
What’s in an Author Name? - samclemens
https://themillions.com/2018/04/whats-in-a-name-4.html
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barbegal
It's interesting that different cultures use names in different ways. I always
hate it when websites give me a form to fill in where you must specify first
name, middle name and surname. In a lot of the world this just doesn't make
sense. Almost everyone has a name though so just have a name field that allows
Unicode and allow people to put whatever they feel like naming themselves.

In addition names can't be used to uniquely identify people and relying on
them in some cultures is a bad idea. In Korea in particular, family names are
pretty common so most people have the exact same name as thousands of other
people. It is also quite easy to change name in Korea. For that reason lots of
Korean services use other information to identify their customers. The most
commonly used identifier is a mobile phone number which in turn is linked to a
resident registration number.

~~~
stronglikedan
There are very few people that don't have a first name and a surname. The
first name is what people generally refer to you as (or some variant of it).
The full name is the "legal" name. Therefore, I think it makes sense to
collect two separate parts of a name (with an _optional_ middle name).

E.g., my website will greet you with the first name after a successful login,
but will pass your full name to the credit card processor when you purchase my
product. IMHO, "Welcome Daniel A. Daman!" is not as friendly a greeting as
"Welcome Dan!".

~~~
dragonwriter
> There are very few people that don't have a first name and a surname.

There are very few people who don't have one or more _personal_ names and one
or more _family_ names, and a full legal name (which probably incorporates
some or all of those from the prior categories.) “first name” for one of the
first and “surname” for one of the second is culture-specific, and thus
inaccurate for many.

> E.g., my website will greet you with the first name after a successful
> login, but will pass your full name to the credit card processor when you
> purchase my product. IMHO, "Welcome Daniel A. Daman!" is not as friendly a
> greeting as "Welcome Dan!".

That the _first_ name is an appropriate, friendly form of address in a
particular context is extremely culturally loaded (even on top of the loading
that assumes that the first name is a personal name.)

~~~
frockington
If you are creating a website targeting people in a Western culture (most
websites), I do not see any harm in optimizing for their user experience.
Catering towards demographics outside of your target audience may do more harm
than good.

~~~
astura
What's a "western culture?"

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_naming_customs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_naming_customs)

~~~
frockington
NA, Europe and wealthy China. I'm sure Spanish people are familiar with first
and last name concepts and have learned over the years how to handle such
forms without second thought

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briandear
I admit that when I seek out spy novels, I gravitate towards male writers,
based on the few times, I’ve read female-penned works. However, there are some
“male” writers who are actually female. I am admittedly sexist when it comes
to Ludlam/Clancy type books. Though travelogues, literary novels and such, the
author’s gender has no effect on my choices. I suppose if I read romances, I’d
seek out female writers.

Totally sexist, I know but I perceive differences.

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CM30
There are also various examples of authors choosing different names for
different works to either seperate their works by genre or test how they'd do
without their fame attached to them (see Steven King's usage of Richard
Bachman or JK Rowling as Robert Galbraith). Or just examples of authors using
their pen names as a character in the series (see Lemony Snicket).

Which incidentally is why websites should probably not try and force users
into a 'real name policy', since in many cases the pseudonym used can be part
of their identity on the service and how they want to present themselves.

