Re: "family name, personal name" in devel/people
Hi,
From: Osamu Aoki <osamu@debian.org>
Subject: Re: "family name, personal name" in devel/people
Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2003 00:45:16 -0800
> > My family name is Oohara and my personal name is Yuuma. I am _not_
> > Yuuma Oohara -- in Japan a family name comes before a personal name.
>
> I know some minority of Japanese people wish to be called the same order
> in English/French context as ithey do in Japanese context. That is fine
> as preference but you are stretching too far and twisting the fact.
Though I don't adopt this method myself, I understand what they insist.
For example, when I search by using Google the current Korean president:
"Dae Jung Kim" 2130 hits
"Kim Dae Jung" 98000 hits
You know, "Kim" is family name and "Dae Jung" is given name and the
native order of Korean is "Family Given".
This means that Korean people preserve their name order even in alphabet
transliteration. Then, why not Japanese? I don't want to think that
you think "Western culture is international and eastern culture is local,
so eastern people must act in western way in international projects
such as Debian".
I know this result shows only one aspect of this problem. This is
just an example of what they say.
My own opinion is that I don't want to discuss the real contents
of this problem. I just want to ask respecting way of thinking
of each developer.
> All you had to say was "I prefer to be called Oohara Yuuma"
>
> I am sorry but I have to remind you that you are very likely to be
> called officially "Yuuma Oohara" in the letters your government issues
> in English or French. That may be where you have to fight :-) I do not
> understand why you are so picky on this issue here ?
England and France are only two countries in the world. They don't
have rights to determine international way to do something. If we
were developing English or French localized distribution, you would
be right.
> > The NM application form insisted on the personal-name-family-name
> > order, so it may be the cause of the bug.
>
> Form is form. Just follow the instruction.
If this is a bug, or at least may cause a confusion, let us think
about improvement.
For example, adding a note "Please input your given name and family
name in the form regardless of your native order of name."
If we don't have to know which part is given name and which is
family name, it is a good idea to have only one form to input the
whole name. In this case, the order is completely free.
>
> You will be surprised to find many US official forms use surname first,
> given name second, and middle name initial last format. As long as each
> entry is clearly marked, I see no issues.
>
> I see no major threat of cultural imperialism here either. So relax.
> Japan exports enough pop-culture trashes these days. Video games,
> anime, to name a few ... The name order will not trash Japanese
> culture.
>
> > I don't see any point in splitting a developer's name into the family
> > name and the personal name, but it is another issue.
>
> I guess many others see differently.
>
> --
> ~\^o^/~~~ ~\^.^/~~~ ~\^*^/~~~ ~\^_^/~~~ ~\^+^/~~~ ~\^:^/~~~ ~\^v^/~~~ +++++
> Osamu Aoki <osamu@debian.org> Cupertino CA USA, GPG-key: A8061F32
> .''`. Debian Reference: post-installation user's guide for non-developers
> : :' : http://qref.sf.net and http://people.debian.org/~osamu
> `. `' "Our Priorities are Our Users and Free Software" --- Social Contract
>
>
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