In case if here is somebody Chinese, I wanted to ask: is it even possible to distinguish given name from family name by glance? Like, in the example of "Fred Yao Ming" or "Fred Ming Yao".
I mean, if you know Russian, you are pretty much always sure which one is the name, and which one is surname. In theory, it can be whatever, but it almost never really happens.
There is a bit more ambiguity in English (Scott Alexander or even having Jackson as the given name), but still I'd say in the majority of cases you know names from surnames.
Is there some common knowledge in Chinese that Ming is a common family name and Yao is a common given name, and the reverse would be unusual? Or can it be anything, and there's no way to know?
I am wondering this about all asian languages, where names tend to be so short, so it also applies to Korean, Vietnamese, etc.
I mean, if you know Russian, you are pretty much always sure which one is the name, and which one is surname. In theory, it can be whatever, but it almost never really happens.
There is a bit more ambiguity in English (Scott Alexander or even having Jackson as the given name), but still I'd say in the majority of cases you know names from surnames.
Is there some common knowledge in Chinese that Ming is a common family name and Yao is a common given name, and the reverse would be unusual? Or can it be anything, and there's no way to know?
I am wondering this about all asian languages, where names tend to be so short, so it also applies to Korean, Vietnamese, etc.