41–50 of 66 posts
The general complexity of name changes will never cease to intrigue me.
Apparently the Japanese just… chose family names at some point in the late 1800s. They all had to, basically overnight as far as these things are considered.
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…
It contains concrete examples of each of the ideas listed in the first article.
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. Then she has kids that marry.
So Pelé is just a handle then, eh?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
FF is your father first last name (his FF).
And FM is your mothers first last name (hers FF).
The FF FM order was how it used to be (at least in Chile). Now, when the first kid of a given couple is born, that couple choose the order (FF FM or FM FF). In any case, is always the first last name of the parents, and the chosen order must be used for all kids in common between them.
There is some affordance available for representing various family members: her Chinese name can easily have different characters for them that have nothing to do with her actual name.
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.
Of course it's not explicited in most places as 16 chars for a standard Japanese name is an exception, and some applications will silently cut when sending to their backend.
It's as fun as you can imagine it to be.
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…
I find this follow on article really helpful: https://shinesolutions.com/2018/01/08/falsehoods-programmers... It contains concrete examples of each of the ideas listed in the first article.
Peter Biľak gives a story on bumping into this for the accent in his name. https://www.typotheque.com/articles/lcaron
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…
One falsehood I just ran into myself when booking a parking spot at the airport: "all parts of a name start with a capital letter". This isn't true for Dutch names with "van de", "van der" etc, which this site "corrected" to start with capitals. So silly to have a system "correct" my own name and get it wrong.
Another very frustrating issue I run into, is hyphens not being allowed. My firstname and surname both have hyphens, and they are very common even in English based names.