English convention: Given name – Family name San Duanmu IPA: [saen d^waen-mu] ([ae] is the vowel in ‘fan’)

Chinese convention: Family name – Given name Duanmu San (端木 三) IPA: [d^waen-mu saen]

Besides word order variation, there is a Chinese convention not to use a monosyllable to call someone (see Duanmu 1996 for a phonological analysis). Thus, most Chinese speakers automatically call me ‘Duanmu’, even when you would otherwise use the given name. This is because ‘San’ has one syllable but ‘Duanmu’ has two, so they switch to my family name. The same applies to other disyllabic family names, such as ‘Ouyang’ and ‘Sima’. As far as I am concerned, either ‘Duanmu’ or ‘San’ is fine.