Last Name First
Tuesday April 19, 2005 at 5:05 pm | Filed under Me
Forever I’ve been told that it was right, when making a list of people’s names, to put the last name first and sort that list alphabetically. A couple of years ago my group at work issues a phone list that had everyone’s name listed alphabetically by first name. This really screwed me up at first, but it just hit me today that ever since I got used to that list, sorting by first name is what I prefer, at least for my lists. I understand why the white pages and lists with a million names are sorted by last name, since last names are much more varied than first names, there wouldn’t be 6 pages of the same name (unless you’ve got Chinatown’s phone book). But for something like a list of contacts in an IM window, or my address book, why on Earth have I been sorting these by last name? To me, it’s much more natural to think of the person, hence think of their name, and then look them up.
Not sure why I thought this was interesting enough to post, but I did. Here’s to sorting by first name!
No Responses to “Last Name First”
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Jason Says:
April 20th, 2005 at 5:28 amDude, seriously.
I’ve always done it by first name if the list is short. -
wayne Allen Says:
April 20th, 2005 at 12:18 pmIm not sure if I like this sort by first names thing… that would put me near the end of the list instead of near the front.
Although, I understand your thinking on this and I had a phone list like this while at Disney. It sure was easy to find people’s phone number.
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Shana Says:
April 20th, 2005 at 1:05 pmWe sort by first name too. But we have a funny rule at my company. No one can have the same first name. So if you share a first name ? you have to go by a nickname or middle name. I?m lucky Shana isn?t common!