dee1959jay,

Correct. To elaborate further on children's surnames: if the couple divorces when children are still young, the children retain the given surname as you indicate. But, for instance, if the kids are living with the mother, they CAN change into the mother's surname. They must register this if they want to when they become 12.
Furthermore, when the mother remarries (assuming she has the kids), the kids will not automatically have a new surname.

Quoting karlpov:

Quote:
... Curiously, the Netherlands rules vary from the Flemish in that particles ("van", "van der", etc.) are generally not used in alphabetization. Thus the writer Robert van Gulik would be indexed as Gulik, Robert van, although I don't think it would be proper to call "van" a middle name.
...

Both the Netherlands and Belgium have the naming rules spelled out already in this thread. You will find those differences there.
"van" is part of the last name. Gulik is actually the name of a village/small city (no offence intended).

In the middle ages most people in our region followed the Nordic rules, which still exist in Iceland today (not described so far here. Anyone?). And we didn't have a proper registration. During the French occupation (1795-1813/5) a local administration was set up and forced people to name and fix their family name. So many took the place they lived or came from as a reference for their family name. "van" means "of", hence "van Gulik".
Some jokers didn't take it seriously, so there are people named "Naaktgeboren" (=born naked) or similar silly things, causing the majority of current family name change requests to the authorities...

Quoting nimrod85:

Quote:
Please remove the
First name Middle name Last name fields from the profiler, because its useless/ridiculous when people contribute people like Wu Jing and not Jing Wu or Ka-Fai Cheung /Cheung Ka-Fai, and now the Last name is in the First name field

This is so WRONG


But I guess its typical american 

First of all this topic is not about naming conventions in DVDP but an information topic about "Naming conventions around the world"

Second of all declaring something as "typical {insert nation here}" is typical german. 

Quoting synner_man:

Quote:
Hong Kong naming conventions are pretty much the same as Korean naming conventions, with the addition of the western name.  Hong Kong, being a former British colony, required English translations to their films.  Many of the actors, actresses and crew adopted an English name to go along with their Chinese one.  This, of course, lead to multiple credits for the same actor.

There are two famous actors named Tony Leung.  Sometimes they are credited that way, but more often they go by their English name and Chinese name combined: Tony Leung Chiu-Wai and Tony Leung Ka-Fai (sometimes with the dash in their Chinese given name, sometimes without).

Some only go by the Western name (at least, they do when credited using Western characters).  Jackie Chan and Jet Li are two famous examples (though they are also credited in Chinese characters under their proper Chinese name).  Actor Andy Lau is rarely credited as Andy Lau Tak-Wah (and I don't think I've ever seen him credited as Lau Tak-Wah).  Director Andrew Lau is rarely credited as Andrew Lau Wai-Keung or Lau Wai-Keung.  Actor Ngai Sing moved to the US and changed his name to Collin Chou (his real Taiwanese name was Chou Siu-Lun), which he now uses exclusively.  Sometimes the name isn't even consistent, as Johnnie To was sometimes credited as Johnny To in his earlier films.

Some actors used an English name for a brief time.  Lau Ching-Wan tried the name Sean Lau, then dropped it.  Even Chow Yun-Fat went by an English name for a brief time: Aman Chow.

There are also the naming conventions of Mandarin names versus Cantonese names.  Take Lau Kar-Leung.  When he was an action choreographer and director at Shaw Brothers, they used the Mandarin version of his name: Liu Chia-Liang.  In the later years, he went by his Cantonese name: Lau Kar-Leung.  His "brother" Gordon Liu, can be found under his western name Gordon Liu, his Mandarin name Liu Chia-Hui, his Cantonese name Lau Kar-Fei, or a combination of his western name and Chinese names.

Like Korean and Japanese names, you have a translation problem, which means that the name might not always be consistent.  Take Gordon Liu: glancing at HKMDB, they list additional aliases as Lau Ga-Fai,  Lau Kir-Fai,  Lau Kar-Fai,  Liu Jia-Hui,  Lau Ka-Fei and  Liu Chia-Fai.  This is not uncommon in films in the '70s and '80s.

As you can see, Hong Kong naming conventions are not simple (though it isn't difficult to standardize).

Those who collect Hong Kong films probably know that I've been working my through correcting the films (working backwards from Z, but avoiding Hong Kong Legends and Shaw Brothers titles, as I'll be doing them afterwards) and I want to correct one thing I wrote above.  While names may contain a dash in day-to-day life, in credits they are actually a rarity.  95% of the titles I've gone through (currently in the M films) lack dashes in their names (i.e. Chow Yun Fat, not Chow Yun-Fat).  Even those with dashes are often mixed with those names without.