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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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

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 17, 2020 7:56 AM in response to dpdapper1

Sorry to everyone fussing with the order of contact NAMES, but the unsolved problem also raised in this three is the Yoda-speech-like reversal of the wording in emails subject lines. That showed up in thus recent update and is disconcerting as there is no specifically targeted control to revert back to normal English sentence structure in the subject lines. Hero status to whomever delivers the cure.

Nov 23, 2020 6:41 PM in response to LD150

I appreciate that you are a level 6 but clearly you cannot comprehend that by your suggested “fix” of one issue it creating another for most persons (sorting last / first and displaying as First / Last) is NOT a “fix” or “solved” at all. Therefore please refrain from saying such as it leads Apple away from actually coming up with a workable solution. Such as offer an further level of contact sort specifically for email. Again this issue is by no means fix or solved.

Nov 27, 2020 12:03 AM in response to LD150

That corrects the problem for email senders for new and existing emails but, not surprisingly, changes the way my contacts appear. I would like a solution that allows email senders to be First, Last and contacts to be displayed Last, First, as names are typically displayed in directories. - exactly.


I do not want either or, I want both to be correct.

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

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