# Naming conventions for WCA cubers?



## qqwref (Aug 22, 2012)

After doing a bunch of stats in the WCA database I've noticed that there isn't really a consistent naming scheme for people. And yeah, I know that different cultures have their own widely different ways of naming people, but we're widely inconsistent, using many different schemes: a single name; given and then family name (ignoring middle names etc.); family and then given name; single and family names (with middle names etc.); Western and Asian names put together (e.g. Amos Tay Swee Hui); names transcribed in English and also written in the native language; and probably even other formats.

The thing is, for most people, the extra name information only serves to add clutter and confusion. I have a decent understanding of different cultures' naming conventions, for instance, but a lot of people don't and will not be sure what to call someone - and what's the point of having someone's name if you can't use it? Plus, the information of someone's name in Chinese, Arabic, or Thai script provides absolutely zero useful information for any user who can't read that script, and may not even display properly anyway. So the end result, for most users, is that there is a ton of extra info on the page, not adding to the information quality but actually subtracting from it.

I'd like to propose that instead of a single Name field we have a few. This would mean we can keep track of the extra information without needing to display it for everyone. Let's take Yu Nakajima as an example.
*1) Display Name*. This is what is actually shown in the normal ranking pages. Ideally it would simply be the given name followed by the family name for everyone, with a few small exceptions such as Jr. or Sr. In Yu's case this would be "Yu Nakajima".
*2) Full Name*. This is the person's full name, in the Latin alphabet but with all of the details and stylings of the original language. For instance if someone writes their name with two types of given name (e.g. Amos Tay Swee Hui) all of that information would be here. This would be displayed on their profile. In Yu's case this would be "Nakajima Yu" since the Japanese traditionally write the family name first.
*3) Original Name*. This is the person's full name, but written in their native language if possible. Of course, if their language is written in the Latin alphabet already this would be the same as the Full Name. This would be displayed on their profile, if it's different from the Full Name. In Yu's case this would be "中島悠".

Having three names tracked might seem a bit more confusing at first, but if you think in terms of what the user sees it's much simpler. The ranking is consistent, displaying names from Ilya Pankratov to Asia Konvittayayotin in the same format, while a person's profile would show as much information as it does now, for anyone who's really interested in a particular cuber. We could even have things display differently depending on the user's language settings. For instance, if someone browsed the page in Chinese, they might see the original name for everyone with a Chinese original name, but the display name otherwise. And so on.

Of course, I'd be happy to help with this on the database side...


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## Stefan (Aug 22, 2012)

qqwref said:


> there isn't really a consistent naming scheme for people.



There is: Latin(ized) name, followed by real name in parentheses if not Latin already. If you find violations of this rule, let us know.

And I definitely don't want "Yu Nakajima" on one page and "Nakajima Yu" on another. You think that's *less* confusing?


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## qqwref (Aug 23, 2012)

If they're labeled, then sure, it's less confusing. "Nakajima Yu" is the name as it ought to be written in a Latin alphabet, and "Yu Nakajima" is the name as used in the rankings for consistency. I'm thinking the profile would give all of the variants, labeled, just like how Wikipedia articles will separately list a person's common/stage name, birth name, and name in their original language.

And I think you have completely missed my point about the real name in parentheses (not to mention people with excessively long names in the db) simply adding clutter. As an example, everyone who sees Michael Gottlieb on the WCA site has as much information as they need to know who I am, and they do not also need to see that I have two middle names (Zener Riggs).


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## blah (Aug 23, 2012)

Some cultures don't have "family names"; others have mulitple "family names."

Edit: Also, I find "foreign"-script names (that I can read) a lot more readable than Latin/Western transliterations, which may not even be consistent in some cases -- I know Taiwan doesn't have a consistent transliteration system, and I suspect Cyrillic names may not have entirely consistent transliterations either. I find it much easier to read Chinese, Taiwanese, and Hong Kong names in the same script, all three of which use different transliteration schemes. Besides, some might consider "...provides absolutely zero useful information..." completely ethnocentric and condescending.

Edit: I would not have been able to pronounce Polish cubers' names without the new encoding that allows for characters in the Polish alphabet.


