Edit, obviously 琼=瓊=경=gyeong as you wrote, not 공=gong as I mistakenly wrong.
Thank you for the clarification.
In Tzuyu’s case, it’s been mentioned a number of times on variety shows that her name is indeed an approximation of her given name in Korean. In the case of Kyul Kyung/Gyeol-gong, she’s been living and training (off and on initially, then full time later) in Korea since middle school, so she earned/was given a proper Korean name.
We have a similar thing in Hawaii where people are given Hawaiian names based on their given name phonetically which are often nonsense and non-existent in the Hawaiian language. On the other hand, some people are honored with a true Hawaiian name based on their attributes.
This brings to mind another limitation of romanization. If I’m not familiar with Korean and Chinese (Mandarin and Cantonese) names and words, I would think that Gong is pronounced the same as Gong Li who is mainland Chinese. The difference is subtle, but it’s there.
The same with Wang/Hwang which is a common Korean and Mandarin name, but the pronunciation is different.
And there’s my favorite, “Lee” (이)). Oh, there’s English, Chinese (including Mandarin/Cantonese countries) and Korean Lees (and I’m sure a few more I’m missing). While the Korean “Lee” is derived from the Chinese “Lee” (李), it’s pronounced Ee/Yi. Something I would never know if I hadn’t watched hours of Korean shows and trained my ears to hear Ee/Yi instead of Lee.
How many countries in asia have names written as family name first and given name second?
This article posits that countries with influenced by Chinese Confucian culture (Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand*) use the surname first convention. Unnamed are Singapore and Taiwan, which are of course mostly ethnically Chinese.
http://www.georgeleonard.com/articles/chinese-and-other-asian-naming-systems.htm
*I’m not familiar with Thai names, but this article explains why some Thai names are so long (no one unrelated can share the same surname), especially for Chinese immigrants. I’m sure septimus or someone else who is familiar with Thai name conventions, but I suspect if someone from Thailand uses surname first (I think Thais usually use given name first?) they’re likely ethnically Chinese or from somewhere influenced by China.
This leads to a question I just thought of. If I travel to Asia, particularly Japan or Okinawa, which is my ethnic background, do I introduce / have someone introduce me by my surname first, then English name or by my surname first, my Japanese middle name? Or does the Western convention take precedence since because I was born in the U.S.?
Note: Sometimes native Japanese, Chinese, Koreans refer to me by last name only, with “san” added since I’m Okinawan/Japanese.
Wouldn’t it depend on which language you’re speaking, first of all? When I’m speaking English I only give one lastname; when I’m speaking Spanish, I give two.
(Four years ago we had a thread on a closely related topic.)
Thai names are always in Western order: forename, then surname. They call Robert Jones “Mr. Robert” because that’s the way they address each other. Surnames are almost completely ignored (except in formal contexts). I tried to use Thai-language phone directory white pages once: the names were sorted by forename.
As lingyi states, surnames are supposed to be unique, and therefore long surnames arise. However another reason why names appear long is due to the thread topic — Transliteration!
For example, consider one of our ex-PMs, ชวลิต ยงใจยุทธ. His forename and surname are written with 4 and 7 letters respectively (or 5 and 8 letters if we count vowels placed vertically). However this name is rendered in Roman letters as Chavalit Yongchaiyudh — 8 and 12 letters! (I gave another example in the thread linked above.)
Thai names often contain vestigial silent consonants, as English does in ‘Knight.’
I can only speak English (wouldn’t dare use the smatterings of what I know about other languages), but have picked up the habit (from my Dad) of saying my surname first, given name second when speaking to native Asian speakers, so I’d probably unconsciously do that if I traveled to Asia.
I also subconsciously put an emphasis on my surname as I know that’s more important in Asian culture than my given name.
Dangers of cross-posting! 
Obviously you meant “Asian with exception(s) including Thai.”
Oops…yes, the dangers of generalizing. :smack:
I’d also likely use the first name, first convention in countries like Hong Kong and Singapore where the majority speak English as well as their native languages.
“Baptismal name” probably means “the name you were given at baptism” in every country/language - but in American English, people used to use “Christian name” and “given name” as if they were synonyms. Which they aren’t - there are loads of given names that are not Christian names and also baptismal names that aren’t given names ( my daughter’s given name is Jessica, but she was called Rose ( her middle name) at her baptism).
And my mother’s baptismal name is María Teresa Valentina Laura, but the name in the Civil Registry’s record of her birth is María Teresa and she’s been called Maite by everybody except salespeople and her own mother since she was 15yo. My paternal grandmother made a promise that if “the tall blonde one” turned out to be “the one”, she’d name all her children María; my paternal grandfather (who happened to be the tall blonde one) didn’t know this, and registered their secondborn as Francisco de Javier. My uncle later got baptised Francisco de Javier María. Dad got to be Jaime in his civil records, Jaime María Pedro Pablo as his Christian name.
You guys aren’t the only ones whose baptismal name doesn’t necessarily match other names given at birth. And some of us would appreciate it if you’d cut it out with equalling “Western” with “White, Anglophone, American”.
Of course not- that was just an example of a “baptismal name” not being a given name. But I suspect we might be the only place where people in the past would ask for the “Christian name” of someone who might not even be a Christian or refer to " Meadow" as someone’s “Christian name” . I suspect that doesn’t happen much in Spanish or French-speaking countries. But I could be wrong.
