Yu, Yu Hu, Hu Yu, or Hu - Chinese Names 101

What's in a Chinese name? Chinese people have a last name or family name, and a first name. Most of the last names are a single Chinese character that corresponds to an ideogram. The first name are either one or two Chinese characters. It is commonplace to see one-character first name in modern-day China. Each ideogram is phonetically a short syllable, and the four-tone intonation is not encoded in the Chinese Pin-Yin system. You find many similar names that need to be disambiguated.

Let's use an example. An engineer friend is generally referred to as HY. HY's last name is Hu and his first name is Yu. Chinese refer to people as "Last name, First name," and thus refer to my friend as "Hu Yu". This is natural for the those who speak Chinese. Note that this direct reference is not particularly polite in general. It is used only when certain clarity is needed. The same is true in the U.S. cultural.

Since Western conventions and cultures use the "First Name.Last Name" format in email address and other places, it is common to see "yu.hu@company.com" as an email address. It is the U.S. culture to refer to people by their first name when we are reasonably acquainted with them, and therefore we are expected to use "Yu" to refer to this friend . If you insist on calling him "Yu Hu," that would be odd but excusable if you are not a Chinese native ;-) Another colleague once asked me why "Hu Yu" was used by another Chinese engineer, and that confused the hell out of her. Which is which?

In conclusion,
1) Yu - First name, American way, when you are reasonably acquainted
2) Yu Hu - First name followed by last name, American way, not too polite, used only for clarity.
3) Hu - Last name, used occasionally in special circumstance to refer to someone remote.
4) Hu Yu - Last name followed by first name, Chinese way, can be used by superiors.

Remember the problem of the short syllable and one-character first names for this generation? It is likely to have someone with Yu as last name, Hu as first name. Now, you would really have to ask for clarification.