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## qqwref (Aug 23, 2012)

As for no or multiple family names: that's fine, as long as we don't have an unknown order of names of various types of meaning. I don't think I remember saying that given and family names aren't allowed to contain spaces. But something like "Amos Tay Swee Hui" would be nonstandard.


You forgot the end part - "...for any user who can't read that script". I don't assume that everyone speaks an English-related language, but I do assume that the typical WCA user cannot read at least one of Chinese/Japanese, Arabic, Thai, and Cyrillic. Since there's no culture or ethnicity that uses all of those scripts that's a pretty reasonable assumption. And having two languages listed is pretty useless if you can't read one of them. This isn't an airport or street sign, it's a website, and that means we can and should customize it to make it more useful for the user.

For instance, we could very easily have users choose their language (which we should do anyway btw, the menus and such ought to be translated into, at least, the languages of the major cubing countries) and then display names in that language whenever they are available. We could even have options that let the user say which scripts they understand. But assuming that everyone wants to see Chinese and Arabic characters all over their page doesn't fit the audience and doesn't make sense.


As for the Polish language, it fits into the Latin framework, so even if someone doesn't know Polish spelling conventions they can get some idea of someone's name in their head. When your typical English-reading user (that's almost everyone) sees "Łukasz" their initial guess will be good enough to be able to talk about his amazing 2x2x2 times, so that name information is useful. But when they see "中島悠", if they don't speak Japanese, they have literally zero idea what the person's name is and wouldn't be able to talk about his amazing 5x5x5 times, and in that case the name information is not useful and ideally shouldn't be there (unless, of course, the user wants to see it). The difference is that the letters themselves are familiar enough to be useful to the user.


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## keyan (Aug 23, 2012)

What are you proposing for the "normal" naming? Do you want to go back to what we had before with Hao Wang 1, Hao Wang 2, Hao Wang 3, Hao Wang 4? What about when 张丽 and 章黎 compete on consecutive weekends, you would presume they're the same person? What about the next week when they attend a competition together, do we now have to add a 2? Do you have a problem with Frédéric Meinnel? No? Well what about Đào Quốc Việt? Could someone with a common name use their middle name if they wanted to avoid adding a 2? What if that's the name they regularly go by? Would I be required to go by Christopher? Would Eileen be required to go by Wei? How about Bilege, can you tell me what's the "normal" way to write a Mongolian name? As for "the name as it ought to be written in a Latin alphabet", what does that even mean? For Chu-Ju Chang, that's probably what it would say on her passport, but it's by no means the 'best' or 'right' romanization, if your standard is that you yourself, an ignorant English speaker, can try to pronounce it. Should she be required to change to Joo-roo Jahng? Similarly, do you have a problem with Shelley's last name? Is it more or less right than for Chu-Ju Chang? What happens when 于那卡基马 attends a competition, will you be confused as to why his times are suddenly so slow? Given how spectacularly I've heard it butchered, why do you say that Yuxuan gives you more useful information than 宇轩?

How about we just drop the romanized names and write everyone's in IPA? 

Is that little bit of text really a problem?


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## qqwref (Aug 23, 2012)

It sounds like you're suggesting we get rid of the Latinized names altogether.

And to your questions: The normal naming can be whatever people want as long as it fits a standard ("<given name> <family name> whenever possible"). We don't need to throw numbers all over the place since we have unique WCAIDs, even if there are several John Smiths. Nicknames are fine and people can use any transliteration they or the WCA feel is appropriate, exactly like we already do, as long as it's reasonably easy for someone to tell what is the given and what is the family name. Your complaints about Chinese transliteration are irrelevant because they apply as much now as they would after my proposal - to someone who can't read or speak any Chinese, the existence of a 宇轩 does not in any way affect how much they will mangle Yuxuan.

Frédéric Meinnel and Đào Quốc Việt are fine, since the individual letters are meaningful to the vast majority of users - when I see 章, for instance, since I don't know how to read that script, I can't describe the character to someone, or write it out, or type it, or even remember it, so it might as well be a "you can't display this character" box (▯). Indeed, if I see 于那卡基马 in a list of people it might as well be ▯▯▯▯▯ to me. The only way I could interpret those characters would be if I had a Latin transliteration or if there was a decent Chinese to English translator out there (which there isn't).


