Forming Names, Globally

How many online forms do you think you have filled out in your web life? Likely if you live on the continent I am in, there is no thought needed when you see boxes for First Name, Last Name, etc, right? It’s standard practice, move on.

Over the last few years creating them for my work at Open Education Global it’s something I have grappled with as in many parts of the world, these boxes just do not work. Without even covering all the variations nor trying to be comprehensive, these boxes make no sense:

• Cultures where the “last” or family name comes first — I also struggle with this when I get emails from these countries, I do not know how to reply like I would normally to to be polie,. by their given name.
• Cultures where people have multiple names representing both sides of the family, so rather than 2 parts, people have 3 or 4
• Some cultures people have single names

Imagine moving to a country where the needs for a databse are more important than traditional names, see Frustrated with failing ID checks, migrants change their names to fit Australian databases — the illustration there is… illustrative:

These are not fitting in those neat First Name / Last Name boxes. How colonial can one get than forcing your naming convention on other cultures?

One approach I tried a year ago for the OEGlobal Open Education Awards for Excellence nomination forms (and a few other forms) was changing the labels- instead using Given Name and Family Name. I still got data that was not quite aligned. One of the many features I like about using Gravity Forms is I can have a field “named” Name, but I can specify which sub portions I want- first, middle, last, prefix, suffix AND I can change the labels.

I’m not too sure it made a difference.

So one consideration I pondered is- what is the need to have separate name fields? In some cases, you need to sort your data. I do not have that need. In other cases, I like in the reply templates of Gravity Forms, when a person gets an email confirmation, I like to have it greet them by their give name, to be personal. I would not be feeling the warm fuzzies if the response I got was, “Dear Levine”.

So why I am forcing a name structure? And make it easier, so my form for 2025 has just one single name field, and this way, people who fill out the forms can just enter the name as they prefer. No box checking. I did want that personal touch, so I created another field I called “Greeting Name” hopefully meant to be understood on the name friends or family might address you by (it also allows for entry of a nickname).

So my name field structure for 2025 was:

I felt much better about this design!

Yet… In the data I see a number where people entered the exact same in both fields. Or other variants. Maybe that second prompt needs a rewording.

This was hardly a significant problem, but I want these boxes to not be something people who type into them have to squint and try to enter what they think we want.

The best reference I found when thinking about this post was from the W3C — Personal names around the world which not only covers the name formats a form might have to accommodate, but suggestions on how to create the fields. For my purposes, their labels fo the Full Name / Greeting name is better than mine!

Also helpful is the section on name sorting:

Lists of names are not always sorted by family name around the world. For example, Thai and Icelandic people expect lists to be sorted by given name instead.

In another example, it is possible that sort orders can also be different in different parts of the Spanish-speaking world. For instance, María José Carreño Quiñones in one place would expect to find her name in a list by looking up Carreño Quiñones. María José Carreño Quiñones from another place, however, would expect her name to be sorted by Quiñones.

The treatment of small words such as “von”, “de”, and “van” brings additional complexity to sorting. Sometimes the prefixes are significant, other times they are not.

https://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-personal-names#sorting

It might not seem terribly important… until you are facing a form with fields that just do not make sense to you.

Curious to hear how/if others deal with names in forms.

And heck, if I was Icelandic, my name would be Alan Morrisson. And to appreciate how progress Icelanders are, see how their naming conventions have been de-gendered. Iceland is very very far from America and its 51st wanna be, Alberta.

Somehow my post was derailed into an Iceland love fest. Take the next right turn to go to Faxabúðir (is that Fax your brother?) Name it.

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Featured Image: Royalty Free photo from PickPic modified with red marks by moi. Call it public domain, eh?