Fumiki Takahashi 4:40 am on September 30, 2026

Name order in WordPress: input needed from family-name-first locales

Let’s gather input from localesLocale Locale = language version, often a combination of a language code and a region code, for instance es_MX denotes Spanish as it’s used in Mexico. A list of all locales supported by WordPress in https://make.wordpress.org/polyglots/teams/ where names don’t follow the English “given name → family name” pattern.

This started as a Slack thread ( https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C02RP50LK/p1790307444188199 ), and I was kindly suggested to post it here so it stays findable.

I hope this will be hook up in Polyglots meeting

The problem

On the profile screen, WordPress always shows First Name before Last Name, and locales can’t change that order.

For many languages, this isn’t cosmetic. In Japanese, a name is written family name first (e.g. 村上春樹, Murakami Haruki). The same goes for Hungarian (Bartók Béla), Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, and others.

Interestingly, WordPress already accepts family-name-first on the output side: “Display name publicly as” offers both “First Last” and “Last First”. Only the input side should be fixed.

A long history

This has been discussed in CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. TracTrac Trac is the place where contributors create issues for bugs or feature requests much like GitHub.https://core.trac.wordpress.org/. for a long time:

2008 — #6148 “InternationalizationInternationalization Internationalization (sometimes shortened to I18N , meaning “I - eighteen letters -N”) is the process of planning and implementing products and services so that they can easily be adapted to specific local languages and cultures, a process called localization. This is the process of making software translatable. Information about Internationalization for developers can be found in the Developer’s handbooks. of personal names” opened
2019 — #47522 proposed a patch to make the name order translatable. It was closed as a duplicate of #6148, in favor of a broader “single full name field” solution
2019–2021 — punted to Future Release; the design team and a committer asked for input from polyglots (Japan, Spain, and Hungary were mentioned specifically)
2023 — closed as worksforme, after confirming that multiple names fit in the existing fields (which doesn’t address the order)
2026 — reopened

The input requested in 2021 never really arrived. So in practice, the small localeLocale Locale = language version, often a combination of a language code and a region code, for instance es_MX denotes Spanish as it’s used in Mexico. A list of all locales supported by WordPress in https://make.wordpress.org/polyglots/teams/-specific fix has been waiting about seven years for a larger solution that hasn’t landed.

What I’ve heard so far

The number of replies is small, so this isn’t a survey, just what I learned from asking:

1. Official forms. In Japan and Hungary, names are written family name → given name on official documents (ID cards, bank forms). In Japan, even foreign residents’ names are written family name first on their residence cards.

2. Multiple conventions in one country. In Malaysia, Chinese, Malay, and Indian names follow different conventions, so a single “Full Name” field is what people usually use.

3. Workarounds. Long-time users in Japan and Malaysia independently came up with the same hacks: entering the family name into first_name (or using it as a full-name field), or swapping the fields with CSSCSS CSS is an acronym for cascading style sheets. This is what controls the design or look and feel of a site./JS. So there’s already real data where first_name holds a family name.

“It’s Western software, so we live with it.” Several people said this. A Hungarian polyglot first told me it doesn’t bother her anymore, because she has adapted to international platforms. But when asked whether a local, non-technical user would get it right, she agreed they’d likely think in the Hungarian order first.

That last point matters. Those of us active in SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/ and on Trac have already adapted to the English order, so asking “does it bother you?” tends to return “not really.” The people most affected, like a small café owner setting up a site in their own language, rarely show up here.

I’ve also done some desk research on Russian-speaking countries. Official forms there seem to use three fields in the order family name → given name → patronymic, with the patronymic optional. Patronymics exist across many post-Soviet countries, and in some (like Kyrgyzstan or Azerbaijan) they include a suffix with a space (“Алихан кызы”). I’d love for Russian, Ukrainian, Kazakh, and other teams to confirm or correct this.

