In the format of A.B. Name, which is the given name and which is the family name?
Hire the world's top talent on demand or became one of them at Toptal: https://topt.al/25cXVn
and get $2,000 discount on your first invoice
--------------------------------------------------
Take control of your privacy with Proton's trusted, Swiss-based, secure services.
Choose what you need and safeguard your digital life:
Mail: https://go.getproton.me/SH1CU
VPN: https://go.getproton.me/SH1DI
Password Manager: https://go.getproton.me/SH1DJ
Drive: https://go.getproton.me/SH1CT
Music by Eric Matyas
https://www.soundimage.org
Track title: Ominous Technology Looping
--
Chapters
00:00 In The Format Of A.B. Name, Which Is The Given Name And Which Is The Family Name?
00:25 Answer 1 Score 4
01:10 Accepted Answer Score 9
02:20 Answer 3 Score 3
02:58 Answer 4 Score 2
03:14 Thank you
--
Full question
https://english.stackexchange.com/questi...
--
Content licensed under CC BY-SA
https://meta.stackexchange.com/help/lice...
--
Tags
#names
#avk47
ACCEPTED ANSWER
Score 9
In English, names are usually written in the format:
[First given name] [family name], e.g.
John O'Reilly
Sometimes they are written:
[First given name] [other given names] [family name], e.g.
John Timothy O'Reilly
When using initials, it is the same, e.g.
J. O'Reilly, or
J.T. O'Reilly
But it is also very common, in certain situations, e.g. school roll (high school, university tutorial list etc.) to put the family name first, but this is posted with a comma, e.g.
O'Reilly, John Timothy
And in other places, e.g. an index, it is done with initials instead, also with a comma:
O'Reilly, J.T.
When doing three letters in a row, it is almost always the given name first, then the family name, e.g.
JTO
For John T. O'Reilly (that's another common way to write names).
Bill Gates' TLA (three letter acronym) would be:
BHG
ANSWER 2
Score 4
In English, the family name is always given last (except in the case of transliterated names which confuse many people).
In your example, "Bill" and "Henry" are his two given names; if you used only one given name, it would be the first one, "Bill". "Gates" is his family name.
Thus, the following are correct:
- Bill H. Gates
- B. H. Gates
- B. Gates
- BHG
- Bill Gates
- B. Henry Gates (rare unless the person in question has made it clear that this is his preference)
And all the others are incorrect.
ANSWER 3
Score 3
I think perhaps you're confusing monograms with initials.
Initials are always listed in the same order as they would appear in the name: the initials of William Henry Gates are WHG, the initials of Bill Gates are BG, etc.
Monograms, on the other hand, combine the initials in an aesthetically-pleasing way. A common method is to put the last name's initial in the middle, and the first & middle names on the left and right, respectively. Almost always, the last initial (the one in the middle) is larger than the other two. The monogram of William Henry Gates could thus look something like:
ANSWER 4
Score 2
If you see something along the lines of "E. Annie Proulx", it probably means the person prefers to be known by their middle name. As others have said, the surname is usually last and to present names in surname order you would probably write something like "Proulx, E. Annie".