Senders' Names Now Reversed in Mail Inbox (iOS 14.2)

Since upgrading to iOS 14.2 the names of senders in my Inbox of Apple's Mail app are reversed. For example, emails that used to show as coming from "The New York Times" now show as coming from "York Times The New York." Or instead of "Shell Card" it now shows as "Card Shell." It seems iOS used to recognize business names and show them as such. It looks like it now treats business names the same way it always displayed individual names (Last Name, First Name). I know this doesn't affect functionality, but it sure is aggravating.


Anyone else experiencing this and is there a solution?

iPhone 11 Pro

Posted on Nov 11, 2020 11:02 AM

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Posted on Nov 16, 2020 9:01 AM

The change of contacts display does impact how my email senders are named. I had the goofy issue with 14.2. Many other threads on this issue, several noting the problem only in inbox and not other folders so clearly a bug not intended. I don’t know why contact display order impacts mail senders, including many not in my contacts (likely the case fir the vast majority of iPhone users), but it clearly does. However, if I change sort order in contacts, as with others, I also have the first, last display in contact as well as mail. So mail senders read normally like they used to but contacts is harder to read because first name is displayed first which, to me, is visually confusing and makes it harder to find what I’m looking for.


I will note that after changing the display order to first, last and seeing the mailbox senders fixed, I tried changing sort order in contacts back to last, first and found that, while contacts reverted to my long-standing and preferred display of last, first, the mail sender display did NOT change back to the weird last, first order that took over with 14.2. This is good. I quit the mail app and relaunched and found it has retained the corrected sort order. I have changed it back and forth several times in preferences and, since changing it back the very first time, changing contact display preference has ceased to effect how mail senders are displayed. No matter what I set display order to, only contacts change (as one would expect), but not mail sender display, which stays “normal”, for lack of a better term.


Don’t know how long it will last (hopefully permanent), but for the moment I have the display order I want in mail and the one I want in contacts and the preference to change sort order is now only changing the display in contacts with mail unchanged since the first change to correct it. Clearly and unequivocally a bug.

199 replies

Nov 21, 2020 8:53 AM in response to livin1965

“...,Incorrect. Changing the display of Contacts to "first, last" corrects the email sender naming convention problem.....”


That is the topic of the thread. Solved.

Also solved same problem in Whatsapp and imessage.


“..,.but then causes contacts to be, as one would expect, displayed with first name first and then last name after that....”


Yes an unfortunate side effect but a miniscule problem. They are still sorted either way as per user choice in the other setting.

Nov 23, 2020 8:39 AM in response to Chatajack

“...This corrects the view order in mail to be how it was prior to the update ...”

Good. Solved the topic problem 👍


“...negative and completely unwanted effect of displaying all contacts in the same way First/Last...”

Nevertheless the sort order if the contacts is correct as you set it, and the sort field is in bold so as a workaround it is surely not the end of the world?

Nov 23, 2020 11:37 AM in response to ukexpatusa

I would hope this was not intentional, I only noticed it on update but then a lot of messaging was messed up including iMessage losing connection with contacts, and Whatsapp affected like email.

The answers above are a best efforts workaround suggestion for email senders that are in your contacts. Nobody yet has confirmed if it affects non contact senders and again I stress it only seems to correct new emails.


Before your wife’s ipad is updated it would be good to look at the current Contacts sort settings and see if they change on update. Come back if you have more data.

Nov 24, 2020 1:00 AM in response to Chatajack

I appreciate entirely the situation.

I have said many times this is a workaround.

You mention my level for some reason as though helping thousands of people is something to be ashamed of.

I am after the truth, and to help people.

I can gain nothing more from contributing here and Apple do not monitor this forum.

You will have reported this as a bug like I have at https://www.apple.com/feedback/

so there is nothing more to be said

Nov 25, 2020 1:24 PM in response to LD150

Apple needs to provide separate display order settings for Mail and Contacts. Contrary to previous responses, there are NOT two display settings. There is a Contacts Sort setting (which has nothing to do with email), and a single Display setting which is now shared by Contacts and Mail. I want my Contacts sorted by:

Last, First


However, this setting then causes the email sender to also be displayed as:

Last, First


This could be tolerable for people I know that are in my contacts list. But for businesses, it really makes things quite ridiculous. For Example:

Depot The Home

or

List Angie’s


This really needs to be fixed.

Nov 28, 2020 9:50 AM in response to LD150

I agree with Joshua Morganstein, above. Changing the display order is problematic because while it may fix the issue in the mail display, it changes the way the names appear in Contacts... Rather than seeing all the last names in alphabetical order, the result is a jumble of first names on the left hand side that make finding your contact rather cumbersome. Much easier to read the contacts if the last names are all aligned and justified to the left, and the first names are on the right... Is there another fix for the mail problem? It started for me when I upgraded as well and I find it annoying.

Nov 28, 2020 11:30 AM in response to LD150

The 14.2 update now scrambles the company name in the mail app and this is not an improvement. I dislike the change to personal name display in mail but I can live with it but it looks plain silly to break up company names, i.è. Motors, General for General Motors. I do not want my contacts sorted by first name which scatters the members of my families all over. I certainly cannot find any logic to this change.

Dec 4, 2020 1:46 PM in response to dpdapper1

This is annoying, especialy given that RFC 2822 never defines the From and Sender headers to only have names in any name orded, so I'd expect my mail client to not fiddle with those, and display as theye were.

If Apple won't address this issue in the next update I'll need to seek for a new e-mail client (already started trying out a few) which would partly mean losing handoff capabilities between my mac and iphone/ipad


does anyone have any suggestion on alternatives?


lonczy

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Senders' Names Now Reversed in Mail Inbox (iOS 14.2)

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