One of the issues I faced whenever I'm addressed by a non-Chinese is the lack of awareness of how to be addressed properly. How would you feel when your name is Alex, and someone calls you Al, or Ale? And how would you feel after you've corrected someone for their first mistake, but they commit the same mistake in getting your name right?

Just as there's naming conventions for variables and methods in any computer language, there's also a naming convention for human names. I've always wanted to write a proper document to address just the Chinese naming issue, however, someone beat me to it and wrote a much more comprehensive one.

I remembered in the late 80s or early 90s, I once wrote quite a lengthy letter on this to someone working in Borland. I can't remember who though.