Yes, there isn’t one system that will fit all names, including historic names, nobility and royalty.
IMHO - Chinese and Korean names sound odd with the order messed up, while Japanese names sound good either way. hence the Japanese don’t mind it while the Chinese prefer it in the original order, or they simply come up with a western name that incidentally has the family name last, because western names sound odd with the family name first.
My Chinese friends tell me that if they have short two- or three-syllable names, then generally speaking their whole names get used routinely.
Actually, the system covers all these possibilities, because when something is not a given name or not a family name, the system does not require use of these terms. You can use “patronymic” and other terms.
Anglo-American/Western European: given name(s)-family name
Japanese/Chinese/Korean/Hungarian: family name-given name
Icelandic: given name-patronymic
Russian: given name-patronymic-family name
Indonesian: (given) name
Indian (Bengali): given name(s)-family name
Indian (Marathi): given name-patronymic-family name
Indian (Tamil): patronymic initial(s)-given name
Spanish: given name(s)-paternal family name-maternal family name
In none of these cases does the terms “Christian name” or “surname” or “first/middle/last name” clarify anything.
Waaay too complicated. We generally use
given name(s)- family name(s),
which covers the Portuguese as well.
Alternatively,
given name(s)-first family name-second family name,
where the last field is optional: covers most “foreigners”.
What’s hard to believe about a different culture doing it a different way?
Chinese tends to have a single syllable (eg character) family name, a single syllable first name, and a single syllable middle name. HU Jin Tao being a case in point. It would be commonly romanized as HU Jintao (well, capitalizing the family name is something I do but not a widespread convention).
Di-syllabic family names exist but my wag is maybe only 5% of the population has one of these.
Many Chinese only have a first name and no middle name. Again my wag is 20-30% of the population. In Shanghai, it’s probably more like 50%. No idea why but that’s the way it is. YAO Ming is both Shanghaiese and a good example of this. A casual search shows that YAO Ming’s name is frequently writting as “Yao Ming” rather than the US convention which would flip it around as “Ming Yao” and I guess that is because he came here as a sports star.
So, even with the basic 3 character/syllable Chinese name, it’s really easy to say and is generally the norm. Kind of like saying Jonathon instead of Jon. For the 2 character/syllable name, that’s usually spoken by close friends or family. It is much more normal for friends to use some from of 2 syllable nickname. For the analogy, that would be using “Johnny.”
No middle name is extremely common in Shanghai, where I lived for the past 12 years. For someone like YAO Ming, it would be very rare for anyone to call him “Ming” in Chinese. Chinese would definately call him something with 2 syallables, such as Yao Ming, a-Ming, maybe he was known as “Ming Ming” as a child. Or if he had an English name, that could also be used commonly by the under 40 set in China. For example, my Shanghaiese wife and sher ister both do not have a middle name. I do not think I have even once heard a Chinese person refer to either of them by their first name only. It just does not happen.
As to the OP, I’m not sure you are correct about Chinese names today in the US. Given the computer age, one does not have a choice but to fill in the first name, middle name, last name fields. It’s not like the IRS or DMV give you any leeway on your preferred name order. (I write this as someone with a first name that I never ever use and dislike, and it’s really hard to deal with anything on the grid in America using only middle name last name.)
I’d want to call him Big Cherry. 
Hu Jintao = Huge Intao = Big Cherry (since Intao is Chinese for cherry)
As I said, the level of precision will reflect the needs of the conversation.
It’s interesting that when a Japanese news outlet refers to an American of Japanese ancestry, they use the Western order for the name. eg. ITO Midori, ARAKAWA Shizuka, Kristi YAMAGUCHI. I’m pretty sure this is the case even when the given name is also Japanese, I just couldn’t think of an example off-hand. Also the name will be in katakana, the system for writing foreign words, even if there’s no mystery about what the kanji characters would be.
There are also, from what I understand, agreements between Japan and China such that a Chinese name is pronounced in Japan as the characters would be in Japanese, and vice versa. Thus you could be a fan of a singer and not know how they pronounce their own name. Discussed here: How are Japanese names pronounced? | WordReference Forums
In my experience with Japanese, if they are familiar with western naming conventions, they often turn the name around when they are dealing with westerners; if they are referring to people who don’t live in Japan, as in the news example above, they will often put it with the family name last. I think this is because Japan is much more comfortable with input from western cultures than either China or Korea is. They cheerfully adopt loan words (and then mangle them beyond recognition - can you figure out what a boo-san* is?) and have a whole syllabary dedicated to writing foreign loan words. So switching names when discussing non-Japanese, or when talking to non-Japanese, is both comfortable and a small note of worldly sophistication.
My sketchy information of Chinese and Korean languages is that they are much more resistant to loan words.
As for why westerners deal with Japanese names that way, my guess is because we can.
*Yes, several points to anyone not living in Japan who knows what “boo-san” means. Hint: it is not an honored ghost.
