Similarly, it’s Leonardo or Leonardo da Vinci, never ”da Vinci”, a popular book and movie notwithstanding. ”da Vinci” is not a family name but a moniker referring to his place of birth, the town of Vinci in Tuscany.
Why we don't use Galileo's last name (2009)
61–70 of 174 posts
Re: Why we don't use Galileo's last name (2009)
#62I worked in insurance for over five years. One of the more common reasons we had to send out HIPAA notification letters was due to relatives in the same city with similar or identical names getting claims processed under the wrong policy. These were very often two male relatives -- father and son, twin brothers, cousins. They sometimes even lived on the same street. There's also this story about two women with the sa…
Be careful with that - my friends enjoy an automatic level of anonymity even if they publish something under their real names, but my real name is rare enough that it points directly to me and me alone on Google results.
My real name is not uncommon. Many years ago, I decided to use it for professional posts on the web in order to build an online presence. There were no significant search results for my name at the time.
Shortly after that, two people (an actor and a prominent academic) with the same name completely overtook me.
Re: Why we don't use Galileo's last name (2009)
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Family names start appearing when you need to be able to identify a person unambiguously among the population of a big country Pretty sure they go back further than that. Family names that are former patronymics (Svenson, Stevenson, Godwinson etc) are notably more common in Northern England than Southern. Reason being that was the Danelaw part of England where the Vikings held sway until roughly the Norman Conquest…
Iceland—a relatively small country— still uses patronymics rather than surnames for the most part. The singer Bjork is Björk Guðmundsdóttir, because her father is Guðmundur Gunnarsson, which makes Bjork “Guthmund’s daughter”. There are still confusing exceptions: the retired footballer Eiður Guðjohnsen is not actually Gudjohn’s son; he is the son of Arnór Guðjohnsen.
Interesting, I didn't know that. There was a big period of confusion in the overlap with some keeping to patronymics, some using as a family name. I'm not sure if it was Christianity, or personal preference that made the switch, as Christianity wasn't fully rolled out to England yet, again Danelaw areas being late adopters. Parish records of births, marriages and deaths were still 500 years away, so maybe no one really knows.
Helpfully, the old Saxon custom of the eldest having a particular first name - which would be given to the next eldest if the older one inconveniently died, stuck around a good while too!
Re: Why we don't use Galileo's last name (2009)
#64I worked in insurance for over five years. One of the more common reasons we had to send out HIPAA notification letters was due to relatives in the same city with similar or identical names getting claims processed under the wrong policy. These were very often two male relatives -- father and son, twin brothers, cousins. They sometimes even lived on the same street. There's also this story about two women with the sa…
This really shouldn't be a problem in the modern age when each person can be assigned a globally (or at least nationally) unique ID number as soon as their birth certificate is produced. It baffles me that the most technologically advanced country in the world still has difficulties figuring out who has the right to vote.
Re: Why we don't use Galileo's last name (2009)
#65I worked in insurance for over five years. One of the more common reasons we had to send out HIPAA notification letters was due to relatives in the same city with similar or identical names getting claims processed under the wrong policy. These were very often two male relatives -- father and son, twin brothers, cousins. They sometimes even lived on the same street. There's also this story about two women with the sa…
Here in Italy we are given a Codice Fiscale at birth, which is a string of 13 characters derived by 3 letters of the last name, 3 letters of the first name (usually these 6 letters are all consonants, but there are exceptions for names like Anna), 2 digits, a letter and two other digits representing the birth day, one letter and the digits representing the birthplace an one last letter which is a checksum.
These are state-issued so in case of people that share all those characteristics there's a system in place which changes just one character and gives a different result.
Every contract I signed and every interaction with the government required this information, so the kind of mishaps you talk about are not that common here (at least to my knowledge). Also, different from US social security numbers, this is not used as the only credential for important services, so keeping it secret is not needed (also, it can be manually derived in most cases, indeed you know the needed data. The algorithm is public).
One other thing that avoids confusion is that father and son can't legally have the same name.
