I’ve run into a similar-ish situation working with East-Asian students and East-Asian faculty. Me, an American who wants to be clear and make policies easy for everybody to understand: worried about name ordering a bit (Do we want to ask for their last name or their family name in this field, what’s the stupid learning management system want, etc etc). Chinese co-worker: we can just ask them for their last names, everybody knows what Americans mean when they ask for that, and all the students are used to dealing with this.

Hah, fair enough. I think it was an abstract question to me, so I was looking for the technically correct answer. Practical question for him, so he gave the practical answer.