The government ate my name
slate.com
The government ate my name
1–10 of 212 posts
Re: The government ate my name
#2Interesting article, I've had some similar (though significantly less severe) experiences with having ä and ß in my names, it seems many U. S. companies are just unwilling/incapable of going beyond ASCII.
The government being this sloppy at getting accents right is surprising, I would expect them to value accuracy and a clean paper trail when handling names.
Re: The government ate my name
#3Interesting article, I've had some similar (though significantly less severe) experiences with having ä and ß in my names, it seems many U. S. companies are just unwilling/incapable of going beyond ASCII. The government being this sloppy at getting accents right is surprising, I would expect them to value accuracy and a clean paper trail when handling names. http://archive.today/5h4v2
> The government being this sloppy at getting accents right is surprising, I would expect them to value accuracy
That tells me you're German, I didn't even need to see the ä and ß.
Even in the UK I encounter websites that won't accept my Norwegian address because it begins with Å. English speaking countries generally are pretty bad at this sort of thing.
Re: The government ate my name
#4Interesting article, I've had some similar (though significantly less severe) experiences with having ä and ß in my names, it seems many U. S. companies are just unwilling/incapable of going beyond ASCII. The government being this sloppy at getting accents right is surprising, I would expect them to value accuracy and a clean paper trail when handling names. http://archive.today/5h4v2
The USA government can't even handle ü. I was filling out a simple form to replace my damaged passport. I live in Zürich but it couldn't handle the umlaut. I never know what to do in this situation - do I use 'ue' instead, which is most common in Europe, or do I just use 'u' which is wrong but usually works in America. I didn't even bother checking with 'ue' and just went with 'u'
Ü isn't even a special character or utf-8 - ü is part of ascii. How does this even fail? Is their database a 7-bit database?
Re: The government ate my name
#5Interesting article, I've had some similar (though significantly less severe) experiences with having ä and ß in my names, it seems many U. S. companies are just unwilling/incapable of going beyond ASCII. The government being this sloppy at getting accents right is surprising, I would expect them to value accuracy and a clean paper trail when handling names. http://archive.today/5h4v2
> The government being this sloppy at getting accents right is surprising, I would expect them to value accuracy That tells me you're German, I didn't even need to see the ä and ß. Even in the UK I encounter websites that won't accept my Norwegian address because it begins with Å. English speaking countries generally are pretty bad at this sort of thing.
Last time I tried to make an international transfer from my British bank account it couldn't accept destination names with any accented characters. An international transfer. Sheesh.
Re: The government ate my name
#6Interesting article, I've had some similar (though significantly less severe) experiences with having ä and ß in my names, it seems many U. S. companies are just unwilling/incapable of going beyond ASCII. The government being this sloppy at getting accents right is surprising, I would expect them to value accuracy and a clean paper trail when handling names. http://archive.today/5h4v2
The USA government can't even handle ü. I was filling out a simple form to replace my damaged passport. I live in Zürich but it couldn't handle the umlaut. I never know what to do in this situation - do I use 'ue' instead, which is most common in Europe, or do I just use 'u' which is wrong but usually works in America. I didn't even bother checking with 'ue' and just went with 'u' Ü isn't even a special character or…
Don't think of government ascii as the entire ascii code page. Instead think of it as what's on a typewriter. You get 0-9 and A-Z along with a few punctuation characters.
Re: The government ate my name
#7There's an analogous problem for Russians, and presumably folks from other Slavic-language countries. Our last names are gendered; if Ivan Kuznetsov marries Elena, her last name becomes Kuznetsova. (And their children would have gendered last names, too - little Borya Kuznetsov and little Masha Kuznetsova.)
So Russian families who move to America have a choice - either deal with people and systems who assume that married couples, and parents/children all have the same last name and hit roadblocks when that expectation does not match reality, or change one partner's last name to match the other's.
But that second option has problems too, because that name change doesn't retroactively apply in Russia - so now you might have American documents that say you're a Elena Kuznetsov, but your Russian documents say that you're Elena Kuznetsova - so any legal dealings that involve the two countries (like, say, traveling) become significantly more complicated because you need to prove that the two names actually point to the same person.
At least middle names aren't a big issue - patronymics mean something in Russia, but here in America it's just a string you pop into the "middle name" field, and maybe you get asked what it means, and get to teach someone what patronymic means.
Re: The government ate my name
#8Interesting article, I've had some similar (though significantly less severe) experiences with having ä and ß in my names, it seems many U. S. companies are just unwilling/incapable of going beyond ASCII. The government being this sloppy at getting accents right is surprising, I would expect them to value accuracy and a clean paper trail when handling names. http://archive.today/5h4v2
The USA government can't even handle ü. I was filling out a simple form to replace my damaged passport. I live in Zürich but it couldn't handle the umlaut. I never know what to do in this situation - do I use 'ue' instead, which is most common in Europe, or do I just use 'u' which is wrong but usually works in America. I didn't even bother checking with 'ue' and just went with 'u' Ü isn't even a special character or…
if they can't type it on a keyboard when manually copying it from one place to another they'll drop it is what I've come to expect.
Re: The government ate my name
#9Interesting article, I've had some similar (though significantly less severe) experiences with having ä and ß in my names, it seems many U. S. companies are just unwilling/incapable of going beyond ASCII. The government being this sloppy at getting accents right is surprising, I would expect them to value accuracy and a clean paper trail when handling names. http://archive.today/5h4v2
The USA government can't even handle ü. I was filling out a simple form to replace my damaged passport. I live in Zürich but it couldn't handle the umlaut. I never know what to do in this situation - do I use 'ue' instead, which is most common in Europe, or do I just use 'u' which is wrong but usually works in America. I didn't even bother checking with 'ue' and just went with 'u' Ü isn't even a special character or…
Heck, they can't even handle that my last name has more than one capital letter in it.
Re: The government ate my name
#10> Famous people named Fenech include [...]
What? No love for Paul Fenech from "Fat Pizza"?