Chinese, Japanese and Korean, in their original form, use the surname first.
But when translated, some editors change the order to make it easier for western readers (which some people deem a form of cultural imperialism), while others preserve the order out of respect for the author’s heritage. And some authors themselves have a preference on which order they want. In your case, I believe Meng and Seo are the last names. With Japanese names it can be a bit hard to tell because of the number of syllables, but often in (Han) Chinese and Korean names, because each character has only one syllable, and the majority (not all) of surnames are single character, and given names tend to have 2 characters (again, not all – some people in northern China favour a single character), you can usually make an educated guess based on the number of syllables, based on the way the sounds a combined. But as I said, it’s an educated guess if you don’t know the language, especially since some ethnic Chinese in SE Asia translate their names but space out all 3 characters, for example, Goh Chok Tong and Lee Kuan Yew. Sent from Mail<https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=550986> for Windows From: Julia Palffy<mailto:[email protected]> Sent: Saturday, 26 March 2022 7:00 AM To: The Origami Mailing List<mailto:[email protected]> Subject: Re: [Origami] Cataloguing query I‘m not sure about Korean, but I believe Chinese names are usually written with the family name first and the given name second, as in Japanese. Depending on the size of your collection and catalogue, you might consider choosing one form, and then make a cross-reference from the other one to the one you have chosen, e.g. „Weining Meng : see Meng Weining“. That‘s common practice. For your comfort: I once worked for a couple of months in a great library, back when catalogues were still on card files, and was shocked to discover that all the Hungarian authors had been filed under their given names instead of their family names (because the family name also comes first in Hungarian names). 😳 🤪🤣 > On 25 Mar 2022, at 03:40, [email protected] wrote: > > > Pretty sure I'm not the only one who catalogues their origami books, so can > someone help with my current dilemma? > Meng Weining - under M or W > Wonseon Seo - W or S > I know what to do with Japanes names, but not with these. > (And yes, I do angst over such stuff🤔😔🤣) > Thanks
