Is the order of the first and last name determined by culture?

Answer

Your rule is not watertight, in Hungary, for example, the family name is put first, even in a running sentence; conversely, in India (except the South), Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines, the first name is usually put first. And in Belgium and France the surname is often put at the front of forms or lists, but not in a spoken sentence, it has something of a bureaucratic formalism (“name and first name?”). But in general it’s true: in the Western world, or where a Latin or Cyrillic alphabet is used, there is a Western order, and in Asia there is something like an Eastern order.

Both systems have advantages: with one the surname makes clear to which family someone belongs, and with the other the individuality (gender, name preference of the parents) comes directly to the fore. But it should be easy to guess within your culture which word indicates the last name and which the first name, so that there are grammatical rules. And all over the world, long lists of names, for example in bibliographies, put the family name first.

It gets interesting with translations. The rulers of North Korea are also put in Dutch in their original Eastern order (Kim Il-Sung, Kim Jong-Il and Kim Jong-Un, respectively grandfather, father and son). In China, the Eastern order also applies, unless one has a Western first name (Jackie Chan, Michelle Yeoh). in a Western language, a Chinese personal name is almost always reversed to a Western order, unless with professional athletes (strangely enough especially in baseball, football and athletics; in baseball, ice hockey and golf there is a Western order after all!). When in doubt, there is a fairly simple rule of thumb: the name with the hyphens is usually the first name (director Wong Kar-Wai)

Japan, where an Eastern order was followed in Japanese, decided in 2020 that that order should also be maintained in other languages ​​on official documents, if necessary with the family name in capital letters. For the time being, we are still talking in Dutch about Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, filmmaker Akira Kurosawa and manga artist Osamu Tezuka. And not the other way around. This political decision indicates that it is a purely cultural fact: with the decision, Japan wants to confirm its own authenticity and identity, also in other languages ​​and writing systems.