[Date Prev][Date Next] [Thread Prev][Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

Re: "family name, personal name" in devel/people



I think some misunderstanding happened.

On Fri, Jan 31, 2003 at 06:51:40PM +0900, Tomohiro KUBOTA wrote:
> From: Osamu Aoki <osamu@debian.org>
> > > From Oohara Yuuma 
> > > 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 they do in Japanese context.  That is fine
> > as preference but you are stretching too far and twisting the fact.
...
> 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 think we are talking 2 separate issues.
 1.  How people should be addressed?
 2.  What is the convention of name translation?

I can assure you that I do not think "Western culture is international"
since I am living in, err... , hostile cultural environment :-)

If Oohara Yuuma said "In Japan a family name comes before a personal
name in _Japanese_ _language_ context.  I want to retain the same order
in English context too.", it was not stretching the fact.  I am all for
respecting his defiance wish to the Japanese translation convention.  

Please remember that it is a well established convention for Japanese
name to be flipped in English or French context upon translation.  That
was my point.  I guess if translated into Hungarian or Chinese, we
should use surname first as the translation convention.  

PS: 
Boy, it is a hot topic.  In my daily activities, defending my real first
name against anglocized name is a real challenge in a hostile
environment.  I already gave up on my real fist name at the restaurant
or bar.  :-)

-- 
~\^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



Reply to: