I think it was Dale Carnegie that said the most important words to a person is their name. Here’s the proof: think about the first thing you look up when you new phone book is delivered each year.

I was thinking about the labels we put on forms on the web. As an anglophone I often assume that people’s names are in the format FirstName Surname. However, this is not always the case. In some languages and cultures surname (or family name) is the first name and given names are secondary. This can be further confused by different titles or honorifics which may be prepended or appended.

It is generally a bad idea to use the term ‘christian name’ when refering to someone’s given name. I recall a discussion about names and their origin a collegue and I were having with a visitor from Indonesia. My collegue continually referred to his given names as christian names. The visitor was quite offended and protested that his name was Hindi, not Christian.

From now on I will use where possible the labels ‘Given Name’ where I would have previously used first name and ‘Family Name’ where I would have used surname.