Life In 19x19

@Bantari:
In the cases of Japanese and Korean (which has the same issue), you can usually tell. This is especially true in Korean, where there is a good chunk of the population with a last name of Kim, Lee, or Park (and also, in Korean, it's common for given names to have two syllables, with the family name having a single syllable).

But more to the issue, since all three languages (Japanese, Korean, and Chinese) use Chinese characters for the names, certain characters and combinations of characters give a certain feeling. For example, you can select a couple of Chinese characters for your kid's name, which form a sound that is somewhat unique for a given name. Even when this is the case, you can sometimes guess if the name is a guy's name or a girl's name, just because of the characters that were selected. So it's natural that native speakers of the language can not only sometimes have a good guess of the first vs. last name, but can even sometimes guess the gender of the name, even if it's a unique name.

This is probably due to the fact that the Chinese characters have associated meaning. And when there's a meaning to someone's name, you might be able to guess if it was intended as a masculine/feminine name - or as a given name, perhaps.

Aside from Chinese characters, though, we can revisit thinking of this from an English perspective. While it's true that Peter, as in your example, is likely to be a first name, is this always the case in English? Consider a name like "Jackson". Is it a first name? Is it a last name? What about "Spencer"? You might be able to guess some of the time, but you can find counter examples in any decently sized phone book.

The same is true in the languages of discussion. You can have a guess as to maybe the gender of a name, or whether it's a first or last name. But you can surely find exceptions now and then, with millions of people having different names.

Lastly, it's logical that family names will start to become familiar. When a name is passed on from generation to generation, you have more and more people sharing the name. While given names can also be reused, there is opportunity for diversity in names, which isn't present in an automatically passed-on family name.

tl/dr: I think native speakers of a particular language can have a good guess as to whether a name is a family name or given, but they might make mistakes now and then - just as in English.

Bantari wrote:I really find that interesting.

Yes, it is quite interesting.
I wonder if there is a specific branch of linguistics where they study the etymology of names ? ...

Bantari wrote:From what I know, looking at names of some Japanese pros, it is often also easy. For example: Kato Masao... since I know of a few 'Kato's I assume Kato is the first name. Same with Toshiro Kageyama, and so on. With many names I have no clue, but I always assumed this is because I am unfamiliar with the language, and for somebody speaking Japanese if would be immediately apparent which part of 'Otake Hideo' is the first name and which is the last name, regardless of which order it was written.

I really find that interesting.

From your list, Kato, Kageyama, and Otake are the family names.

In Japanese it is usually apparent what the family name is. Of course like English you can get weird cases 1% of the time.

Bantari wrote:...

However, what I wondered about was more if there are any other ways to tell first names from last names.
...

In most of cases the last name contains only one character and it can be looked up in the list of common surnames. The rest two characters are the first name. So in the case of `Wei Keng Ho', the first name is Wei Keng, the last name is Ho.

There is Double-barrelled name, but not common as the example described above in Taiwan (Don't know the current situation in China.) With this case, the first few (usually two or three) characters generally be the last name, the rest are the first name.

The characters here indicate Chinese character.

shogun1234 wrote:

Bantari wrote:...

However, what I wondered about was more if there are any other ways to tell first names from last names.
...

In most of cases the last name contains only one character and it can be looked up in the list of common surnames. The rest two characters are the first name. So in the case of `Wei Keng Ho', the first name is Wei Keng, the last name is Ho.

There is Double-barrelled name, but not common as the example described above in Taiwan (Don't know the current situation in China.) With this case, the first few (usually two or three) characters generally be the last name, the rest are the first name.

The characters here indicate Chinese character.

But isn't Wei also a single character? Based on what you say why isn't Wei the family name and Keng Ho the given name?

EdLee wrote:

Bantari wrote:I really find that interesting.

Yes, it is quite interesting.
I wonder if there is a specific branch of linguistics where they study the etymology of names ? ...

I don't know if there's a specific branch but between here and my father-in-law's home there are multiple books on the etymology of Irish first names, surnames and placenames. It's definitely a specialty in language studies (it gets very, very complex in European countries that have been invaded multiple times due to a particular word fragment having many possible origins and I imagine Asian names of all types get similarly complicated).

Bantari wrote:By the way - I assume somebody here is Chinese or speaks Chinese. Out of curiosity - is it always hard to tell what is the first and what the last name of in that language? In all the other languages I have ever tried, in pretty much 100% of the cases it is quite obvious what is the first and what the last name. Take 'Joaz Banbeck' for example...

In New Mexico I knew a fellow named Calvin Dieter. He said that a German friend of his told him that his name really should be Dieter Calvin.

DrStraw wrote:

shogun1234 wrote:

Bantari wrote:...

However, what I wondered about was more if there are any other ways to tell first names from last names.
...

In most of cases the last name contains only one character and it can be looked up in the list of common surnames. The rest two characters are the first name. So in the case of `Wei Keng Ho', the first name is Wei Keng, the last name is Ho.

There is Double-barrelled name, but not common as the example described above in Taiwan (Don't know the current situation in China.) With this case, the first few (usually two or three) characters generally be the last name, the rest are the first name.

The characters here indicate Chinese character.

But isn't Wei also a single character? Based on what you say why isn't Wei the family name and Keng Ho the given name?

The assumption is based on the written order is correct, indicating the name `Wei Keng Ho' is consisted of first name (Wei Keng) and last name (Ho) in the correct order.

It's possible `Wei' could be the surname because the character Wei in one of its written form ie `魏' can also be used as the last name. But in the original post it is mentioned that customer was doing business with the poster, so I assume that person understands English and probably knows the correct order of the name in English (first name + last name). If this is not the case, then perhaps asking that person to write down his name in Chinese is the only way to know his surname.