Submitted by JorWat t3_11yqpz1 in explainlikeimfive
[removed]
Comments
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.
​
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)
HalcyonDreams36 t1_jd9uawb wrote
OP, another short way to think of it is: I know your name the way you told it to me.
Dunlaing t1_jd8zowu wrote
Starting in the late Nineteenth century, Japan adopted the western custom of putting the given name first and family name last when writing/saying their names in English.
It’s only in the last few years that a movement has started to change it so that the order will match between Japanese and English.
SaintUlvemann t1_jd93bf9 wrote
This is the real answer. I know the name "Shinzo Abe" and I know the name "Ban Ki-Moon" but I could not have told you until a few seconds ago when I looked it up which of either is the family name and which is the personal name. Wiki has an overview of Japan's Meiji-era decision to swap name orders in contexts using Western languages.
Throwaway08080909070 t1_jd96tpd wrote
But do you know the name 25th Baam?
KingSmizzy t1_jd9e7zl wrote
Trash tier story in what could have been an amazing setting. I hate Rachel
J3lackJ3ird0501 t1_jd9n5ib wrote
What do you mean trash tier story? ToG is great
Throwaway08080909070 t1_jd9edl8 wrote
Rachel is the worst for sure. Literally the worst.
big_sugi t1_jd9e810 wrote
But did you ever hear the name of Darth Plagueis the Wise?
imminentmailing463 t1_jd8xdzq wrote
Korean names often do get swapped. The footballer Park Ji-Sung was very often referred to as Ji-Sung Park. Same is true of several other Korean footballers. Son Heung-Min is a current example. Often talked about as if Son is his given name, or referred to as Heung-Min Son.
Also, possibly part of that reason Korean names may get switched less is because we aren't even aware of the family/given name order. To use your example, I'd imagine plenty of English speakers think 'Bong' is his given name and 'Joon-ho' his family name.
Whereas I think we have a little more cultural familiarity with japanese names, so we recognise certain names as family and certain ones as given names, and switch them to be the order we recognise.
Gstamsharp t1_jd93td1 wrote
That last bit sounds very plausible. Since the end of WWII we've had a very close relationship with Japan with a ton of cultural exchange. Americans are just more familiar with both Japanese naming customs and the sound of which names are given vs familial.
Lraejones t1_jd9amgc wrote
Can confirm, I communicate via email with people from all over the world for work and typically use first/given name in the email salutation. Japanese names are easy to recognize first and last, as are the more common Korean last names like Park or Kim. Vietnamese on the other hand is often tough for me to discern first name. There's no typical convention by country in terms of name order in email addresses. It seems to be based on whether the company is more traditional/formal or not.
Gstamsharp t1_jd9ie9a wrote
>Vietnamese on the other hand
Oh, that's easy. It's whichever name isn't Nguyen.
An exaggeration, of course, but it is true a whopping 40% of the time.
Lraejones t1_jd9iir1 wrote
Very true!
Waterknight94 t1_jd9sq3w wrote
I think I have heard of some Nguyen Nguyen situations.
Exist50 t1_jd9vzdx wrote
> Americans are just more familiar with both Japanese naming customs and the sound of which names are given vs familial.
Tbh, I don't think it's common knowledge for Americans either. Not rare knowledge, perhaps, but I'd be surprised if that was true for the majority.
mr_ji t1_jda50m9 wrote
Helps that the list of common Japanese names is fairly short.
Then when you learn Japanese and realize it's mostly mixing and matching a few common things like season, weather, common descriptive adjectives, and child/girl/boy at end, it becomes really easy to recognize.
jdl_uk t1_jd9iwma wrote
Zhou Guanyu (Chinese driver) had problems when he first joined F1 as nobody knew how to say his name properly and the software that generated the graphics for TV always did it wrong (it treated "Zhou" as his given name).
Took a while for them to sort that out
TanaDragon t1_jd9r7gw wrote
Good example because I don’t think they ever had that problem with Yuki Tsunoda. But then again F1 is a lot more familiar with Japan than China.
jdl_uk t1_jda2tev wrote
I think because he (Yuki) reversed his name so it was in the western fashion, as other Japanese drivers have in the past.
This may be less to do with F1 being familiar with Japan, and more to do with Japan being familiar with F1 and other western influences
[deleted] t1_jd91qlp wrote
[deleted]
AntarcticaLTE t1_jd99bvs wrote
I'd also guess a lot of people have no clue which part of a korean name is the first name or last name
banngbanng t1_jd9qcek wrote
I know I never thought about Bong Joon-Ho being family name-given name until reading this thread lol
DroneOfDoom t1_jd9w3vq wrote
You’d think that the fact that the two most well known korean persons are father and son would indicate that the family name goes first.
mr_ji t1_jda4rcl wrote
What if the second Kim is a junior?
DroneOfDoom t1_jda581a wrote
Doesn’t work, because then you’d have a father and a son who share the same first name but have different last names.
Hayaguaenelvaso t1_jd9vq6s wrote
Korrekto. We are more exposed to Japanese names, thanks to them being the number one pop culture exporter in the world
Kzickas t1_jd8z12n wrote
I'd expect that a big part of it is when their names were introduced to western audiences. I'd expect that generally the willingness to not alter the names much from their original form has probably increased over the last few decades.
cyklone117 t1_jd9pshb wrote
It's still inconsistent. Take MLB phenom (and MVP of the 2023 World Baseball Classic) Shohei Ohtani for example. The family name is Ohtani, but in the MLB his name is westernized. As is every other Japanese (and Korean) player signed to the MLB.
a_frayn t1_jd9szsx wrote
It was also pretty common for Bajorans too. Humans often would assume their given name was their family name. It wasn’t until Ensign Ro corrected Captain Picard that it became more common to use their names correctly.
dreamwarrior222 t1_jd9wsw6 wrote
We say the name how it is presented to us. It is the Koreans who choose to go by their last names first. The Vietnamese, on the other hand typically give us first middle last, like Ke Huy Quan, who's name in Vietnamese is Quan Ke Huy. Most Koreans I went to school with used their last name as a first name. That's apparently how they filled out their paperwork. Idk why. When Chan Ho Park came to the US to pitch in MLB, he said he wanted to be called Chan Ho Park, not Park Chan Ho. It was confusing.
Flair_Helper t1_jd9xkne wrote
Please read this entire message
Your submission has been removed for the following reason(s):
Loaded questions, or ones based on a false premise, are not allowed on ELI5. A loaded question is one that posits a specific view of reality and asks for explanations that confirm it. These usually include the poster's own opinion and bias, but do not always - there is overlap between this and parts of Rule 2. Note that this specifically includes false premises.
If you would like this removal reviewed, please read the detailed rules first. If you believe this submission was removed erroneously, please use this form and we will review your submission.
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.