GoKawiilUntil nearly the end of the twentieth century, most papers indexed in the Science Citation Index — a database of scientific papers — were written by researchers from Europe and North America. In keeping with the usual naming conventions on those continents, the index puts the given name first and the family name last. Journals, databases and citation styles are built around that norm, and scientists in the rest of the world have had to adapt.
But science has changed. Today, at least one-third of scientific output comes from Asia. Researchers from China, India, Singapore, Japan, South Korea and Indonesia are no longer peripheral contributors to global science: they are helping to define it. Yet the publishing system still often asks them to reshape one of the most personal parts of their identity: their name.
Attention science: some people have only one name
I come from a Telugu-speaking family in India, where naming conventions differ from most journal expectations. Like many East Asians, Telugus place the family name before the given name. Yet across publications and citation systems, my name is often reordered to fit standard publishing conventions. These changes might seem minor, but over time they can create not only confusion, but also a quiet erosion of cultural identity.
The problem might sound administrative, even trivial, until you imagine introducing, for example, the fictional British secret-service agent James Bond as Bond James. It feels awkward because names are not just signifiers of identity: they also carry culture, rhythm and meaning. Reversing them changes more than pronunciation. For many Asian researchers, including myself, seeing their names inverted in publications might feel like a separation from their sense of cultural belonging.