Straight Dope Message Board Main General Questions PDA View Full Version : Japanese names 08-29-2005, 04:37 PM I was watching a Little League World Series game Saturday, between US and Japan, and as the Japanese players introduced themselves (in Japanese) it confirmed something that I was vaguely aware of: we reverse the order of Japanese names. The person that we Americans would call "Hideo Nomo" (for example) would call himself Nomo Hideo.
On the other hand, Chinese names (I believe) also have the family name first but we don't reverse those. It's "Mao tse-tung" in Chinese and in the US, even though "Mao" would be the family name (I'm going way out on a limb here...forgive me).
So why is the convention with Japanese names different?
A related question: I don't speak a word of Japanese, but every player who used a name (either his own, or that of his favorite ballplayer) seemed to append a suffix of "-des" to the name (eg, "Nomo Hideo-des"). Was I hearing things, or is there something to this? Pixisis 08-29-2005, 04:45 PM | |
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