What’s being proposed

To avoid the scope problem that stalled #6148, I’m suggesting splitting it:

1. First step: Let the locale change the order of the name fields on the profile screen, via a translatable stringString A string is a translatable part of the software. A translation consists of a multitude of localized strings. and a filterFilter Filters are one of the two types of Hooks https://codex.wordpress.org/Plugin_API/Hooks. They provide a way for functions to modify data of other functions. They are the counterpart to Actions. Unlike Actions, filters are meant to work in an isolated manner, and should never have side effects such as affecting global variables and output.. The meaning of the data stays the same (first_name = given name, last_name = family name), so there’s no backward-compatibility issue. This is what #47522 proposed.

1. Later: A site-level setting (given-first / family-first / single full-name field), per-user overrides, and a way to format names for different contexts.

WooCommerce already does something similar: it changes the name field order by address country (family name first for JP and HU).

How you can help

If your locale is affected, please leave a comment with:

How are names written on official forms in your country? Family name first, given name first, a single full-name field, or something else (patronymics, multiple family names…)?
How does your locale handle this in WordPress today? Translating labels differently, a pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party., Display Name, a CSS/JS hack, or just living with it?
Would a local, non-technical user enter their name correctly on the current profile screen?
Would a locale-controlled field order help, even before a larger redesign?

Short answers are very welcome. Even “it’s fine for us” is useful, especially with a note on why. I’ll summarize the responses on #6148.

Thank you! 🙏

Yui 7:23 am on September 30, 2026

for russian it may be not really important, but formal way is to use family name first,
more respectful way is to use name, patronymic name and then family name.
Patronymic names are omitted for children (formal way is always using patronymic names if they exist, which is 99% cases)
- Fumiki Takahashi 8:01 am on September 30, 2026
  Thank you, Yui!
  
  That makes sense. Since “name, patronymic, family name” is also a natural order in Russian, the current First Name → Last Name order doesn’t feel wrong. That’s a good example of why this should be a per-localeLocale Locale = language version, often a combination of a language code and a region code, for instance es_MX denotes Spanish as it’s used in Mexico. A list of all locales supported by WordPress in https://make.wordpress.org/polyglots/teams/ choice rather than one fixed rule.
  
  One follow-up, if you don’t mind: since WordPress has no patronymic field, what do Russian users usually do? For example, for Фёдор Михайлович Достоевский:
  - First Name: Фёдор / Last Name: Достоевский (patronymic left out)
  - First Name: Фёдор Михайлович / Last Name: Достоевский
  - First Name: Фёдор / Last Name: Михайлович Достоевский
  Or something else?
  - Yui 8:31 am on September 30, 2026
    
    Actually you need always sort by last (family) name, not by first name,
    it is more formal/official and useful. Imagine that you have a lot of
    Alexander
    Mikhail
    Sergey
    -named people in list, that wouldnt be much informative and is never used when refering to sorted/ordered list of people.
    
    Its OK to omit patronymic name when there is no field to enter it.
    It would be more correct than merge patronymic name to name or family name. Especially because there are sometimes double family names like
    Petrov-Vodkin (artist), Lvova-Belova (ombundsman).
    Double family name + patronimic.. thats will be a mess.
    - Fumiki Takahashi 12:10 pm on September 30, 2026
      
      “If there’s no patronymic field, omit one”
      This is interesting. Thanks!
tobifjellner (Tor-Bjorn “Tobi” Fjellner) 10:20 am on September 30, 2026

A recent video on the topic of how person names are created and handled around the world. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Wx_lDqbM-Y
- Fumiki Takahashi 12:12 pm on September 30, 2026
  Hi, Tobi. Thank you for sharing the video!
  
  While working on this ticket, I’ve read a few books on how personal names are structured around the world, so I’m fairly aware of how diverse naming patterns are:
  - patronymics
  - multiple family names
  - cultures without family names
  - cultures where people are widely known by a name other than their legal one
  - cultures where part of a name changes by generation or family line, and so on
  I also understand that splitting a name into “given name” and “family name” is not a universal assumption.
  
