| Names are complicated, very personal, and vary a lot depending on the culture. In English-speaking North America we're actually spoiled that most people have names that follow a standard given-middle-family convention. And also that one's given name is the same in all contexts. But not everyone's name follows the same format. My wife has two middle names, one of my friends has three middle names, his wife has two given names and a middle name, and my father-in-law goes by his middle name. And this convention is not true everywhere. Wikipedia has a list of articles for how names work in various cultures: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_name#Naming_convention As an example, here's how it works in Russia (note the diminutive form, where the given name depends on the social status of the person they're addressing): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_personal_name Of course, in lots of parts of the world, especially east Asia (e.g. China, Korea) it's common to put the family name first. In general, the answer to "What is your name?" is "Who's asking and why?". If you need a person's name, you should ask for it in one of three ways: 1) What is your full, legal name? (e.g. Jonathan Anthony Smith Jr.) 2) What should we normally call you? (e.g. Jon, Mr. Smith, Johnny, Tony, Junior) 3) What name should we use when billing your credit card? (e.g. Jonathan A. Smith) You should only ask the ones you need (don't need a full name? don't ask), and they should all of these should be free form with generous length limits and accept any Unicode text. |