Sort contacts by last name, not phonetic last name

Now that I didn't think of. Hmmm thanks much for the idea. Time to redo the addressbook and hopefully this time around gmail addressbook and apple addressbook/contacts will play nicer.

Not sure if nickname syncs to gmail addressbook (I haven't tried). But it should work on Contacts/Mail and iPhone

Nicknames work on iPhone searches in phone and email, and Siri, and within Mail.app. I use them extensively. Also handy on the iPhone is the favorites list for phone. Not sure how easy it is to type Asian-character nicknames, but they will sync at least.

It does. But for some reason sometimes the same fields would overwrite or disappear after syncing. I've had to totally turn off iCloud addressbook syncing on other devices that I only sync with my mac addressbook and do manual sync in order to even get gmail syncing done nicely with the least amount of errors.

This could also be a legacy issue as my addressbook has been imported for over 15 years from system to system and format to format. There could be some corrupted data that doesn't show up as errors and what not is my guess. Only way to clean that up is to redo all the entries again imo but that takes a **** of a lot of time to do.

Apple's asian character imput is the best I've ever seen although when I tried out Windows 7 version of double byte character input, its very close to what Apple has. You can also use the touchscreen or the trackpad to "write" the characters although the small screen for the iphone inputting via keyboard is easier than trying to "write" the characters.

Apple's unicode implementation is also very nice. The issues I have are really just my refusal to change my workflow. Old habits die hard you know especially for an old fart like me coming from an IT background from the late 80s.

Easy enough to google details, but you can export your contacts as xml, trash your current address book (move it someplace), then re-import the xml. That should clean up any problems.

Do not use Phonetic Name as the field type you are adding. If you are trying to get Siri to 'say' the name properly, or recognize voice dictaction of a name, choose Pronunciation (name type). iPhone does not use pronunciation for sorting. You can also (using siri) say "Who is blah blah contact" and then say "You didn't pronounce blah blah contact right". Siri will apologize for getting it wrong, and ask you to say the name. Siri then presents a few options on how you want it pronounced. I used this method to fix a contact with the first name spelled "Roxi" that voice dictation insisted be spelled "Roxy". I added the contact, and added the pronunciation "Roxy" to the "Roxi" contact. It now inserts the assumed to be correct name "Roxi" instead of the more usual way of spelling it "Roxy".