Talk:Kira Yoshinaka

Changing name to English format?

"Kira Yoshinaka," while being a direct transliteration of 吉良義央, maintains the Japanese tradition of family-name-first. I think that it, and the other names in the article, should be changed to fit the English format, as this is an English-language article, e.g., "Yoshinaka Kira," with the family name second. I, however, realize that it is a simple formatting issue, so didn't want to change it right off.

I do, however, believe that it would be misleading to any English speaking people who were to read the article, unaware of the Japanese format.

So change, or no?

65.33.51.108 (talk) 22:09, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Hello. You make a good point that it's possible to make a mistake about which part of the name is the family name and which the given name. To solve that problem, I've added a template that identifies "Kira" as the family name.

Wikipedia has an extensive manual of style for general articles, and for articles on topics connected to Japan, Wikipedia:Manual of Style (Japan-related articles) is the appropriate style page. This discusses name order, and is the result of extensive discussion among the members of the community. You can see the discussion in the archives of the Talk page. Links are near the top of Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (Japan-related articles).

Thanks for asking about this, and happy editing! Fg2 (talk) 02:02, 5 February 2009 (UTC)