On Sun, Jan 31, 2016 at 6:17 AM, Kazunobu Kuriyama
<[email protected]> wrote:
> On 31-Jan-16, Tony Mechelynck wrote:
>> (When writing to Japanese posters, I never know which is the given
>> name and which is the family name: I know that the Japanese custom is
>> to put the family name first, but some Japanese people reverse their
>> names when writing to "Western" people and some not, and I never know
>> which is which. Please pardon me if I erred.)
>
> That confusion is partly due to the Ministry of Education of Japanese
> government and partly due to Gmail.
>
> Since Japan (was forced to) established diplomatic relations with Western
> countries in 1850’s (except the Netherlands; it was the only European
> country with which Japan had been keeping the formal diplomatic relations
> during the era when shoguns and samurai ruled the country), one’s given name
> has been put first and the family name last when her/his name is written in
> European languages.
>
> Japanese children had been taught as such in school for more than 100 years.
>
> Around the beginning of this century, the Ministry asked textbook publishers
> to restore our traditional name order in their English textbooks so that the
> children would “show respect for local cultures.”
>
> Since then, some Japanese people began using the Japanese name order when
> writing their names in European languages.
>
> But news media around the world and many Japanese (including me) are still
> using the given-name-first order.
>
> FYI, when the Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe, who is often described as
> a nationalist in the Western media, visited the White House and the Congress
> last year, this head of Japanese government didn’t ask the US to call him
> “Abe Shinzo.” :p
>
> As for Gmail, I signed in with my given name Kazunobu and family name
> Kuriyama, expecting the name is shown in this order. To my surprise, by
> default, Gmail “kindly” reverses the order for the Japanese users. So I was
> very upset at my first gmails showing my name in the unexpected order!
>
> As explained above, the confusion is caused by Japanese government.
> Needless to say, Japanese people is ultimately responsible for that.
>
> So, I think the rest of the world needn’t care about that :) As far as this
> list is concerned, it looks to me that Japanese regular participants use the
> given-name-first order. If not, my apologies to you.
>
> Cheers,
> Kazunobu Kuriyama
Thanks a lot for the detailed explanation. My confusion may be due in
part to encountering many different national "customs" for the use of
names through the participation in Esperanto congresses:
• Most Western people use given name - family name.
• United States citizens usually have a "middle name" which can be
(for a wife) the husband's family name or, IIUC, for a man a second
given name.
• Most Icelandic people have no family name, they use given name -
patronym (name derived from father's given name)
-- Example: Sigurdur Gudmundsson may have a son, Tor Sigurdursson, and
a daughter, Freya Sigurdursdottir.
• Hungarian people use family name - given name when speaking
Hungarian. For a married woman, the family name is replaced by a name
derived from the family name of the husband.
• Most Russian people use given name - patronym - family name
-- Example: Ivan Vladimirovich Kassinskiy means Ivan (John), son of
Vladimir, of the family Kassinskiy (well, Kassinskaya actually, since
"familiya", "family name", is feminine in Russian)
• Arabic-speaking people may have (in their own language) very
complicated full names combining in various ways several names: among
others:
- given name
- given name of the son (if any) [abu=father or umm=mother, + name]
- given name of the father [bin or ibn (depending on dialect) + name]
- given name of the grandfather [bin or ibn + name, after father's name]
- (rarely) given name of the great-grandfather [bin or ibn + name,
after grandfather's name]
- family name [various]
- place of origin [el + place + -iyy]
• I think that it isn't so anymore, but in the 19th century, many
Jewish males (at least in the Russian Empire, which included Poland)
had alternate given names: a "Hebrew" name as written on their
circumcision certificate held at the synagogue, and a "Christian" name
beginning with the same letter, as written on their birth certificate
held at the town hall. For instance the initiator of Esperanto called
himself Ludoviko Lazaro Zamenhof, from Ludvik ("town hall" name),
Leyzer ("synagogue" name) Zamenhof or (German) Samenhof or (Russian)
Zamengov (family name).
I knew that the custom in most of East-Asia, when speaking one's own
language (Japanese, Chinese, and I think Vietnamese, plus probably
others) was family name first; but I didn't know how governments
interfered. On the front page of my user site
http://users.skynet.be/antoine.mechelynck/ I tried to translate my
name into various languages. For CJK I wanted something which would be
spoken more or less the same when the same kanji were read according
to Japanese On, Mandarin and Cantonese readings. This gave me a
somewhat ridiculous given name which nevertheless is reasonably
similar in pronunciation to Tony in all three, and with a meaning
which, for some reasons which I need not detail here, I can
figuratively accept. For the family name, I had only a very restricted
choice of acceptable Chinese family names so I chose the common family
name Ma = horse, similar in sound to the first syllable of my original
family name. You may smile or even laugh when learning that I chose
馬東尼 as my name: laughing is better than weeping, it makes for a
prettier face. :-)
Japanese people are very present in Esperanto congresses, thanks (at
least in part) to the Oomoto movement (or religion or sect) which
combines the Japanese cult of ancestors (or something like that) with
a belief in world peace and in the usefulness of the international
language Esperanto. IIUC, its mother temple is at Kameoka, in Kyōto
Prefecture.
Best regards,
Tony.
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