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The government ate my name

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131–140 of 212 posts

Re: The government ate my name

#131

> In response to 9/11, Congress had passed the REAL ID Act, requiring a new type of identification to board domestic flights [...] (It’s been postponed twice since then. The new deadline is now 2027, wink wink.) For anyone reading this...this isn't true. It finally actually went into effect on May 7, 2025. EDIT: I HAVE witnessed someone at a TSA checkpoint at an airport get turned away because they didn't have a REAL…

Yes I just traveled domestically. Real ID was required.

Does a passport still work?

Re: The government ate my name

#132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have experienced visa issues due to name differences in papers while traveling between Belarus and Russia. Monetary arguments were necessary to get through. But this was also over a decade ago.

Differences between your name on your passport and your name on your visa? That is completely separate thing. If you mean different last names as your travel partner, I don’t understand why you having different last names would matter? Doesn’t each person have their own visa? It sounds like you were just being shaken down. It didn’t matter what your name was, they just picked something bullshit to shake you down with…

> Differences between your name on your passport and your name on your visa?

It's not precisely stated in the GP, but most probably that one. Background: Russian and Belarusian spelling of names are slightly different, the latter being orthographically closer to the phonetic value. (The current Belarusian president-for-life is globally known as "Alexander Lukashenko", which is a transliteration from Russian; the Belarusian spelling, again transliterated, is "Alyaksandar Lukashenka". For the originals, see his Wikipedia page.)

N.B. I'm writing this as a non-expert in either of the languages, but I can read Russian.

Re: The government ate my name

#133

A few years ago I was unable to register a new Australian company via the automated systems because one of our directors has a hyphenated middle name and the various agencies concerned normalised this in differing ways, leading to rejection at a validation step. Resolving this turned a process of a few minutes into a multi-week telephonic saga. I subsequently learned that many folks faced with the same problem simply…

An Aussie friend has a hyphenated last name and has had so many headaches in her life due to it she made everyone she knew swear they wouldn’t inflict that on their future children

Re: The government ate my name

#134
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europe is much worse about that than the US. Many countries don't let you change your name at all unless you have an extremely strong reason to do so. Others have strict requirements on what an acceptable name is, and foreign-sounding names are often not allowed. Denmark straight up gives you a whitelist of allowed names to choose from.

And then there's Ireland where your name is whatever you can prove people call you

That’s basically California about legal names.

My first name is an old family name. I’m the 8th to have it. My kid’s the 9th. I go by my middle name. My mom and dad and sisters call me that. My wife calls me that. My doctor calls me that. My first name would be an AKA, an alias. Literally no one calls me by that name.

And that’s why my credit union is one that would issue me a debit card in my legal name, which is to say my legal name. Other banks have strict rules to call me by my alias, so I don’t use them.

Side note: I’m way sympathetic to people who’ve changed their names and want to be called something else. Use my first name with me and I know you’re someone who doesn’t know the first thing about me. You’re a stranger. I don’t identify with it at all.

Re: The government ate my name

#135

> In response to 9/11, Congress had passed the REAL ID Act, requiring a new type of identification to board domestic flights [...] (It’s been postponed twice since then. The new deadline is now 2027, wink wink.) For anyone reading this...this isn't true. It finally actually went into effect on May 7, 2025. EDIT: I HAVE witnessed someone at a TSA checkpoint at an airport get turned away because they didn't have a REAL…

The final rule on REAL ID published earlier this year announced a 2-year phased implementation option for federal agencies. There were some indications at the that TSA intended to use that option for air travel, though no information on specific phased implementation plans was ever released, and the full enforcement at the May 7 date was implemented. This is probably the source of confusion (though such a basic fact, 5 months after the full enforcement date, should not have been missed.)

Re: The government ate my name

#136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do people think of this as 8-bit ASCII ? I've never heard of it referred to ASCII until now. In fact, I've never heard of it at all (by the time I was old enough to know what a character encoding was, Latin-1 and Windows-1252 were totally dominant IIRC).

In DOS days, codepage 437 was commonly referred to as "ASCII" colloquially in countries where some other encoding was in use for the national script.

Interesting to know, thanks!

Re: The government ate my name

#138
post #73

> In fact, authorities in New York never actually wrote down anyone’s name, they just checked each immigrant against the ship’s passenger list, which would have been compiled by employees of the steamship companies. That means that your grandpa Szymańczyk turned into Simmons before he even set foot on the boat. So many people refuse to understand this. It's a fact they simply reject. > I was born in Mexico City, and…

> But all this hits upon something I don't like about the "Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names" article: Programmers usually don't believe things, programmers implement things

These lists are called “Falsehoods programmers believe about...” because ultimately, when the rubber meets the road, it’s a programmer who makes the decision to type it in, implement it, and ultimately cause the problem. Maybe, to be more accurate, the lists should be called “Falsehoods programmers perpetuate by not pushing back against clients and product managers.”

Re: The government ate my name

#139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> who assume that married couples, and parents/children all have the same last name and hit roadblocks when that expectation does not match reality Speaking as someone whose mom didn't change their name when marrying my dad, with a sister who didn't change her name when marrying my brother in law, with a wife who also didn't change her name when she married me, I think this problem is overblown. I have yet to encount…

Looking at it from the other way, your mom probably didn't change her name because it's not a big deal where you live ? People getting the issues live in different systems and/or have different needs, and it also changes with our world getting more digital. One part that doesn't much depend on locality this days would be international travel and money. For international travel, small kids having a different name is s…

This happened to my grandparents a few times going back and forth to Canada with me when I was a kid (before 9/11). Even with the birth certificate and whatever else, they can arbitrarily decide to waste your entire day. Better safe than sorry.

I think part of it was because the hospital I was born at was renamed just before I was born, and then demolished not too long after. I've had it trip things up before remembering to mention the original hospital name. Everyone seems generally familiar with the bullshit now, just a matter of remembering to bring it up because they're expecting it.

Re: The government ate my name

#140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who has a different last name to my child, I constantly encounter really weird issues where people assume that I don't exist since "First name, Childs last name" doesn't exist in the database.

Really? I am curious to hear an example, because I am struggling to imagine when this would be something they would try to find you by your kids last name.

For me, it's mostly been in medical settings. I've had particular trouble with public health programs automatically signing me up under my child's last name.

I don't know if my local healthcare catchment just has their software setup wrong, but it's a continual annoyance.

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