EDIT: more info on the Italian Fiscal code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_fiscal_code_card
Re: Why we don't use Galileo's last name (2009)
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm working in a product right now where we've run into this and we have a ticket to remove the family name requirements. Even if we remove the family name requirement from our end, a third party we use for identity verification still requires a family name, so how do we deal with that?
Request that they change, and if they won't, then find a new third party I guess?
Joe base26(md5("null"))
Re: Why we don't use Galileo's last name (2009)
#67I worked in insurance for over five years. One of the more common reasons we had to send out HIPAA notification letters was due to relatives in the same city with similar or identical names getting claims processed under the wrong policy. These were very often two male relatives -- father and son, twin brothers, cousins. They sometimes even lived on the same street. There's also this story about two women with the sa…
This really shouldn't be a problem in the modern age when each person can be assigned a globally (or at least nationally) unique ID number as soon as their birth certificate is produced. It baffles me that the most technologically advanced country in the world still has difficulties figuring out who has the right to vote.
A lot of people in the US just don't like the idea of a central national database that stores information about them. To be sure, this (increasingly) happens at some level anyway. And to a lot of people in, say, Europe this probably seems like a baffling concern. But it's the way it is.
Re: Why we don't use Galileo's last name (2009)
#68I worked in insurance for over five years. One of the more common reasons we had to send out HIPAA notification letters was due to relatives in the same city with similar or identical names getting claims processed under the wrong policy. These were very often two male relatives -- father and son, twin brothers, cousins. They sometimes even lived on the same street. There's also this story about two women with the sa…
Be careful with that - my friends enjoy an automatic level of anonymity even if they publish something under their real names, but my real name is rare enough that it points directly to me and me alone on Google results.
The two extremes for the US are probably John Smith and something absolutely unique. Each has their pros and cons.
(Although my name isn't obviously unusual, it's actually more or less Internet unique and, at a minimum, I have a way bigger footprint than anyone else.)
ADDED: Personally it's probably advantageous to me to have a unique online identity. But it means I can't hide behind an excuse that "It must have been one of the other $NAMES that you read about." And I assume such conflicts could get a resume tossed pretty quickly by a recruiter doing a quick search.
The worst alternative is to have a name conflict who might be plausibly you based on location etc. where the other is a criminal, etc. I went to school with someone who shared a name with someone in NYC who was in very public and messy legal problems. He literally got death threats left on his (pre-Web) telephone.
Re: Why we don't use Galileo's last name (2009)
#69I worked in insurance for over five years. One of the more common reasons we had to send out HIPAA notification letters was due to relatives in the same city with similar or identical names getting claims processed under the wrong policy. These were very often two male relatives -- father and son, twin brothers, cousins. They sometimes even lived on the same street. There's also this story about two women with the sa…
> Thanks to my ex and I both having first-hand experience with family members having similar names, we both agreed on making sure our children had names that wouldn't cause that type of issue for them. My aunt was in that same position, tired of her name being confused with other people in the family. So she named her 3 daughters 3 names unique from anyone in the family. Then 3 of her brothers in law married 3 women…
that's an amazing coincidence
Re: Why we don't use Galileo's last name (2009)
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or having to give your « middle name » in the Anglosphere ! Try explaining you have three to a clerk...
Note that the convention of what is your given name and what is your family name, and how they are inherited are different that the convention in USA. This add a lot of confusion when someone moves and need to fill paperwork. Using a "|" to separate your given name(s) and your family name(s): --- Common pattern in USA: Father: X Y | Z Mother: A B | C Your name: R C | Z --- Spain/most of Latin America: Father: X | Y Z…
(Catholic?) Germany:
Father: X | Z
Mother: A | C
Set of Godfathers and Godmothers given names: {G}
Your name: {G} | Z
There are also double given names. For example Hans-Peter is a differs from Hans Peter. The later could also be rendered Peter Hans but for Hans-Peter the order is fixed.
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Many Slavic Countries:
Father: X | Z
Mother: A | C
Your name (boy): R | patronymic(X) | Z
Your name (girl): R | patronymic(X) | feminine(Z)
The middle part is neither given name nor surname but referred to as patronymic.
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