In the multicultural world that we live in how do you know my name. Is my first name my last name? What is my family name and what should you call me. As web site developers we regularly ask people for their name so we can personalise the web, but are we using the correct name?
Presented at Leeds PHP Usergroup May 2017
and
Presented at Leeds JS Usergroup August 2017
30. María-Jose Carreño Quiñones
Multiple family names
Given name
Family name
from Mother
You call her:
• Señorita Carreño
Family name
from Father
Antonio Carreño Rodríguez
María Quiñones Marqués
de
First name Last name
Spanish family names would have the order paternal+maternal,
Portuguese names in Brazil would be maternal+paternal
C
40. tussenvoegsels
First name Last name
Robin van Persie
First name Last nameInsertion
You call him:
• meneer Van Persie
• Robin van Persie
P All different in Belgium
45. Capitalisations and Case
First name Last name
Don’t assume all names are capitalized
French often use all caps for family name
Napoleon BonaparteNapoleon BONAPARTE
47. Capitalisations and Case
First name Last name
Ewan MacgegorEwan MacGregorEwan MCregorEwan McgregorEwan McGregor
Don’t assume all names are capitalized
French often use all caps for family name
52. Recommendations…
• Ask yourself whether you really need to have
separate fields for given name and family
name
• Let the user decide how to write their name
• Make input fields long enough to enter long
names.
TO SPLIT OR NOT
53. Recommendations…
• Make the fields optional not everyone has both
• Avoid using the labels ‘first name’ and ‘last
name’.
HOW TO SPLIT
55. Recommendations…
• Make the fields optional not everyone uses a
title
• Only use it if you need it and it is relevant
• Maybe you need to have a pre and post name.
TITLES
56.
57. Recommendations…
• Ask separately how that person would like to be
called
• Separate formal name and common name
(nickname)
• Don’t assume the parts of the name
• Varying expectations of formality around the world.
WHAT’S YOUR NAME
58. Recommendations…
• Don’t capitalise a name leave it as entered
• Don’t restrict to Alpha - allow space and dash
• Don’t restrict to ASCII 128 - allow extended
• Don’t make all fields required
• Don’t have a minimum or maximum character count.
INPUT RULES
60. Recommendations…
• Are you collecting the person’s name just to
have an identifier in your system?
• Do you plan to call them by name in their
language but track them in your back-office in
a language such as English
• You may want to ask for a Latin transcription.
LANGUAGE 2