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I think I got it all wrong, I thought you meant koreans would write their names in chinese writing.

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I had no "no" votes, so I guess everyone was happy with that decision.

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In that, is what I would suggest should be the first step towards sorting this out... that is, using the increasingly common, politically-correct (i.e. non-anglacised) "Given" and "Family" name in profiler rather than the "First" "Last" scenario in the coding of Profiler itself.  Sure, it doesn't solve everything, but at least we're getting the terminology right... and it's a step along the way.

There's also the bonus that it's a minor coding change, so we're far more likely to see it in the short-term.

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I almost hate to ask but where do we stand on the issue of Asian names?

I did an audit of the title Red Corner and found that the cast names have been entered (mostly but not always ) in the name fields in such a way that they appear inverted in the DVD Profiler cast list.

Example:

On-screen: Bai Ling
Currently entered in DVD Profiler as: first name: Ling last name: Bai
Results in DVD Profiler display of: Ling Bai

What I decided to do for my local (Skip, please read the last 3 words again ) is to change the 'credited as' name to Bai Ling and leave the name as Ling//Bai.

If I try to contribute this cast list with maybe 20 of these names with inverted 'credited as', there will be howls that I have to prove the common names (of which I have no clue).

If I invert all of the names to match 'as credited', then I'll get howls that the first names and last names are not in the right positions.

There are lots of role names that would be good to get fixed to 'as credited', but I don't know how to go about it without raising the ire of either side of the Asian names argument. As a result, I just locked it down and didn't contribute. Seems a shame to not fix the role names though.

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For the purposes of the master name database (not the credits), we need to decide how to best put the names of these Asian cast and crew.  The fields for the names that Invelos specified clearly states, First name, Middle name, and Last name.  We can do it one of two ways.

1. Put it in backwords, so that First name is the surname, and Last name is the given name.  I think this is what graveworm is proposing.  The advantage is that most Chinese actors appearing with western actors in non-Asian movies will have their names credited in correct order without using the "as credited" option. The disadvantage is that the names are intentionally put in wrong.  Furthermore, in Asian movies, their names would be credited backwards if the user has set their preference to display names in Last, First Middle fashion, as most Asian users may (this is Asian users from Asian countries, although I don't know how many would use this program to catalog their DVDs).

2. Put it in with Last name as the surname, and First name as the given name. This is my proposal. The advantage is that names are put into the database in "correct" fashion given their English definition.  The names are also displayed in correct fashion for Asian actors appearing in Asian movies if the user sets their names to display names in Last, First Middle fashion.  The disadvantage is that for Asian actors appearing in non-Asian movies, the user is going to have to put the credits for these actors and crews in with the "as credited" option to have the names displayed in correct order.

In both cases, unless one uses "as credited" option for all actors and crew, Asian and non-Asian, some names are going to come up backwards depending on how one sets the name display property. Of the two options, I believe the second one is the better one. If the data in individual fields are correct, then program can be changed in the future to enable correct displaying of credits in the future (perhaps by using a checkbox in the master name to indicate that certain names should always be displayed Last, First Middle (for Asian actors) or First Middle Last (for non-Asian actors)).

In any case, I welcome this newfound interest in this topic and look forward to many more constructive comments.