"Is that little bit of text really a problem?"
It's aesthetically unpleasant, could cause issues for some users, and doesn't fit with the way the rest of the site is laid out. I believe the reason for removing the Magic events is not any better than this.


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## keyan (Aug 23, 2012)

To clarify
张丽 = Li Zhang 
章黎 = Li Zhang
于那卡基马 = Yu Nakajima


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## blah (Aug 23, 2012)

he doesn't eat fish eyeballs


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## Yuxuibbs (Aug 23, 2012)

It might be easier to just put first name then middle name/last name(s) then put their real name in their native language. It would be better for the database to use the latin alphabet just for organization and it does help with how to pronounce the name sometimes and some languages don't really have an alphabet.
As to spelling, I think it should be up to the person signing up on what the spelling is and add an option to add how to pronounce people's names and if they want to add something like how to pronounce their name on their profile or something, they can (personal experience says having people mispronounce your name almost everywhere gets annoying sometimes).



> Given how spectacularly I've heard it butchered, why do you say that Yuxuan gives you more useful information than 宇轩?


I agree ^
宇轩 gives a lot more information than Yuxuan because chinese and other languages that use characters have many different ways of pronouncing something like "yu" and just the word "yu" in chinese can give you over 50 different words(characters)/meanings. My name is Yuxuan in english but there's a completely different meaning to my name (chinese names almost always have meanings behind them and stuff). 



so basically, if the naming conventions will be changed, I propose the format to be 
1. first name, middle name (if there are any and if they want to put it there), and last name with the latin alphabet for consistency and organization purposes in the database
2. person's name in their native language (so people can switch first name/last name and stuff because of their culture)
3. how to pronounce name if they want to add that 
all spelling is up to the person unless there is a way to make the pronunciation part more clear to those who read it
On the WCA website and stuff it could just display numbers 1 and 2 for names and when people click to see profiles they see all 3 and the other info that's usually there.


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## keyan (Aug 23, 2012)

blah said:


> he doesn't eat fish eyeballs



No, no he doesn't. 
(Can't believe we never thought of that.)


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## blah (Aug 23, 2012)

Actually, we did: http://www.speedsolving.com/forum/s...12-(Las-Vegas)&p=769010&viewfull=1#post769010


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## blah (Aug 23, 2012)

"Family", "given", and "middle" names are Western biases. Even "Western" is somewhat misleading as not all Western cultures have notions of these three types of names.

What's so ideal about "the given name followed by the family name for everyone"? Is it your bias? Is it a bias of the majority?

Arabic/Muslim names: Osama bin Laden's given name is Osama, his "family name" is Laden, which is his father's name, not his family name. "bin" is neither part of his given name, nor part of his family name, and it's definitely not his "middle name."

Icelandic names: Jón Einarsson's given name is Jón, he is the son of Einar, but Einarsson is one word.

Dutch and Belgian names: Names with tussenvoegsels (van, van de, van den, van der) are treated differently in the two countries. Are they part of the family name or not?

Indonesian names: Edo and Michael.

And of course, Malaysian names: Francis Wong Jia Yen, Howard Wong Jun Yen, Amos Tay Swee Hui, Jonathan Tan Wei Xiat, Wilson Tan Wei Siun, Caleb Wong En Yi, etc. Underlined are family names.

I'm sure there are more naming conventions that appear unconventional to the Anglosphere that I am unfamiliar with. My point is, we can all try to make something _appear_ "uniform" to _us_, but their are notions in our naming system that make no sense/lack counterparts in other cultures, and vice versa, and we need to respect that.

Edit: Vietnamese names: I have a friend named Pham Thi Thu Hang (I don't know the accents, unfortunately). Her father's last name is Pham, her mother's last name is Thi, so Pham Thi would be her "family name." Her given name is Thu Hang, but she goes by Hang; it's common to address a person by their second given name (when he or she has two) in East Asian cultures. But in *your* "ideal" situation, her name would be Thu Hang Pham Thi, and in your head she would be Thu Thi.


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## ardi4nto (Aug 23, 2012)

qqwref said:


> The normal naming can be whatever people want as long as it fits a standard ("<given name> <family name> whenever possible"). We don't need to throw numbers all over the place since we have unique WCAIDs, even if there are several John Smiths.



