I mean, from the CJK languages: they begin with family name then end it with the legal first name while that’s reverse in let’s say English, Spanish, Russian where the first name starts then ends with the family name. As in, 近藤浩治 becomes Koji Kondo in ENG when it’s actually read as “Kondo Koji” upon referring back to its mother tongue (other languages that follow a similar format are: Mandarin, Korean or Hungarian for example).

  • HobbitFoot @thelemmy.club
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    2 days ago

    A lot of places around the world put the family name first, including a lot of Islamic majority countries. Western European and their successor countries don’t rely on family names as much because they weren’t as important.

    The old Scandinavian tradition is that the “family” is “name of mother or father” + “daughter or son”. Non-noble people in other parts of Western Europe didn’t have family names until rather recently. In the UK, family names didn’t become big until mass migration caused by the Black Death, which is why a lot of English last names are job titles. Slaves in the Americas didn’t get to choose their last name until they were freed, which is why a lot of Black last names today are Freeman.

    Since families/clans weren’t as important to the working class, it had major impacts on the economic structure of Europe compared to other parts of the Old World.