# Why do we generally reverse Japanese names, but keep Chinese/Korean name order? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 24, 2011, 5:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-generally-reverse-japanese-names-but-keep-chinese-korean-name-order/568747 "2011-01-24T05:26:38Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2017, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-generally-reverse-japanese-names-but-keep-chinese-korean-name-order/568747/61 "2017-12-05T02:39:58Z")
> [@Amy\_Cheng](#): > > Paul Krugman: “When I travel to Asia, I’m fairly often met at the airport by someone holding a sign reading ‘Mr. Paul.’ … If this were in Thailand it would be perfectly normal. Thai names are written with given name before surname, but only the given name is used in most contexts. In Thailand he’d be called ‘Mr. Paul’ (or Professor Paul, or Doctor Paul, or General Paul, etc. ) as a matter of course. Phone books were sorted on given name. Close friends often won’t even know each other’s surnames. (Exceptions include schoolmates since full names are written on uniforms.) Moreover many Thais (especially women) go by nicknames unrelated to their given names, so long-time acquaintances might know _neither_ their friend’s surname _nor_ his/her official given name. (When nicknames _are_ derived from given names, it is usually _final_ syllables which are used: Unlike Christopher–\>Chris, the pattern is Surapong–\>Pong.) ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2017, 6:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-generally-reverse-japanese-names-but-keep-chinese-korean-name-order/568747/62 "2017-12-05T06:51:00Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > But he totally should have. > > Gah, Il Douche is such an embarrassment. :smack: > > Up-thread some 6 years ago some folks got testy about labeling and organizing the sub-parts of people’s names. For your reading pleasure, here’s a ranty blog post that’s a classic in the software developer world. [Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names | Kalzumeus Software](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/) > > I always enjoy this one. Yeah, there’s a whole lot of those “Falsehoods Programmers Believe” lists, [and a list of them curated here](https://github.com/kdeldycke/awesome-falsehood), but, ultimately, they have little to do with programmers _per se_: They’re inherent to any kind of structured system, even if it’s processed completely by hand because, if Janey don’t know about no ß, [Herr Doktor Straßmann](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Strassmann) is Hair Doctor Strabman, and no mistake, and that’s how you’ll bury him. It’s useful to talk to programmers about these things _now_, sure, but remember that this kind of friction happens whenever multiple cultures meet, especially if it’s on anything like an equal footing (because if it’s unequal, there’s no conflict, just a correct answer, and some losers who whine about that correct answer… _hein_, Mr. Strabman?). ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2017, 11:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-generally-reverse-japanese-names-but-keep-chinese-korean-name-order/568747/63 "2017-12-05T11:42:39Z")
Exactly. My point was to educate non-IT folks on false beliefs they may hold simply because they’ve never encountered them. The nature of dev is to explore all the nooks and crannies of human administrivia. Not a lot of other occupations get that deep into it. Just like we often have posters who’ve only lived in one state who answer questions about the vehicle code as if the laws of their state are universal across the country or planet. Hint to them: they’re not. The only difference between computerized and manual administration is that computers and humans react differently to unanticipated situations. Which unexpected situations will be noticed as exceptional and how the exception will be handled varies massively between clerks, departments, companies and each and every software application. One persistent difference is that there’s more variation in how a group of clerks in some department will do something than in how some single computer program that same department will. ---
**Author:** ![Hector\_St\_Clare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5ac83/32.png) [@Hector\_St\_Clare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hector_St_Clare)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2017, 11:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-generally-reverse-japanese-names-but-keep-chinese-korean-name-order/568747/64 "2017-12-05T23:13:09Z")
> [@Leaper](#): > > I’ve asked this before, years ago, but the thread got few replies and pretty much no answer. I was recently reminded of it, so I figured I’d give it another shot. > > Japanese, Chinese, and Korean all write their names with family name first, “Christian” name last. We in the West (or at least in America) generally keep this order with Chinese and Korean names (Chang Kai-Shek, Kim Jong-Il. But most English sources I’ve seen do NOT do so for Japanese names (Tetsuya Nomura – which in his home country would be Nomura Tetsuya). > > Why is this? Japan achieved industrialized, developed-country status much earlier than either Korea or China (although South Korea is a developed country today, and China will probably get there iwthin a few decades). I’d assume that Americans and western Europeans have been interacting with Japanese people, on a large scale, much longer than they have with Chinese or Koreans, so they developed the habit of converting Japanese names to a more familiar ‘european’ model, whereas they didn’t start encountering Chinese or Korean names in large numbers until several decades later, at which time sensitivity to other cultrues was greater. ---
**Author:** ![Corry\_El](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ecae2f/32.png) [@Corry\_El](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Corry_El)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2017, 3:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-generally-reverse-japanese-names-but-keep-chinese-korean-name-order/568747/65 "2017-12-06T03:44:20Z")
> [@Hector\_St\_Clare](#): > > Japan achieved industrialized, developed-country status much earlier than either Korea or China (although South Korea is a developed country today, and China will probably get there iwthin a few decades). I’d assume that Americans and western Europeans have been interacting with Japanese people, on a large scale, much longer than they have with Chinese or Koreans, so they developed the habit of converting Japanese names to a more familiar ‘european’ model, whereas they didn’t start encountering Chinese or Korean names in large numbers until several decades later, at which time sensitivity to other cultrues was greater. It’s true Japan industrialized before China and Korea, but further it seems the Japanese themselves adopted the convention of rendering their names given name first in European languages. I can’t point to a definitive source, but I guess over the years of this thread nobody else has either. 🙂 But my understanding is that started in the phase where Meiji Japan (in late 19th/early 20th century) was not only adopting Western technology but positively culturally friendly to westernization, though that was followed (of course) by a period of heightened Japanese chauvinism and hostility to the west. It doesn’t seem either to have been a product of the US occupation after Japan’s defeat in 1945. It seems to go back to the Meiji period. People from China or Korea sometimes give their given name first when in the West. But it’s not a standard convention like it is in Japan. Japanese usually write their given name first when in Latin letters or speaking a European language, though family name first when they write it in or are speaking Japanese. IOW it’s more ‘they’ than ‘we’, though obviously related to the West’s interaction with Japan. ---
**Author:** ![PatrickLondon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/patricklondon/32/4422_2.png) [@PatrickLondon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatrickLondon)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2017, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-generally-reverse-japanese-names-but-keep-chinese-korean-name-order/568747/66 "2017-12-06T18:15:05Z")
> [@jjimm](#): > > “Christian name” is a bit outdated. “First name” and “last name” end up being logically incorrect. > > Easier terms are: > > Family name > and > Given name When I worked on student records in an international university, we tried all sorts of ways to cope with different naming systems (patronymics, some South Asian cultures just have a personal name and no family name or patronymic, and so on). I finally settled on the convention you describe, and I leave it to you to guess the home country of the student who recorded his “family name” as “Bud”. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-generally-reverse-japanese-names-but-keep-chinese-korean-name-order/568747.md?page=3)