How will you handle single word name?
Indonesian names don't really follow a convention, ("<given name> <family name> whenever possible"). Basically parents can give their children any name they want.
Even it is a single word name without any last/family/surname, like Michael, and it *IS* how his name written in legal documents like ID or passport. I also know someone named their child "O" without any additional information here.

Write it to "Michael Michael" won't solve this problem. I also don't really like LNU (Last Name Unknown) abbreviation that usually used by the immigration service to solve this problem.


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## Stefan (Aug 23, 2012)

qqwref said:


> "Nakajima Yu" is the name as it ought to be written in a Latin alphabet, and "Yu Nakajima" is the name as used in the rankings for consistency.



I prefer the consistency of having the correct name everywhere. One of those two versions is wrong, and I don't want to display wrong information.



qqwref said:


> And I think you have completely missed my point about the real name in parentheses (not to mention people with excessively long names in the db) simply adding clutter.



I don't mind the clutter. But if some are too long, we can add another field to the Persons table containing a short version of the name, just like we already have for Events and Competitions.


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## applemobile (Aug 23, 2012)

What if someone has only the one name, like Seal or McLovin?


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## Ilkyoo Choi (Aug 23, 2012)

How about we just ask each and every one of the competitors how their name should be displayed on the website, since the person who cares the most about his/her name on the website should be the owner of the name? 

Oh wait, we already do that. 


FYI, many Koreans have their names as (Family name, given name) on the website, opposed to (Given name, family name). Even though I think that (Given name, Family name) should be the way to be displayed on the WCA website (at least for Koreans), I am perfectly fine with people having their names the way they prefer. 

If you can't figure out what to call him, then you should at least ask the person.


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## shelley (Aug 23, 2012)

Ilkyoo Choi said:


> FYI, many Koreans have their names as (Family name, given name) on the website, opposed to (Given name, family name). Even though I think that (Given name, Family name) should be the way to be displayed on the WCA website (at least for Koreans), I am perfectly fine with people having their names the way they prefer.



This isn't consistent with the naming scheme for a lot of other Asian competitors. Does this ever cause confusion for the WCA ID generator?


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## Tim Reynolds (Aug 23, 2012)

shelley said:


> This isn't consistent with the naming scheme for a lot of other Asian competitors. Does this ever cause confusion for the WCA ID generator?



WCA ID generator, in a nutshell
-strip out anything in parentheses
-replace any non-ascii character with A, and capitalize
-give the first four letters of the last name, overflowing to the first name when necessary [using "last name" and "first name" literally]
-let whoever's doing the uploading change as necessary


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## JBCM627 (Aug 23, 2012)

For competition check-in and sorting purposes, it could be nice to have a "what name are you going to tell us at check-in / would you like to be sorted by" field, but I don't know if it is practical to get this information from every competitor.


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## qqwref (Aug 24, 2012)

blah said:


> What's so ideal about "the given name followed by the family name for everyone"? Is it your bias? Is it a bias of the majority?


It's not a bias, it's a proposed standard. My goal is to make names look reasonably similar. If we can do it in American schools, phone books, employee listings, and so on, why not in the WCA? It's not like America doesn't have people from every major world culture.



blah said:


> Osama bin Laden, etc


Rule of thumb: If in an English culture you could call someone "Mr. <X>" then their family name could be <X>. So bin Laden, Einarsson, de Vries, etc. are all possible. Indonesian names with one name cannot fit the standard so we just get as close as possible (by doing exactly what we do now, in this case). As for the Malaysian names, that's exactly what I mean - those names are confusing so we should write Amos Tay OR Swee Hui Tay, etc. There are two different types of given names in there - choose your favorite and put the full thing in the profile.



blah said:


> But in *your* "ideal" situation, her name would be Thu Hang Pham Thi, and in your head she would be Thu Thi.


Why would she be Thu Thi? When in my posts have I said that given and family names must be a single "word"? Why would you think I would want that? As long as the given and family name are in that order, without stuff that isn't either of them, and written in a Latin-based script, it fits the standard completely.



