Re: "Please tell me your name?"

On 2008-04-15 19:21:57 +0200, "Don Phillipson" <e925@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> said:

"A.E lover" <aelover11@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:2fcb0da1-2077-4342-bc5e-d946e4b3e9e3@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Everytime customer service speakers ask me "What is your name?", I
have to say "My last name is... and my first name is...".
I really do not want to say those words, I just want to tell them my
name right away. But I do not know which name (First or last name) I
should give first.

Your problem is that in very nearly all the European cultures
and languages people identify themselves as (say) John Smith,
Smith being the family name and John the given name (= Christian
name or baptismal name.) The main exceptions are:
1. Hungary, where people gve their name as Smith John
2. Iceland, where John son of Frank is John Frankson (and
his sister Helle is Helle Franksdotteir.)

Those two countries have their own languages, so little known
by foreigners that their styles of nomenclature have had no
influence on the cultures of France, Britain, Germany, etc.

It's not as simple as that. Russia, Spain and Portugal are three countries that don't follow the same system as France, Britain or Germany, and have languages far better known by foreigners than Icelandic or Hungarian, and Sweden (maybe Denmark and Norway also) adopted it only within living memory.

Russians normally combine the "standard" and Icelandic systems: John Franksson Smith

The Spanish include the maternal surname after the paternal: John Smith Jones, and women do not officially adopt their husband's name, so Mary Brown Green remains Mary Brown Green after she marries John Smith Jones, though she may sometimes clarify matters by calling herself Mary Brown of Smith.

The Portuguese do it the other way round: John Jones Smith (but only since the beginning of the 20th century; before that they did it as in Spain, but switched in order to assert their differences from Spain). They also often include grandparents' surnames as well: John Smith Jones Cooper Danks. When I was on a commission of evaluation in Portugal some years ago I had to read a great many CV's: almost no one had just two names; most had at least five, and one or two had ten or more (of which only about half would be given names. As not everyone put their names in the official order it was by no means easy to work out which names they actually used in detail life.

In Sweden you can find people who changed from the patronymic system within the past 50 years. I know someone who told me that he and his two brothers have three different surnames because they made different choices.

Even your reference to "Britain" is arguable if one takes a historical perspective: the paucity of different surnames in Wales reflects the comparatively recent adoption of the English system by the Welsh.

In Turkey they follow the "standard" system in theory, but in practice they pay more attention to the given name than to the family name.

--
athel

.

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