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Watching some highlights this morning I noticed that all the players in sports that are from the far East have their first names on their jerseys and not their last name.

What's up with that????

edit - spelling

Hoser wrote:

What's up with that????

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_name
Unverified, but I imagine that's in play for many.

mattsteg is probably right. An example would help though.

mortifiedPenguin wrote:

mattsteg is probably right. An example would help though.

Yao Ming. Yao is his family surname; Ming is his given name.

It's the same for Japanese and probably several other East-Asian countries.

Oh yeah, that is correct. I just wanted Hoser to give an example of what he was talking about.

edit: thought I'd mention an observation. I noticed that during the Olympics last year that the commentators often referred to the Chinese athletes by their "first" (personal) names rather than the correct surname even though they referred to western athletes by their surnames.

mortifiedPenguin wrote:

edit: thought I'd mention an observation. I noticed that during the Olympics last year that the commentators often referred to the Chinese athletes by their "first" (personal) names rather than the correct surname even though they referred to western athletes by their surnames.

Never underestimate the lack of cultural knowledge displayed by network TV crews.

Interestingly enough, on a recent rerun of some Olympic Coverage, I saw that the scoreboards properly all caps the surname while leaving the personal name "regular". You'd think if they got that right...

Obsidian wrote:

It's the same for Japanese and probably several other East-Asian countries.

Yep. The grandmaster of our martial art (as well as any other Japanese for that matter) have their names printed both ways, it confused me at first.