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StupidLemonEater t1_jd91c4i wrote

It's actually the Japanese who do this, not English speakers.

During a period of Japanese history called the Meiji era, the country was rapidly industrialized and modernized on the model of the contemporary great powers of Europe. This included adopting not only Western industry but also Western-style laws, military organization, education, clothing, architecture, art, music, etc. In those days, to achieve the success of the West it was believed that a country's entire society must emulate the West, and Japan was not the only country to do so (consider Turkey, where in 1928 the entire writing system was changed in order to be more European).

As one element of this "Europeanization" whenever writing or speaking European languages, including English, the Japanese would reverse their own names to the more European family-name-last order instead of the typically Asian family-name-first, and this continued to be the norm into the 20th and 21st centuries.

For China and Korea, if they did experience modernization in the European image, it was not to the same extreme of this name-order code-switching and thus never became the norm in those countries. In the last few years there have been moves in Japan to return to the traditional name order in Western languages, e.g. the English-language website for the Office of the Prime Minister shows Fumio Kishida's name family-name-first (and in caps, for added clarification), but English-language publications have been slow to switch.

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FriendlyPyre t1_jd9r8d8 wrote

>For China and Korea, if they did experience modernization in the European image, it was not to the same extreme of this name-order code-switching and thus never became the norm in those countries. In the last few years there have been moves in Japan to return to the traditional name order in Western languages, e.g. the

Side note, in Singapore and Malaysia (both ex-colonies of the UK with relatively extensive Christianisation & English Educated Elite), Chinese names are arranged as such in government records where applicable:

<English first name> <Family name> <Transcribed Chinese first name>
or
<Family name> <Transcribed Chinese first name> , <English first name>

Also note that it's <Transcribed Chinese first name> due to the mix of dialects and the fact that the registrar at the time did not have a standardised manner of transcribing names to English. Even the same family name of the same dialect could be transcribed differently; example, Ku vs Koo vs Khoo even though they hold the same character and pronunciation.

&#x200B;

Let's take the example of Lee Kuan Yew the founding father of the current government of Singapore. He was born Harry Lee Kuan Yew; Following the convention of <English F.n> <Family n> <Tr. Chinese F.n>. (Note that he did drop the use of his English first name at some point during his study years in the UK)

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HalcyonDreams36 t1_jd9uawb wrote

OP, another short way to think of it is: I know your name the way you told it to me.

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