Re: UPPERCASE surname?
From: Josip Rodin <joy@gkvk.hr>
Subject: Re: UPPERCASE surname?
Date: Sat, 18 Jan 2003 01:32:58 +0100
> I think if the document is in English, then English style is just fine.
> The uppercase stuff may be appropriate in e.g. French, but I don't believe
> there's any rule in English that requires it.
>
> Also, writing whole words uppercase is a sign of yelling in electronic
> communication channels which a lot of us are accustomed to.
I see, but I will continue to write my name as "Tomohiro KUBOTA" in
"From:" mail headers and so on. I won't force others to follow my
way.
> By default, the first part is the name, and the second part is the surname.
> There would only be confusion if someone wrote "Kubota Tomohiro", and I
> don't see why anyone would do that.
Though we rarely need to know which part is given name and which part
is surname, it is not safe to assume there is a "default". Though I
everytime write my given name first and surname next in Alphabet
transcription, I don't know about other Japanese or other peoples.
For example, the followings are a statistics of famous Japanese people,
though the results don't exclude Japanese web pages:
---------------------------------------------------
surname givenname Google hits in Google hits in
"s-g" order "g-s" order
---------------------------------------------------
Natsume Soseki 3410 1700
Kawabata Yasunari 5410 5370
Matsui Hideki 594 6030
Tokugawa Ieyasu 6900 2010
Oda Nobunaga 5660 1650
Ito Hirobumi 1880 633
Ozawa Seiji 3150 25100
(Mao Tse-Tung 82700 1260) * Chinese
---------------------------------------------------
I think you cannot "assume" givenname-surname order is "default".
---
Tomohiro KUBOTA <kubota@debian.org>
http://www.debian.or.jp/~kubota/
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