Wednesday, December 14, 2005

Fun with names.

This is only funny is you work with player or competitor names and rosters, and have had the pleasure of dealing with Asian names.

You probably already know this, but in Asian names the family name is first, then the given name.

Example: One of the venue tech guys for Snowboarding has a family name of Wan, and his given name is Wei.
So his full name is "Wan Wei" (Pronounced, I'm not kidding, "One Way"...) and we call him "Wei". Got it?

So... As happens quite often, when programmers write software to parse and display names, they overlook the possibility of Asian names being mixed in with Western names. For a long time the displays for the Houston Rockets showed Ming Yao rather than Yao Ming...

A tech support call comes in from one of the venues.
"Hey Ned, all the Asian names are coming out backwards."
Meaning, instead of being the correct order, our man Wei's name would be appearing as "Wei, Wan".
Having seen this many many times, it is an easy fix.
Unless Ned is taking your call... In which case he wants to have a little fun at someone else's discomfort.
(As I have said many times, Finding humor in someone else's trouble or embarrasment is the basis of all comedy.)
"What?! The names are backwards?" Ned asks.
"Yeah, backwards." says the caller.
"Hmmm... I want to be sure I understand what you mean. You are not being very precise."
"What do you mean, I'm not precise. The names are backwards."
"Do you mean the name 'Wang' is displaying as 'Gnaw'? Becuase that is backwards. Or do you mean the names are displayed in the wrong order? Because that is a completely different problem."
Ned excels at making the callers unsure of themselves.
"Uh... Yeah." comes the reply. "Is there someone else there I can talk to?"

Ned can be a real Funny Guy sometimes...

GTB Out-

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