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by puszczyk 1016 days ago
In Poland informally it’s always <given name> <last name>. Formally, it depends most places are on the same as informal, but particularly military and some other bureaucracies will use <last name> <given name>. I always thought this is a holdout from the pre-computer days to make it easier to sort alphabetically (last names are a bit better distributed than the popular first names).

In France they seem to prefer <LAST NAME> (yes, all caps) <First name> even for less formal things.

3 comments

I've seen this in Czech too - sometimes lastname first but maybe more in old-school things. I think I'm registered with the Czech FA as "McSurname Sean" :-D

Also this "reversal" had me confused when we hosted a French exchange student without knowing French (I spoke German, but the teachers knew my family were happy to host if they needed). His name was written like "KHALID Mohamed" and he was very polite so he didn't really correct me when I was calling him "Khalid", and since I was unfamiliar with Algerian names I had experience to suggest "Khalid" was more surname-y than firstname-y. It sorted itself out after a day or two though :-)

Not sure how it is done in other countries, but it's very likely that the custom of using the last name in all caps exists elsewhere. AFAIK, it comes from the fact that some last names are also common first names, so it's easier to distinguish between the two like this, as the order isn't really that important. For example, if I see a DIDIER Bernard or a Bernard DIDIER, I know I need to call him M. Didier in a formal context or just Bernard in an informal one.
I've seen the capitals convention to designate family names in several places, like with people from East Asian countries corresponding in English. The point is to take away ambiguity about which name order is being used and therefore how to address the writer.