If a user interface only deals with English or European languages, it's usually quite straightforward to split a user's name into given_name
and surname
. This way, you can easily do things like:
- "Dear
given_name
" - "
given_name
's Account" - "This item was created by
given_name
surname
"
And so on, translated into various languages.
However, if you've got users from countries such as China, this approach isn't so good. In general, you don't want to address Chinese users using only their first name, but by their full name.
To me, the more global way to separate names seems to be a full_name
field and a name_to_be_addressed_as
field. So a European user could put 'Joe Bloggs' for the first one, and 'Joe' for the second, whilst a Chinese user could put '宋浩然' for both of them (or whatever they like, of course).
Note that in my situation I do need a full / formal name to refer to users at times.
My question is, how can I name these fields so that e.g. European users get the idea without having to know why it's implemented that way?
Currently, I'm asking for 'Full name:' and 'Address me as: ', but that seems quite cumbersome and unintuitive. I'm also considering 'Formal name:' and 'Friendly name:', but that also seems quite weird.
What would be a better approach?
(I'm in not asking for translated terms in different languages - what I'm looking for are two general concepts that I can then translate.)