  That’s why I think a single full-name field is a reasonable recommendation from an i18nInternationalization Internationalization (sometimes shortened to I18N , meaning “I - eighteen letters -N”) is the process of planning and implementing products and services so that they can easily be adapted to specific local languages and cultures, a process called localization. This is the process of making software translatable. Information about Internationalization for developers can be found in the Developer’s handbooks. point of view. W3CW3C The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an international community where Member organizations, a full-time staff, and the public work together to develop Web standards.https://www.w3.org/. points in that direction too, and it’s the approach that has been discussed in #6148.
  
  On the other hand, from the point of view of how ordinary people actually use it, at least in Japanese, the current fields, with the given name before the family name, feel wrong. And if people in other languages are also commonly using hacks like entering first_name and last_name the other way around, I think that shows the input fields themselves are lacking.
  
  So what I most want to learn from this post is not the theoretical structure of names, but how people in each region actually enter their names and how they feel about it.
  
  For example, until I asked here, I didn’t know that a Russian speaker would find it natural to simply leave out the patronymic when there’s no field for it. Based on what I’d read about name structures, I had imagined that since the patronymic is important, people would put it somewhere. That’s something I could only learn by asking people who actually use it.
  
  I believe that gathering this kind of real-world experience will show what each region truly needs. I’d be happy to keep hearing how things work where you are!
  
  For example, your profile says you’re a native Swedish speaker. I’d love to know why you entered your name as Tor-Bjorn “Tobi” Fjellner here. Is “Tobi” related to the Swedish tilltalsnamn (the registered name someone is called by), or is it simply a nickname?
  - Fumiki Takahashi 12:30 pm on September 30, 2026
    Interesting point from video:
    
    Hybrids with Western culture (Hong Kong):
    
    The video shows people using a three-part structure in daily life, a Western-style personal name + a Cantonese family name + a Chinese personal name, and switching between them depending on the context.
    
    I’d be really interested to know how people in Hong Kong enter their names differently on social media and on sites aimed at Chinese speakers in Hong Kong. Whether it’s for work or for personal use also seems to matter a lot.
    
    Mismatch with Western-style forms and real-world workarounds (India, Myanmar)
    
    India (e.g. Karnataka): Names are made up of the initial of one’s home village + the initial of the father’s name + the person’s own name. This doesn’t fit Western “First / Middle / Last Name” forms, and people talked about the struggle of having to rearrange the parts or find other ways to enter them.
    
    Myanmar: There are no hereditary family names at all. The video describes how, for example in UK passport applications, the last word of a name is treated as the family name, or a single-syllable name is registered twice (e.g. “Win Win”) just to get through the form.
  - tobifjellner (Tor-Bjorn “Tobi” Fjellner) 2:16 pm on September 30, 2026
    
    @takahashi_fumiki
    One field is probably the best approach. It’s impossible to guess where things should go.
    My full name is Tor-Björn Fjellner, but that’s often really hard to pronounce for non-Swedes. We’ve got a short form “Tobbe”, but, being a radio amateur operator back then, I wanted something shorter (B is one of the longest characters in the Morse alphabet), so I started using “Tobi” instead.
    
    When I registered my account with wp-org, “Tobi” was already taken, so I threw in my surname, too. Impossible to pronounce, but rather unique.
    
    When I later on wanted to make my “nicename” less weird, people trying to mention me here would trigger notifications to a bunch of other users. That’s why I put back my username and added the “explanation” instead.
    - Fumiki Takahashi 3:59 am on October 1, 2026
      
      Thanks for the background:)
  - tobifjellner (Tor-Bjorn “Tobi” Fjellner) 2:17 pm on September 30, 2026
    
    @takahashi_fumiki
    It might be useful to also have a second field for “sorting value”.
Hidekazu Ishikawa 1:17 am on October 6, 2026

I operate an e-commerce site using WooCommerce, and I frequently encounter situations where customers enter their surname into the “First Name” field because they don’t notice the order of the input fields, or where the order appears unnatural (First Name followed by Surname) in purchase confirmation emails. I am not sure if this is an issue specific to WooCommerce or a result of coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. WordPress behavior, but I would certainly like to see core WordPress provide better support for this—starting with the input forms themselves.

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Name order in WordPress: input needed from family-name-first locales

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