Nobody corrects a foreigner on their name. The email comes back signed the same way, the meeting continues, and the mistake is repeated for months by a company that has decided it does not matter enough to mention. It does matter, in the small way that accumulates: a name used correctly says that you paid attention before the relationship needed anything from you.
Family name first, and it is usually the short part
A Chinese name is written family name first, given name second. The family name is nearly always one syllable, one character; the given name is one or two, and in romanised writing the two syllables of a given name may be joined, hyphenated or separated. So in a name of three syllables, the first is the family and the rest is the given name — which is the exact opposite of the European habit of reading the last word as the surname. Written in Chinese characters there is no ambiguity at all; the confusion is entirely a product of romanisation.
The complication is that some of your counterparts have already adapted for you. A person who deals with foreign customers may write their name in the European order on a business card, in an email signature, or in a document template designed abroad; another will put the family name in capitals to remove the doubt, which is a convention worth adopting yourself. When a form has been filled in by a database rather than a person, the order is anyone's guess. The safe move is to ask once — « which of these is your family name ? » is a normal question and is never taken badly — and then to be consistent everywhere, because a contract and an invoice that disagree about which word is the surname create a genuine administrative problem later.
An English first name is a real name
Many Chinese professionals use an English given name, chosen by themselves, sometimes at school and sometimes on the day they joined a company that works with foreigners. It is not a nickname, not a concession and not a translation: it is the name they use at work with people like you, and it is normally paired with the Chinese family name. Use it without comment. The two habits worth avoiding are remarking on the choice, however warmly, and switching back to the Chinese given name because you have decided it is more authentic — the second is a decision about someone else's name made on their behalf.
The reverse courtesy is to make your own name usable. A French name is hard to pronounce and harder to type on a Chinese keyboard, and a counterpart who cannot say it out loud will avoid saying it at all, which quietly removes you from conversations you are not in. Giving a short spoken form of your first name, and a Chinese transcription you have chosen rather than one invented for you, costs nothing and is used immediately. Choose it once and keep it: a second transcription appearing on a later document looks like a different person.
The title is part of the address
In a Chinese working environment, the function is a normal way to address someone: family name followed by the role — manager, director, general manager, chairman, engineer, teacher — rather than the given name. This is not stiffness; it is how the room is organised, and it tells everyone present who is being spoken to. Where you do not know the function, the general forms « xiānsheng » for a man and « nǚshì » for a woman, placed after the family name, are correct and neutral. What almost never works is the family name alone, which sounds abrupt, or the given name alone, which is reserved for family, old friends and classmates.
| Situation | In writing | Out loud in the room |
|---|---|---|
| First contact, function unknown | Full name as they wrote it, then Mr or Ms with the family name in the body of the message | Family name plus the neutral honorific, until someone in the room uses a title you can copy |
| You know the function | Family name plus function, which is also how their own colleagues will write it | The same, every time, including in front of their staff — this is where the form does real work |
| They gave you an English first name | That first name with the Chinese family name, exactly as they sign | The English first name alone is usually fine with them, and the title form is safer in front of others |
| Writing to a group | Name everyone in the order of seniority, not alphabetically — the order of a list is read as information | Greet the most senior person first and last; the rest of the room is addressed through them |
The mistakes nobody will mention
- Using the given name alone. It reads as an intimacy that has not been offered. With a counterpart who uses an English first name, that first name plays the role instead and is safe.
- Inventing a diminutive. Shortening a Chinese given name because it is long, or adding a French ending to make it friendlier, renames someone without asking.
- Swapping the order mid-relationship. Writing the name one way in the contract and the other way on the invoice produces a mismatch that customs, banks and registries all treat as a different party.
- Addressing the person who speaks your language. The best English speaker in the room is often not the decision maker. Looking at them while answering a question asked by their manager is visible to everybody.
- Guessing the pronunciation silently. Asking how a name is said, once, at the start, is received as respect. Mispronouncing it for a year without asking is received as indifference.
- Treating a title as decoration. Dropping the function once the relationship is warm can be right in private and wrong in a meeting; the safe rule is to keep the formal form whenever anyone else is listening.
The same problem, seen from the other side
A French name is a puzzle in the other direction. The order is reversed, compound first names and particles make it unclear where the surname begins, accents disappear in systems that do not carry them, and the honorifics carry information a Chinese reader has no reason to decode: a French company uses « Monsieur » and « Madame » where titles would be used in China, and drops them between colleagues in a way that looks like inconsistency. First names are used much earlier in France than the hierarchy of the room would suggest, which is read as either friendliness or disorder depending on who is reading.
Which means the fix is yours to make, and it is small. Write your own name the same way on every document, with the family name in capitals. Put your function next to your name in your signature, because that is the information your counterpart needs to know how to address you and how much weight your answer carries. Say your name slowly at the first meeting and write it on the paper in front of you. And tell people which form you want in return — a French manager who says « call me by my first name » has given a permission that will be used, and a French manager who says nothing will be addressed with a title, correctly, forever.
Keep one line in your contact file for each person: the name as they write it, which part is the family name, the form you use out loud, and the function. It takes a minute per contact and it survives the moment when the project passes to a colleague who has never met them — which is exactly when a name usually starts being written the wrong way round.