I think you're missing my point. Having relaxed standards, such as I outlined, will account for nearly all special cases for a target audience that is reasonably homogeneous. Of course if you are designing a global facing application, then yes, you need to account for a wider range of possibilities. But for many applications designing around cultural norms, but being liberal about what you accept, is perfectly acceptable where the benefit of accommodating for low-probability cases does not justify the costs.

And, like I mentioned, in cases for applications targeted towards a homogeneous group, for those that have names so far outside the cultural norms that even liberal standards cannot accommodate them, then they've probably encountered the same thing already before, and they've come up with a way to adapt.

Allowing a liberal range is like me going to France and asking for ketchup with all of my food. But having a really unusual name, like one with unmappable characters, is like me going to Riyadh and expecting them to serve booze with my meal. Should I be allowed to drink there just because it's acceptable in my culture? No. It's illegal there, and I just have to adapt whether I like it or not.

Again, I emphasize, what I am advocating is for applications with a culturally homogeneous audience, not global, multicultural apps.

Japanese people living in the US are no doubt perfectly comfortable writing their name out in Latin characters for the benefit of the barbarians they live with.

Many Japanese professionals who have call to be in the United States -- but not all of them! -- will write their name something like YAMASHITA Taro, which is your clue that you should be calling him Mr. Yamashita rather than Mr. Taro. Or Dr. Yamashita, in the case of my client who was not actually named that.

Some of them, including at least one prominent politician and several people I represented in a professional capacity, are adamant that reversing the order is incorrect.

(Unsurprisingly, many Americans are unaware of this convention. Sadly, many of them persist in being unaware of it even when it is written on the meeting briefing and explained verbally right before the meeting starts. sigh Twelve corrections in 3 days -- my client was not happy for that trip.)

Does your hotel, car rental service, university, etc, handle this case correctly? We blazed a path of frustration through Chicago and Michigan last time.

Further fun: a Taro Yamashita born and raised in the United States (or any other Taro, for that matter), and present at the same university for the same conference, might request the exact opposite treatment! And if you spell his name as YAMASHITA Taro on the meeting agenda in defiance of his preference, you're doing it wrong!

But who's really doing it wrong? If someone expects another culture to conform to their own culture's preferences when a guest there, perhaps they're the ones making the error. I actually attended a conference in Japan that wrote all names, including mine, as "FAMILYNAME Givenname" on the program. I personally write and prefer "Givenname Familyname", but I don't see it as a cause for offense. As a guest in their country, I consider it their prerogative to go by their local conventions.

I mean, wouldn't it be pretty chauvinist for me to get offended at it or demand that they follow Western name ordering? It feels like it'd be in the same category as complaining that they don't serve my favorite American food at the conference, or that the cars are driving on the wrong side of the road.

> But who's really doing it wrong?

You are.

The canonical source for the correct way to spell/write someone's name is that person. You should never tell someone "No, you're writing your name wrong".

I disagree. People's preferences should get some deference, but not ultimate deference. I don't have to accommodate Prince's claim that his name is properly written as a graphical symbol, for example. It's perfectly fine to tell him to pick a name that isn't a graphical symbol.

Between countries, I think generally the right approach is to use the country's naming customs, and adapt foreign names to them, to the extent reasonably possible. In Greece, for example, it's customary to transliterate people's names into the Greek alphabet, especially if the source is going to be read by Greeks (newspapers, etc.). The person known as "George Bush" in the United States is more commonly referred to in Greece as "Τζωρτζ Μπους", for example--- despite it being a rather ugly transliteration in this case, due to a bunch of the consonants not existing in Greek.

Are you really arguing that this Dr. Yamashita (or Mr. Bush) can tell them they can't use their own alphabet in their own country, because that's not how he likes his name written?