First Name & Last Name VS Given Name & Family Name

Question

Why facebook and google use First Name & Last Name when some countries have family name first followed by their given name ?

Why not just use Family Name and Given Name, and I think this is more clear. But seeing this, I'm not sure anymore. Is it so common that people will automatically put their name correctly? If Google and Facebook use it, I think it is standard now, but I want to know why first name & last name is better and more commonly used than given name & family name.

I'm building a website that will be used internationally, I want my users can interact with other people from different countries, and I'm concerned about some countries that have culture of calling person by their given name without their permission is considered rude.

UPDATE answering Serg's comment

Actually I'm asking about more general user experience, not for specific project. It's for my consideration for future projects that could have totally different subject than my current project.

For now, I'm working on open source apps that will be available world wide. Using this apps, user (company owners, admin, etc) can store data of employees, customers, suppliers, etc. I think first name and last name will be crucial when e.g company owner/sales department sending email / calling their customer.

Answer 1

A small tip for those wondering Given name is the same as First name.

Answer in two lines

You can either go with

"How do you prefer to be addressed?"

or

"Herr Schmitt! We've decided to call you Mistah Caputchi! Simply because we can..."

it's important to understand the following to decide on it:

Your position from culture

Do you want to have a product that is tailored to fit all the different cultures? or do you want to have a vision for a culture that is influencing and driving its users?

In the cases of Facebook and Google - and more obvious at Google's side - you can see crystal clear they are trying in a way to enforce a certain culture on their users, you can see the words Social, Fun, Cool even when they sent out the new Pixel 2 with that "Kinda Blue" color.

How do both approaches compare?

The more you influence culture - by having a vision for it, or a direction or at extreme cases design for it - the more you become niche oriented and becomes less suitable for everyone out there.

The more generic your position is the more compatible you are with different cultures, yet your identity becomes weaker and the chances of connection are lower and cultural conflicts are more likely to occur.

Metaphor

Influencing Culture

High Coherence: Think about a group of people that you find yourself belonging to, be it friends, family, colleagues, everyone speaks freely the language used is more connecting as well as the overall feeling.

Generic Culture

Low Coherence: In a random elevator filled with people you feel the awkwardness that everyone else has, no one is interacting, everyone avoiding eye contact and if anyone would say a word it will probably pre-thought and rehearsed in the mind a thousand times before.

Conclusion

If you are trying to consciously avoid interfering with cultures more of "Open for all" and you can simply ask the users

"How do you prefer to be addressed"

If you are willing to have the authority of influence, find the right way of doing it.

"All people are called by First Name and Last Name"

"All people are called Mr. Capuchi! We don't care..."

"All people are called Herr Prof Dr Last Name"

you study it and decide it

Answer 2

It depends on your target market. The combination of "First name" and "Last name", in this instance, is unambiguous to a wider international audience, as not all users are familiar with "Family name" or "Given name".

Answer 3

Given the current state of social media in 2019, companies like Google and Facebook have an incentive to get users to provide more detailed names. Prompting for specific parts of a complete name is a good way to nudge (good-faith) users to enter "Tom Smith" instead of just "Tom."

Regarding the order of those fields, if you are addressing an international audience and you are already localizing your user interface, you can adapt your fields to match the expectation of the particular culture.

For example, I've taken the same examples you gave in your question, and changed my browser's first language to Japanese, whose typical name order is Family Name/Given Name.

You can see that both Google and Facebook have placed the surname/family name (姓) first and given name (名) second.

You should seek expertise in localization (L10N) in a particular market if you're looking to build a user base in cultures you are not familiar with.

This solution doesn't prevent you from also asking for a screen name or how you'd like to be addressed like UX Labs suggests. This helps people in multiple contexts, such as a member of the Vietnamese diaspora (family name first) in France (given name first).