Roddy
I personally prefer to not use the term ‘middle name’ when referring to Chinese names, because they don’t work like middle names in English-speaking culture, and I think using the term may mislead people who are not familiar with how it works. In English, both the first name and the middle name are a ‘proper name’ on their own, and you would normally not use both at the same time. In fact, in the English-speaking world, chances are you won’t know someone’s middle name unless you know them very well. In Chinese, in the most common case where someone has a two syllables given name, normally both syllables must be used together and cannot be separated. Some people may have a nickname based on one of the syllables that may be used by family and close friends, but that is by no means universal.
Just to muddy the picture further, the convention in many English publications in Hong Kong (e.g. the SCMP) is:
English Given Name
Family Name
Chinese Given Name
(e.g. chief executive Donald Tsang Yam Kuen)
or for even more fun, for married woman:
English Given Name
Husband’s Family Name
Maiden Name
Chinese Given Name
(e.g. Secretary of Security Regina Ip Lau Suk Yee)
Does anyone know if this is a question of education? For example, do Japanese students in English class reverse their names? while students in English class in China don’t? This could lead to different “instincts” when dealing with actual English speakers that the English speakers just go with.
think of it this way - as a Chinese your name is Radical. would Dicalra sound ok to you?
Students in China generally go with an English name. Most educated and relatively international Chinese under the age of say 50, probably will introduce themselves with their English name. Even 2 native Chinese speakers in China do this. So, I dunno, maybe a hundred million people subscribe to this practice. They tend to use Alice Chen.
Actually, depending on the age they might use Rocky Wang, Rambo Li or even Stallone Cao. (I swear that every class of English I tought in Taiwan in the early 80’s always sported at least one Rocky or Rambo, leading to calling people Rocky One, Rocky Two, etc. rotypically speaking, most Rocky’s weighed no more than 120 pounds, were pale, sported thick glasses and a bad haircut. :eek:). One kid’s English school had a few teachers that would name the incoming class after a TV show like Little Rascals, Happy Days, etc.
Oddly enough nearly 30 years later as I do business in China and Taiwan, I deal with counterparts that still sport Rocky as their English name. it’s on the their business card and I get a kick out of introducing Chairman Rocky Cai to the execs at my company who are desperately trying to hide their WTF expression.
Yet we’re too sensitive to do so with Chinese or Korean names?
I dunno. Why do you westerners keep mangling my name?
My official name is Tabby XUE Yao Feng (not my official name).
In university, I got called Mr. Yao, Mr. Feng, just plain Yao (which is weird), Mr. Yao XUE… what?
Either call me Mr. XUE, Mr. Tabby XUE, Tabby, or Yao Feng. I don’t really care if you reverse my name or not - Yao Feng, XUE is fine. But come on. You know that XUE is my family name, Tabby is an obviously english name so you can follow english naming conventions on that, but why on earth would you call me Mr. Yao? Would you call anyone Mr. Middlename?
I had a kid from China come into my preschool class. His mother said, “His name is Jack. He likes Titanic movie. He wants his name to be Jack.” I thought, wow, that’s pretty cool for a five year old to get to select their own name (as long as they pick something reasonable.)
And I repeat, way too complicated. Nobody would use it like that, plus it doesn’t reflect the reality that there have always been people whose two lastnames did not follow the “paternal-lastname followed by maternal-lastname” pattern. Heck, our Queen is one of them 
IOW, names in Spain and other Hispanic countries do not work as you’ve been told they work.
Pretty close, except her friends are likely to call her by a nickname, such as “Haa-chan” or “Haru-chan” and her boyfriend will call her kimi (you) or omae (a really rough form of you) depending on his education, how tough he thinks he is, etc.
The only reason Chinese and Korean names sound odd reversed is that we’re used to them not reversed. If the custom had been to reverse them, that would sound natural.
It happens, but I don’t know if you would call it an “agreement”. But yes, my Chinese friends don’t know how to pronounce J-pop stars in Japanese.
Actually, you’re mistaken about what I have been informed of and what I haven’t. Some portion of Hispanic names do work that way, and when the subject under discussion is the names of people with such names in a conversation about what kind of names people have, it would not be “way too complicated” to use terms as I have used them. It doesn’t matter that these rules aren’t universal in Hispanic cultures – indeed, it proves my point, because in order to distinguish among the different rules that people adhere to, one must have sufficiently precise terms in order to talk about them.
I’ll note we’re not always consistent with this for Chinese or Korean names, either.
It’s not the most pleasant example, but the Virginia Tech shooter was usually listed as “Seung-Hui Cho” in the media in the weeks following the massacre, but “Cho” would be his family name.
And it’s not entirely uncommon for Korean immigrants to give their names in the Western given name/family name order when in America. It’s actually quite common, even in Korea sometimes. If you are familiar with the culture, you can usually tell immediately if they’re giving their family name first or last, no matter how the name is presented.