From: miles@gnu.org   
      
   Gilles Poitras  writes:   
   >> I don't see why that is proper. Yes, Japanese write family names   
   >> first.   
   >   
   > Many Japanese do not like the reversal of their name order. The English   
   > speaking world used to also do this to Chinese and Vietnamese names, we   
   > no longer do so.   
      
   No matter what you do (reverse or don't reverse), somebody will try to   
   apply some interpretation to it without understanding what they're doing,   
   and mangle it (e.g., "Mr. Firstname").   
      
   I have the opposite problem -- I live in Japan, and no matter which order I   
   write my name in, it manages to get mangled, usually by computer systems   
   trying to transform it in some way (if they would just treat the whole   
   thing as an inviolable chunk, things would be much easier)   
      
   If I use the English order, many systems will assume my first name is my   
   last name and do funny things as a result.  For a looong time, the computer   
   system at work had managed to drop my last name entirely, and truncate my   
   middle name (Gordon) -- I was known officially as "Miles Godo", and   
   addressed in official correspondance as "Mr. Miles" (occasionally I ended   
   up being addressed as simply "Godo"!).   
      
   I've tried using the Japanese order, but even then, some systems try to use   
   clever heuristics like "if name is foreign, reverse the order", negating my   
   attempt to 2nd guess them -- and even worse, some organizations have both   
   types of systems using the same data.  Just can't win...   
      
   [er, rant over]   
      
   -miles   
   --   
   The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.   
     --Albert Einstein   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)