Ahead of a series of important international events in Japan, including a visit from U.S. President Donald Trump this weekend, Japan’s foreign minister has issued a request to the English-speaking world: Call our prime minister Abe Shinzo, not Shinzo Abe. Kono is the foreign minister’s family name, just as Abe is the Japanese prime minister’s family name. Chinese and Korean names have their family names first in English – for example, in the cases of Xi and Moon, as Kono noted. That report didn’t change things at the time, but as the foreign minister noted, it is now a new era. The U.S. leader has formed an unusually close bond to Abe – even referring to him as “Prime Minister Shinzo” in 2017.

Source: National Post May 22, 2019 13:15 UTC