A question for any Portuguese or Spanish speakers here, which I think are languages and cultures in which these sorts of name patterns are common - when you see a name like "Roberto Antonio Ferreira De Almeida", is it obvious where the "given" name stops, and the "family name" starts? I'm guessing in this case it's fairly obvious, since I'm guessing Ferreira is analogous to something like Smith, but are there names w…
Usually it is obvious, but sometimes you'll find weird combinations (or surnames that are usually names) that can throw you off.
The trick (both for Portuguese and Spanish) is to treat the last two words as the family name and whatever precedes it as the name. That works fine until you find an Argentinian :P
I'm obliged to mention Falsehoods Programmer Believe About Names: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-... . As someone who also has two family names, I always dread questions for my "last name". What's also fun are alphabet differences. Try to interact with the Greek government and they might ask you to spell your name using only their characters. An interesting challenge when your name contai…
A Russian friend living in Japan noted that, at least as of a decade ago, a decent number of government services (for citizens) allowed something like 6 characters max for the entire name. This is because Japanese names are normally written compactly in Kanji, but it becomes a problem when your name is 15 Katakana or 25 Latin characters long.
Even something as simple as buying a movie ticket can require submitting a name using only Japanese characters.
A question for any Portuguese or Spanish speakers here, which I think are languages and cultures in which these sorts of name patterns are common - when you see a name like "Roberto Antonio Ferreira De Almeida", is it obvious where the "given" name stops, and the "family name" starts? I'm guessing in this case it's fairly obvious, since I'm guessing Ferreira is analogous to something like Smith, but are there names w…
Yes. Having 4 names are quite common in Portugal, specially in certain areas. The names are usually structured like this: G1 G2 FM FF G1 and G2 are given names. Usually 2 "first names" that you see in english, but there's common combos and sometimes there's a word joining them. Examples: "Maria Jesus" vs "Maria de Jesus". Some names are more common to be put first, but almost every name can be put in any order, examp…
So what happens when father's or mother's last name is already in FF FM form?
Sweden actually removed middle names. I believe now you can have 1–2 last names, 1+ first names and 0 middle names. You can choose a given name that you are called which can be different than the first names but usually isn’t.
This causes problems with forms and at airports that don’t allow for Swedish name rules.
I have this weird thing about a birthday -- for some reason, I was assigned a different birth date in NHS records in the UK compared to the one I have in my native Finland. I want to believe it has something to do with electronic systems transacting with different countries' systems (I noticed this difference soon after I exchanged my driver license) -- and I would have indeed born on a different day if it'd been the…
There are plenty of older Polish people living in countries like Belgium who are born in a city that's can be translated to "Blue".
How comes? For the color of the eyes used to be present on Polish ID cards / official documents (maybe still is, dunno).
And a great many people in non-polish speaking countries read the wrong line for "place of birth".
I'm obliged to mention Falsehoods Programmer Believe About Names: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-... . As someone who also has two family names, I always dread questions for my "last name". What's also fun are alphabet differences. Try to interact with the Greek government and they might ask you to spell your name using only their characters. An interesting challenge when your name contai…
A Russian friend living in Japan noted that, at least as of a decade ago, a decent number of government services (for citizens) allowed something like 6 characters max for the entire name. This is because Japanese names are normally written compactly in Kanji, but it becomes a problem when your name is 15 Katakana or 25 Latin characters long.
When I moved to Japan in 1983, not much was computerized and I was able to use my preferred short version of my name--eight letters or five katakana, surname last in both cases--for nearly everything. But over the years more and more places started requiring that names be input into labeled fields, which would reverse the given-name surname order. And many places started to insist on the same name as on my passport--nineteen letters, eleven or twelve katakana, depending on how I wrote it. Many input forms don't allow so many characters, none that I have encountered distinguish first from middle names, and there's usually no way to link that long name to the short name that I have been using for work and in daily life for more than forty years. It's a constant annoyance, not just for me but for other people.
I've always wondered about a woman, Mary Jones, marrying Tom Smith and deciding to hyphenate her last name with Mary Jones-Smith. But then she has a daughter Sally Jones-Smith who meets and marries John Alexander-Wabasha and wants to hyphenate her name as Sally Jones-Smith-Alexander-Wabasha.
I have this weird thing about a birthday -- for some reason, I was assigned a different birth date in NHS records in the UK compared to the one I have in my native Finland. I want to believe it has something to do with electronic systems transacting with different countries' systems (I noticed this difference soon after I exchanged my driver license) -- and I would have indeed born on a different day if it'd been the…
My German residence permit cut 10 centimeters off my height. Typos on the address registration form (which is printed by the resident, then typed back into a computer by a civil servant) frequently has typos too.
As problematic as national IDs and related things are are, I do someone wish my country would just assign me a universal identity number and let me use that for all government documents.
Names are just too deeply personal to impose someone else's rules on them.