But you can baptise someone Meadow. If you do, it is a Christian name. I know people whose baptismal names are Ibai (Basque for river), Yerái (transcription of the way Jedi was pronounced in the Spanish dubbing of Episode IV) or Arya (with a y). And in Spanish the expression for firstname is either nombre (which is confusing because it can also apply to the full name) or nombre de pila: literally, name from the Baptismal font. It doesn’t apply to Jews or Hindus strictu sensu, but it’s the noun we have for that concept.
Again: my peeve is not with that happening in “American English”, I know it does. It’s with “I have no idea how it’s done in other Western cultures, but I’m going to use ‘Western’ when I mean ‘WAS’”, which people in these boards do time and again.
Our Lady of the Meadow is the patron saint of Talavera de la Reina, Spain Someone already had the idea of baptising their child Meadow (Prado is Spanish for Meadow; stick a “María del” in front for a girl, leave it off for a boy).
For Japanese, always give — and assume they are giving you — the family name first. Occasionally, particularly when speaking English, they will reverse the order. In that case, again most often when speaking English, they will probably say “My family name is _____” or “Please call me _____.”, so that’s a big cue that they’ve either flipped the usual order or they’re giving you permission to use a nickname or other term of address. Unusual, but possible.
Often, the family fame is used exclusively and they may not even include their given name when introducing themselves for the first time. There are people I’ve worked with for several years whose given names I don’t know because I’ve never used that name, though I could look it up on the employee list. First-naming people you don’t know intimately, or who have not given you express permission to use their given name is considered presumptuous to outright rude in Japan, depending on the situation and the person.
Always use the -san suffix at least, or other if appropriate when addressing other people. You probably won’t know any other titles, so stick to LastName-san unless you know for sure that something like sensei, buchō, or similar is both appropriate for the person and reflects your relationship with the person. Don’t use diminutives like chan or kun unless you’re absolutely sure that your relationship with the person warrants that level of familiarity and power/age differential. Never give yourself a title. Titling yourself is somewhat more rude than PhDs who insist everyone call them Dr. Asswipe, thankyouverymuch.
When introducing yourself, I usually suggest using Japanese order (Family, Given Name) and katakana-ize the pronunciation yourself to avoid further butchering. With your particular case, use your Japanese names (Last, Middle) and avoid using your English name. Hitting them with three names is confusing; they have two and only use one normally. They won’t be sure what to call you without explicit instruction.[sup]*[/sup]
Even after living in Japan for over a decade and a half, I am hit-and-miss on guessing the katakana version of non-Japanese words. I hear extra sounds that Japanese ignore, or they insert sounds that don’t exist in the original. Conversely, left to their own devices, they will brutalize your name if it includes sounds or combinations that aren’t common (or don’t exist at all) in Japanese. I’ve gotten at least 4–5 different renditions of my first name when I’ve had to say it for someone instead of just writing it in katakana myself. It’s not an uncommon name in English-speaking countries, and even most European countries have a version of it, but Japanese have a really bad time with it. I came up with a least-bad version not long after coming here that’s reasonably easy for Japanese to say but doesn’t just throw out half the sounds.
If you’re Western, they’ll often ignore all their cultural rules — and yours — and first-name you even in situations where it wouldn’t be appropriate in either culture. You can (mostly) prevent this by asking them to use a particular name, or nickname if you prefer, when meeting for the first time. Say, ”_____ to yon’de kudasai” _____と呼んでください。 Which means, “Please call me _____.”
Many Japanese think that Westerners, Americans in particular, don’t have any real formality and you can just call anybody by their first name anytime because it’s “friendly”. I don’t know about you, but even in laid-back California, I didn’t call a teacher by his or her first name until college, and that was with a professor who loathed formality and specifically requested we not call him Professor Somethingsomething, but use his first name, Jerry. And it still took me a couple of weeks to get used to actually doing so.
One of the other things that can be a pain in the ass is when some Japanese try to be “clever” and “friendly” by introducing themselves in Western name order … even when they’re speaking Japanese. That can get confusing as hell because some given names are not easily distinguished from unusual family names. Most Japanese will have name/business cards, so you’ve often got a cheat-sheet (if you read kanji), but I’ve had several first-time meetings where I had to do some quick mental parsing to make sure I wasn’t first-naming some high mucky-muck because he decided to be all “sophisticated” and “Western” by reversing his name order. (Thanks a lot, asshole.)
[sup]*[/sup] My niece’s father is Ecuadorian, so she’s got like half-a-dozen names between the Hispanic naming conventions her father insisted on keeping, and the desire to preserve the Japanese family name somewhere in there. Not a single office or bureau has space for all of her names. They often don’t have room for my more typical First Middle Last. Many Japanese computer systems have been built with the assumption that no one will ever need to input more than 8 characters per name space, and that no one has more than two names. Japan is so totally not prepared for dealing with foreigners, particularly those who actually stick around to live, work, and have offspring in Japan.
That’s a fascinating and informative post. And as an aside it again seems to support my notion that we ought to retire the terms first name, last name, Christian name, and surname in favor of more precise terms such as (most often) given name and family name.