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Originally Posted by Zunaid
For names of European origin, the convention has been always to use the family name qualified by initials as the disambiguating component. To a certain extent this could carry over to Indian traditional names as there too, in general, an existence of a family name. Such is the case for Sinhalese names (*), except unlike most European names, the given name components contain more than first and middle and this needs ALL n initials for disambiguation. Now things would have been more interesting had we cricketers from Spain and Slavic countries along with patronymic and matronymic components.
However, most names from Bangladesh/Pakistan/Afghanistan are of Arabic or Persian etymology - the disambiguating component itself is the entire name (Saif el Islam - sword of Islam etc). And by convention too, we do not refer to a person via a single family/surname (with exceptions of course). We refer to Miller or Sobers or Bradman but not to Butt or Islam or Anjum. We can't fit Islamic origin names into Western naming conventions and CI like many other publishers have stopped trying to shove a square peg into a round hole.
* On the other hand, Sri Lankans might need all the initials they can for disambiguation since about 1/2 the team is da Silva.
** There is a joke in Korea - if you climb the mountain overlooking Seoul and lob a stone, it is guaranteed to hit a Park, Lee or Kim.
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exactly the academic response i was looking for. thanks, Doc!
also explains why everyone is referred to in our cultures by their first name, except when their first name is "Mohammad" (i.e Rafique or Ashraful or Asif/Aamir)...there are too many mohammads.
i have noticed that pakistani and bangladeshi players (except when their first name is "Mohammad") do have their given or first name printed on their jersey. not sure about the Afghan players. and while zaheer khan has his first name on his jersey, i'm sure other jerseys read "sehwag", "dhoni", or "tendulkar"...but peculiarly, there have "rohit" and "ishant" too instead of "R Sharma" or "I Sharma". strange indeed, but at the same time it just *sounds* or *looks* correct the way they have it.