Where and how are names reversed in Asian cultures?
The “name inversion” in the Japanese culture is fairly well-known, however, it is typical for many other Asian cultures too, reflecting the importance of group, and family in particular. Your family is more important than you alone, thus your family name comes first. Japanese culture even goes further with saying, your company is more important than you (and your position there), thus you often refer to someone with “Hitachi no Tanaka-san” – Mr. Tanaka from Hitachi. For people from China, Vietnam and Korea the reverse name scheme is the same – family name first, then first name. The first name will have two parts most often, thus some people appear to have three names. As I was told, in China the second first name is dialect while the first one is “standard language”. An example from Korea would be the singer “Lee Soo-Young”, for example, with Lee being her last name and Soo-Young being her first name. When acting with Western people or within Western cultures, Asian people often rever
