Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Japan-related articles/Name order/Archived votes

Old vote

1. Title: Surname first Kurosawa Akira, or given name first Akira Kurosawa?

2. First bold mention: Does the article start with Kurosawa Akira (also known as Akira Kurosawa) or Akira Kurosawa (also known as Kurosawa Akira)?

3. Consistency with China and Korea: Should our Japanese naming convention be independent of our Chinese and Korean naming conventions, or should we try to make one unified standard?

Nateji77

1) whatever's most common. Yoko Ono for her, Natsume Soseki for him.

2) SN-GN. saves having to repeat romaji next to the kanji, isn't wrong, and if consistent won't be confusing

3) people invert name order for Chinese and Koreans, on occasion, eg Wen-ho Lee. I see no reason not to follow their lead.

Taku

1. GN-SN for modern figures otherwise SN-GN while while we deliberately not specify what is modern to have consensus.

2. The same as the title

3. No consideration at all.

RadicalBender

1. GN-SN for modern, SN-GN for historical. Would prefer Google (with quotes) to be final arbiter should the need arise. Any name that could be construed as the opposite, however, gets a redirect.

2. Same as title

3. I agree for no consideration. Naming conventions should be independent of each other when necessary.

Exploding Boy

1. Title: SN-GN, except in cases where the person is only, or most commonly known by the reverse, eg: Yoko Ono.

2. First bold mention: SN-GN

3. Consistency with China and Korea: Japanese naming convention should be consistent with Chinese and Korean naming conventions.

Enochlau

1. Whichever is most common. One thing to note is that print encyclopedias use surname first no matter what, but wikipedia articles tend to use titles that reflect common usage, and we should stick to that for consistency.

2. After title, start article with kanji followed by romanisation with surname in CAPITALS

3. No consideration

Jerzy(t)

1. GN-SN for modern, SN-GN for historical. Any name that could reasonably be construed as the opposite (by someone with a working knowledge of English, of course) gets a redirect.

2. Same as title. (And of course Kangi, etc., following is fine.) However (and while i'd like to know about the style sheets of any Japanese periodicals that publish in English for the fluently bilingual, in considering the exact wording), with moderns not simply "also" but something like

Akira Kurosawa (known in Japan as Kurosawa Akira)

3. Vietnamese, Chinese, Korean, and Hungarian need separate consideration and don't affect this. (As to Hungarian, note the contrast between Hary Janos or Háry Janós (oh, well, see its composer) on one hand, and Janos Kadar on the other.) Japanese is actually an easier case bcz Japanese-Americans, Briticized Japanese, etc. are all moderns. With some other cultures, adoption of a foreign culture by individuals, or greater significance abroad than at home, started earlier and more slowly.

Aphaea

1. Basically SN-GN: excepts the persons described are still alive and names themselves as GN-SN (e.g. Hideki Matsui 松井秀喜). Whenever someone refers to me in the way GN-SN, it makes me uneasy and ask them to call me SN-GN. Someone accept, someone ignored. On the latter case I feel very dishonored and put them into my kill-file.

2. Therefore the articles start with Kurosawa Akira (also known as Akira Kurosawa).

3. Chinese and Korean people seems to keep their SN-GN convention both inlands and abroad. Why we need a new standard for them?

Charles Matthews

GN-SN for modern-era politicians, scientists and others who are usually cited like that in the West. SN-GN for all pre-Meiji people, and others such a contemporary kabuki actors, go players, sumo wrestlers and so on engaged in traditional arts. Shusaku Endo because he is known that way in the West - most (novelist) authors would be GN-SN.

Josh

1. GN-SN, except for historical figures and others that are mainly known by SN-GN.

2. Same as the title, with kanji after it in parenthesis, and, if different from the title, the name in Japanese order, italicized. For example, Rumiko Takahashi (高橋 留美子 Takahashi Rumiko).

3. No consideration. The Japanese convention should be independent.

gK

SN-GN, except for those who are most-commonly known in the English-speaking world by GN-SN, such as leading politicians, multinational businessmen, some authors, actors who have acted in English-language movies, etc. The suggested Meiji split I think is wrong in most cases, and even moving the split to living Japanese I think is overly broad. For example, it's Banana Yoshimoto (GN-SN), but Tawara Machi (SN-GN).

WhisperToMe

1. Meiji divide in most cases.

2. Bold whatever naming order the person comes in, then in parenthenses put kanji, and next to the kanji or other Japanese writing, the name in standard Modified Hepburn in Japanese order. This is to show how the name is read and pronounced in Japanese.

3. No, because Japanese people are referred to in a different manner in English as opposed to Chinese and Koreans.

Noel

1. The article title should always done in GN-SN order, with a redirect (in basically all cases) from SN-GN. We aren't writing the names the way the Japanese people would, either - we are transliterating them into Western characters - and this is an English-language encyclopaedia. Moreover, on bilingual business cards, the English side invariable gives the name in GN-SN order on - for the exact reason that that is the standard in the English-speaking world. However, since Wikipedia policy is to use the "form in most common use", use SN-GN for people who are well-known in the West under the SN-GN order (e.g. major historical figures like Nobunaga, Hideyoshi, etc)

2. I really like the suggestion that after the title, we should start the article with kanji/etc followed by romanisation (with full macrons, etc) in proper Japanese order SN-GN. That way, the correct order (no matter what the article is under) is always made plain in a standard way.

3. This is a difficult enough problem without dragging in other languages as well!

mdchachi

1. For the English Wiki, always use GN-SN order even for historical with redirects as appropriate.

2. Start article with bold GN-SN.

3. If you follow the English standard of GN-SN then all the rest will be unified.