Copyright © 2005
W3C (MIT, ERCIM, Keio)
Formatting & reading data
Cultural issues
Chinese Chang Wen Yun
Malay Isa (bin) Aman
Indian M. Thiruselvan
Thiruselvan s/o Manickavasagam
When Chinese people write
their name they normally write the
family name first and given name last.
A
form that asks a Chinese user to enter
their first and last names can be very
confusing for them.
Better say 'family' and 'given'
name.
The Malay person above has
only one name, Isa.
'bin' means 'son of', and Aman is his
father's name.
A similar situation applies to
the person from southern India whose
name appears at the bottom.
There are other ways in which
names can vary, including double family
names for Spanish people, and
patronymics for Russians.
When creating forms for names,
ask yourself what you will do with the
name.
If
you won't process it at all, allow people
to enter their whole name as they would
usually write it.
However, if you are expecting, for example,
to use part of the name to address people,
you may find that you can't simply work out
what to call people working from
Anglo-Saxon expectations of how names are
used.
You
may need a special field that asks how the
user likes to be addressed.
Also be careful about choosing a part of
the name for sorting - people sort names in
very different ways around the
world.
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