The surnames flowchart

For years, I didn’t know this about Burmese names:

Burmese people do not have first names or last names in the western sense (although in informal speech many people use shortened nicknames). Thus when referring to Burmese people … you should always use the full form of the person’s name. For example, Mi Mi Khaing should never be referred to as just “Khaing” or “Daw Khaing”.

It’s not in our style guide, but it is in Wikipedia’s. And not only is there no forename/last name, but the name itself may contain honorifics that disappear or change over the course of a person’s life.

Foreign names in copy are a constant trap for the unwary. For example, it might be unwise to truncate the noms de guerre of jihadists or other fighters in the Middle East: “Abu Qatada” means “Father of Qatada”, so shortening it to “Qatada” can, it may be argued, suggest the writer is talking about the son, not the father. Then there is the question of Spanish names, with their patronymics and matronymics (Gabriel Garcia Lorca) – do you mention the matronymic at all, or once at first mention, or use both throughout (or, as occasionally happens, use the matronymic alone)? Transliteration of mainland Chinese names (generally two words) differs from transliteration of Taiwanese and Korean names (generally three). And any rule for any country can be overridden by an individual’s own preference for spelling or form of address.

But before you get to the problems that foreign names present, or even the special rules for kings and queens*, you have to think about something even more complex and nuanced: domestic names.

Other cultures’ naming customs may be less familiar, but the style-guide rules for them are shorter and more definitive. With English names, familiarity itself is the problem: we are all too aware of the shades of courtesy or offence potentially contained in the use of honorifics, diminutives, first names or surnames.

So, when editing, you have to be aware that style of address can be different for different ages and circumstances; for real and assumed names; for before and after criminal convictions; and even for different sections of the newspaper. And so the question of how to refer to someone in a news article isn’t easy to sum up in a sentence or two: rules of thumb aren’t enough. For this, you really need a flowchart.

This is the decision tree for English names as it stands at the Tribune. To use it, start at the top and go down, and if the answer to any of the questions is “yes”, turn right and follow the appropriate path. We are a paper that generally omits honorifics except in leading articles: further wrinkles of complexity would be added at a paper in which honorifics are generally used but with exceptions (e.g. for criminals), or at a paper that drops honorifics for commoners at second mention but retains them for peers (which was the Tribune’s former policy).

Click on the flowchart to open it, then click to magnify. See you at one of the endpoints.

 

* Brief title and forename in full at first mention (“Queen Elizabeth II”); never Her Royal Highness or HRH; forename only thereafter.