This goes out to everyone in the topic: I have specifically used the terms "family name" and "given name" because I understand "first name" and "last name" ARE Western-name-biased terms. I thought I made it pretty obvious that I don't require the "family name" to be the single last "word", or the "given name" to be the single first word. Pointing out all these exceptions only makes it clear that certain people are trying really hard to make my suggestion seem unreasonable. However, from what I've seen everywhere but the WCA, it's quite reasonable and in fact reflects how the global English-language community tends to track names. Look at the Olympics. Their athletes represent a huge number of countries, but they get along fine describing everyone using the family-given standard and with no non-Latin scripts in parentheses. Here are some multicultural examples from http://www.london2012.com/athletes/:
- Michael PHELPS. Typical boring ol' American name.
- Maher ABU RMILAH. Arabic-type name from Palestine. Easy. The abu is part of the last name.
- Anqi BAI. Chinese name, in Latin script, with the given name first.
- Gabor CSASZAR. Hungarian name. They write the family name first, but the Olympics doesn't - for consistency.
- Chatuphum CHINNAWONG. Thai name. No Thai script is necessary.
- TRIYANINGSIH. Indonesian single name. No problems there.
- Sytske DE GROOT. Dutch name with a tussenvoegel. Just as easy as the Arabic name above.
- Thi Viet Anh DUONG. Vietnamese name with multiple "word" given name. Works fine.

My proposal is practically identical to what they do, just without the capital letters (and with accented letters, because why not). It's less confusing than what we have now, less cluttered, and equally useful. And, with my idea of displaying the full and native names in someone's profile, nothing is lost. If you really care about how to pronounce Yuxuan's name, you can either tell the site to display Chinese names, or you can simply bring up his profile and see the Chinese name for yourself in a fraction of a second.

Oh yeah, and for everyone complaining about how 3 names is so much, here's a mockup of how I imagine the profile might look. Compared to the huge tables of cubing information, this is very easy to understand.


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## Stefan (Aug 24, 2012)

qqwref said:


> for everyone complaining about how 3 names is so much



Like who?

(might comment on the rest tomorrow)


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## qqwref (Aug 24, 2012)

I believe that was you - suggesting that one of the names is "wrong" implies we should get rid of at least one of them.

Personally, I don't think either "Yu Nakajima" or "Nakajima Yu" is wrong. They're just written in different ways for different reasons. But maybe I'm just "biased".


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## Stefan (Aug 24, 2012)

qqwref said:


> I believe that was you - suggesting that one of the names is "wrong" implies we should get rid of at least one of them.



That's not because it's _"so much"_ but because it's *wrong*.

(I admit I'm not certain it's wrong, but if you called me _"Pochmann Stefan"_ that would be wrong, that's not my name. I assumed it's the same for others, that you can't reorder at will)

I like the Olympics thing, but as I'm only familiar with "Western" names I can't judge how ok it is for others. And I like our way, too.

Anyway... is there anyone besides Michael who has a problem with our current way and would prefer his?


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## cubernya (Aug 24, 2012)

Stefan said:


> Anyway... is there anyone besides Michael who has a problem with our current way and would prefer his?



I don't have a problem with the current system, but Michael's proposed system does seem cleaner and more standardised.


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## Endgame (Aug 24, 2012)

Stefan said:


> Anyway... is there anyone besides Michael who has a problem with our current way and would prefer his?



no, his system is just making things more complicated than they should be.


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## shelley (Aug 24, 2012)

Michael does have a point. The Olympics can list names without native scripts, why can't we? It's certainly cleaner. As for display, [family name], [given name] might be a standardized way to show names so that there's no ambiguity as to which is which.


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## Endgame (Aug 24, 2012)

shelley said:


> Michael does have a point. The Olympics can list names without native scripts, why can't we? It's certainly cleaner. As for display, [family name], [given name] might be a standardized way to show names so that there's no ambiguity as to which is which.



rather [given name] [family name], [family name] [given name] is as stupid as writing all western family names with capital letters


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## Stefan (Aug 24, 2012)

Yes, "Pochmann, Stefan" would be a valid way, but it seems rather formal and less friendly.



Endgame said:


> [family name] [given name] is as stupid



I guess it's good then that she didn't propose that.


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