[squaresmile]

> Nevertheless, our close examination of his publications removes the ambiguity. The cover of his dissertation clearly delineates his family name from his compound given name, and in his final publication, he listed his last name as “Bui.” The preponderance of evidence suggests that he was Dr. Bùi, but the scientific literature misidentifies him as Dr. Phong.

> This also suggests that “Phong shading” is a misnomer, but for reasons that will likely remain unknown, Bùi did not contest the naming. While he may not have coined the eponym himself, he referenced it in his dissertation and final publication.

I'm nowhere near as smart but if something's going to be named after me, as a Vietnamese, please please please use my given name. Either given name or given name + middle name or full name. Considering he also used it himself, he was probably more ok about it than the author thinks.

I understand it's the custom in English speaking academia to use family name and I only want to speak for myself, not for all Vietnamese and especially someone from 50 years ago. I also have the most common family name so the sentiments of someone with a less common one might be different.

Funnily enough, on his Wikipedia page, they also note about this:

> In this Vietnamese name, the surname is Bui. In accordance with Vietnamese custom, this person should be referred to by the given name, Phong.

Probably a better stance. It was kind of a reach by the the Time's article's author.

[vidarh]

> please please please use my given name.

I assume, and please correct me if I misrepresent your reason, that you're referring to the fact that most Vietnamese have last names from a very small pool?

For those unaware: The 10 most common last names in Vietnam makes up 85% of the population, and nearly half Nguyen alone. I looked it up and Bùi is far less common, but still represents 11% of the population...

For comparison, only .7% of the US population is named Smith.

So in terms of naming something so you get recognition, in Vietnam Bùi is about 16 times worse than Smith would be in the US... Of course, internationally it might have made relatively little difference.

(and if it's not on the list of falsehoods programmers might believe about names - I haven't checked - Vietnamese is one good reason why if anyone think sharding users by last name is a good idea, thinking names like Smith is the worst case, depending on their demographics they may be wildly wrong)

[squaresmile]

Yes, it's one of the reason. As a result, it's super rare to refer to someone by their family name in Vietnamese. Casually people use given names and formally people use full names.

Family names usually come up when referring to the whole family branch of 9-10+ generations like the Nguyễn family or the Bùi family. Because there are few family names, you often see family branches use family name+middle name of the first ancestor to be more specific.

[xuki]

In Vietnamese culture, we don't really use the surname by itself, it's only used in a formal context where the full name is needed.

Most Vietnamese would prefer to be called by their given name, there is no implication of a relationship like "on a first-name basis".

[lupire]

Closest is:

23. Alright alright but surely people’s names are diverse enough such that no million people share the same name.

[dqieu]

I agree. The publishing tradition is [first name][last name], which should be followed for our convenience sake. But the author can choose whatever first and last name. What really matters is that, in a jungle of citations, the reader seeing the shortened name can pinpoint them specifically. While Eastern cultures may place less emphasis of differentiating using the middle name like Vietnam, the author can use Last-Mid as their Last (consistent with VN's tradition), or Mid-First as their First. Just use it consistently.