only a brief summary of the difficulties that a developer may face. 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 about the formation of the names of people in different parts of the world. It is recommended to 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
Prepared based on w3.org article and online encyclopedia information.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/130361/
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