Just a suggestion coming from an IT guy that has to deal with a similar issue on a daily basis. I just created a web form for account creation requests with one text box indicating surname and one indicating given. It has saved me a lot of grief, whereas before they were simply emailing me the information and I would have to make an educated guess at it. When in doubt provide a way for the user to break the data down for you, generally it helps eliminate a lot of easily avoidable errors. Just my 2 cents hope it helps.
I am Chinese and there really isn’t a reliable way to do so. Even if you can read the Chinese characters, it still can be a pain as given names and surnames can come from the same characters.
Im pretty sure all surnames are one syllable and all given names are two. Normally chinese people have a three character name. The first character is the surname and the next two are the given name.
You can’t have users input their names themselves? I have to agree that it is nearly impossible to distinguish once they use pinyin, so your best bet is to consult that wikipedia list of common surnames and hope that you get it right, or ask them for their names in mandarin also and just match the first character with said wikipedia list
Just a suggestion coming from an IT guy that has to deal with a similar issue on a daily basis. I just created a web form for account creation requests with one text box indicating surname and one indicating given. It has saved me a lot of grief, whereas before they were simply emailing me the information and I would have to make an educated guess at it. When in doubt provide a way for the user to break the data down for you, generally it helps eliminate a lot of easily avoidable errors. Just my 2 cents hope it helps.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_Chinese_surnames Because given names and surnames are never distinguishable
I am Chinese and there really isn’t a reliable way to do so. Even if you can read the Chinese characters, it still can be a pain as given names and surnames can come from the same characters.
Im pretty sure all surnames are one syllable and all given names are two. Normally chinese people have a three character name. The first character is the surname and the next two are the given name.
You can’t have users input their names themselves? I have to agree that it is nearly impossible to distinguish once they use pinyin, so your best bet is to consult that wikipedia list of common surnames and hope that you get it right, or ask them for their names in mandarin also and just match the first character with said wikipedia list