One of the first steps in building global software is to recognize that many assumptions Americans often hold about how people’s names work are not universally true. Much of the software used by the Church use people’s names, and we’ve found an amazing amount of diversity in the name-related traditions of different cultures. Can you distinguish fact from fiction in the name myths?

Myth 1:

The concepts “first name” and “last name” are consistent across cultures. 

False. In America, we use the Western name order, and so Americans instinctively know that the last name in George Timothy Clooney is also the family name. By contrast, several other cultures place names in the Eastern order, always listing the family name first. For example, the Chinese will always use Jacki Chan’s Chinese name in the order “Chan Kong Sang”, and they know that the first name “Chan” is the family name.

As a result, if you label name fields in your global software with the position-based terms FirstName and LastName, you may not get what you expect.

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