How to write your name in English properly?

Despite what most of you have been exposed all your life, the correct way of spelling your name in Latin Languages is:

  FirstName MiddleName(sometimes abbreviated) LastName

For example,

• William Jefferson Clinton or William J. Clinton
• William Henry Gates III
• Michael Saul Dell
• John Davison Rockefeller

Chinese Names written in English

If you have a Chinese name, you should at least follow the basic convention accordingly:

     Mo Rong Lee

Middle Name, not!

There is no concept of Middle Name in Chinese, e.g., "Rong" is NOT the middle name in "Mo Rong Lee"! "Rong" is as much a middle name in "Mo Rong" as "Sus" is the middle name in "JeSus". If you disagree, just think of it this way:

• if friends of Mr. Lee address him by "Mo", than yes, his middle name is Rong
• if friends of Mr. Lee address him by "Morong", than, he has no middle name, i.e., Morong is considered as an integral first name!

This is what "first name" means in Latin languages, the name that your friends address you first. In fact, if first name should appear in any places other than the first position, it should not be called "first name" in the first place. Pardon the pun.

Thus you should concatenate or hyphenate your two romanized chinese characters together so that people will not confuse your middle character as the middle name:

      Mo-rong Lee or Morong Lee

Hyphenation is easier to read for the 4.7 billion of non-Chinese in the world. You may optionally capitalize the second syllable of your hyphenated first name:

     Mo-Rong Lee

But that is not adviced, since the hyphen already helps people to pronounce your name properly, and if you capitalize the second syllable, it may be construed as a "middle" name!

Adopted English Names

If you have adopted a classical English name like Jack, the correct way is to either use it as your first name or middle name:

      Jack Mo-rong Lee

      Jack M. Lee

      Mo-rong Jack Lee

      Mo-rong J. Lee

Bastardized English Names

Please do not use the bastardized English naming convention of LastName FirstName:

      Lee Mo Rong

so commonly found here in Singapore. It will only confuse everyone outside of Singapore.

Do you want to go global or do you want to sit in your well?

Please do not enclose the adopted English name with brackets:

      Mo-rong Lee (Jack) : which means he is a type of "Jack"

or put the adopted English name after a comma:

      Mo-rong Lee, Jack  : which means his last name is "Mo-rong Lee" and first name is "Jack"!

Japanese Names written in English

Even the Japanese know how to write their names properly in English:

   Junichiro Koizumi 小泉纯一郎

   Seiko Matsuda   松田圣子

Conclusion

The general rule-of-thumb is, as long as you are spelling your name in Latin language, follow the Latin convention. If you insist on following your own language convention, why not just write the name in your native language, e.g., for Chinese:

    李模荣

If you still insist on writing Last name first, then, you should place a comma after your last name, this is the accepted practice for Latin-based names:

    Lee, Mo-rong

    Lee, Spike

The most unambiguous way to make sure that everyone outside of Singapore understands your first/last name immediately is to BOLD/ALLCAPS/underline your lastname:

Mo-rong LEE

Arabic Names

Too complicated for me to grasp, please see Arabic Name (wikipedia)