Name initials gone wild

In languages that use syllabaries and logograms, especially Han characters like Japanese and Chinese, creating initials by taking characters from the family and given names can easily form new words that aren’t usually noticed when viewing the full name. Outlook, and likely a number of other platforms that are creating initials in the European way, which have went viral on Twitter surrounding awkward and inappropriate initials they got on these platforms. Examples raised by Twitter users include:

• 不破 貞仁 (FUWA Sadahito) → 不貞 (futei, adultery, infidelity)
• バンダイナムコアミューズメント カスタマーサポート (Bandai Namco Amusement Customer Support) → バカ (baka, stupid)
• � → しね (shine, go die)
• � → 大麻 (taima, cannabis, marijuana)
• � → 英雄 (eiyū, hero)
• � → 村長 (soncho, village chief)
• � → 武将 (bushō, military commander)
• 水石銀雫 (MIZUISHI Ginshizuku) → 水銀 (suigin, mercury, Hg)
• クラウドソリューション部 (Cloud Solution-bu, –department) → クソ (feces)
• � → 和尚 (oshō, monk)

Solutions

Handling names properly is difficult, as every culture carries their own rules about them. If you don’t have the capacity to research all cultures in the world, it’s better not to reinvent the wheel and use something tried and tested.

Unicode Common Locale Data Repository (CLDR) and Internaonal Components for Unicode (ICU) has defined a set of rules to format names in all supported locales in more way than you can possibly think of – long/medium/short names, names for sorting, and monograms (initals), for addressing/referring in formal/informal ways – and with locale-aware name orders.

If you develop exclusively for the Apple ecosystem, they have also provided their own APIs to format names in long/medium/short/abbreviated formats.

FYI, CLDR format Japanese initials (monograms) as given-monogram-allCaps (i.e. the first letter of the given name), and Apple has initials (likely) as the first two characters of the family name, both of which are acceptable for most typical person names.