Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2010 May 18

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May 18

Asian names

Why do Asians put the family name first? --70.134.48.174 (talk) 00:10, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

(I believe you mean "East Asian names"—you are referring to names in countries that have been part of the Sinosphere, that is to say China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, etc. Places such as India and Russia are also in Asia, but their names have the given name first.)

As for your question of why they have the family name first...why not? It's no more weird or arbitrary than putting the family name second. For more information you can see Personal name#Name order, as well as Chinese name and similar articles. rʨanaɢ (talk) 00:21, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

It's not confined to "Asian" names. See for instance the articles on the Hungarians Béla Lugosi or Leó_Szilárd, at the top of which are mentions of name order, together with an interesting link to this. Then of course there's Neville Neville, who avoids the question entirely. Tonywalton ^Talk 08:30, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

A lot of Romanians will tell you that Hungarians are Asian too :P I'm not one of them :D Rimush (talk) 09:52, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps related or not, dates and addresses in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean tend to go in the order of 'larger unit first/smaller unit last'. Names also follow the same rule. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 21:55, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

When sorted, we tend to list last name first ("Smith, John") or year-month-day as noted above, so in a sense the Asian system is superior. I would imagine the European approach came about because the concept of a surname is relative recent, and was tacked on ("Leif the Lucky" vs. "Leif Ericsson", i.e. "Leif, Eric's son"). ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:31, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Well, there's the thought that those cultures which put the surname first may put more value on family than on individuality. Of course, this assumes that the more important thing is always listed first, and this isn't always the case. StuRat (talk) 16:36, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Some Asians have only one name (see Indonesian names). Zoonoses (talk) 00:07, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

For Japan, the history of names may provide a hint. Historically, names were of the form "A no B", where A is a family or clan name, B is a given name, and no is the genitive case particle. For example, Minamoto no Yoshitsune is "Yoshitsune of the Minamoto [family, clan]". This medial no eventually disappeared, but the order did not change.

There has been a long debate on whether the order of Japanese names should be switched in non-Japanese contexts. At present, if a foreigner immigrates to Japan, their name will officially be recorded in surname, given name [middle name] order. I am of the opinion that it is language matter, not one of culture, though. But it is difficult to separate Japanese language and Japan the culture. 114.167.196.41 (talk) 04:55, 20 May 2010 (UTC)