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If you want to be international, you don't even try that. You let the communication say "Dear $Name" and you are done. Even if it means none of the emails say what you want it to say. And yes, even for a US system I don't think it's a good idea to ask for first/initial/last or to ask for formal/informal. Chinese users in the US will be happy to just see a "Name" field. Just ask for a name!

I'd stay away from gender/greeting too. Mr/Ms/Mrs/Dr etc. are way too culturally narrow even for the US.




This might break if the language the name is in has a vocative case http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vocative_case


interesting. If the message is in English, would such rules still apply? We are talking about formatting a message with a foreign name (origin unknown) in a known language, e.g English.


Not normally. Typically you'd pick the 'least marked' version of the name and just use that.




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