Comments on: East Asian Names, Deep Dive https://stephenullstrom.com/east-asian-names-deep-dive/ Indexing & Writing Mon, 24 Nov 2025 18:49:14 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.1.2 By: Stephen https://stephenullstrom.com/east-asian-names-deep-dive/#comment-246 Mon, 24 Nov 2025 18:49:14 +0000 https://stephenullstrom.com/?p=1115#comment-246 In reply to Julien.

That’s a very good point and thank you for raising it. I’ve indexed a book on Vietnam and faced this issue. One way or another, there needs to be an entry point for where readers are most likely to search, whether that is a cross-reference from the given name or making the given name the main entry.

]]> By: Julien https://stephenullstrom.com/east-asian-names-deep-dive/#comment-244 Fri, 14 Nov 2025 07:59:10 +0000 https://stephenullstrom.com/?p=1115#comment-244 As I see it, besides name order, another less commonly discussed but equally important issue is name referencing.
In an important sense, Chinese, Japanese and Korean names are not especially difficult because, as in English names, the person is referred to by the surname. This custom, however, does not apply in some other languages — like Vietnamese, Khmer and the Indian language of Telugu. In these languages — which use the same order as Chinese or Japanese — people are referred to by the given name. For instance South Vietnamese leader Nguyễn Văn Thiệu is referred to not as “Nguyễn”, but as “Thiệu” and Telugu Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan and his son Sarvepalli Gopal are not referred to as “Sarvepalli”, but as “Radhakrishnan” and “Gopal”.

]]>