
My name causes an issue with any booking - signa11
https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/149323/my-name-causes-an-issue-with-any-booking-names-end-with-mr-and-mrs
======
deathanatos
I have a suffix (the Roman numeral Ⅳ), and it causes all sorts of problems.
Some sites will have me "prove" that I'm me by asking questions about "my"
credit history, and very often I'll get my father's. Half the time I've
already supplied a SSN… which makes it even more appalling that they can't get
this right.

I've also been issued a driver's license for a "4TH". I have no idea how TSA
would ever spot a fake. (Since they don't flag me! But I'm also in a
demographic that tends to get passes in the security theatre…)

~~~
packet_nerd
My wife is from Myanmar, where most people only have one name (no first, last,
etc.) and has experienced endless frustration since immigrating here to the
US. It's been quite difficult for her and even limiting in some ways and she's
broken down in tears more than once.

Some places just put a few letters into each field (like say for the name
Jessica, first: Jes, middle: si, last: ca, or something like that). The DMV
did that, and then listed her name on her license as <last>\<first> <middle
initial>. Others have insisted on putting "nosurname" in the last name field.
The immigration people put "FNU" as first name, and her given name in the
last. At some places she's put her name twice, once in the first, and once in
the last.

Not anything close to what she's had to endure, but my name doesn't fit the
standard mold either. I prefer to use my middle name and really dislike using
my first name (shared whith my dad, who I don't have a good relationship
with). I'm endlessly having to explain every single stinking time I interact
with pretty much anyone.

Anyway, the take away is, please please please (!!!) don't make assumptions
about people's names! Ideally just one field labeled "name", and let the user
interpret that as they see fit. If you need to collect a legal name then you
need to validate it anyway. If you really must do first name / last name then
at least make the last optional and also include a field for "what should we
call you" or "nick name" or something.

Great ted talk about Myanmar names:
[https://www.ted.com/talks/cynthia_ma_shwe_sin_win_not_good_w...](https://www.ted.com/talks/cynthia_ma_shwe_sin_win_not_good_with_names_local_name_customs_in_a_global_village)

~~~
thaumasiotes
> I prefer to use my middle name and really dislike using my first name
> (shared with my dad, who I don't have a good relationship with). I'm
> endlessly having to explain every single stinking time I interact with
> pretty much anyone.

This sounds dramatically overstated. Going by your middle name is normal and
doesn't require much in the way of explanations. For example, my father goes
by his middle name. This has led to "problems" all of one time -- when he
worked for the military, they insisted on the first name. So, during that
period, he used the first name.

~~~
packet_nerd
I know it's a minor annoyance, but it's something that jades me every single
day and gets really old after a while. I feel companies and websites should do
a better job of being respectful. A "what should we call you" field is simple
and easy, would make the service much more friendly to some people.

~~~
krilly
So do you dutifully put your real first name into all forms? I know people who
always go by shortened versions of their name (e.g. Rob instead of Robert).
They just put in their preferred name as their first name for everything (uni,
bills, etc.)

You can't blame companies for using the name they give you. Are you worried
about being accused of fraud or something?

------
protomyth
Amr Eladawy has personally contacted GDS but been ignored. Sadly, this is one
of those situations where getting a lawyer to send a letter to them probably
would work. A bug that affects a group of minorities with a mention of
interfering with the US Constitution right to travel with a hint of possible
class action will tend to fix this type of bug. I don't like bug-report-via-
lawyer but it does work.

~~~
codingdave
To be fair, we don't know if the problem is being ignored, or just isn't in
the current sprint.

Think about how this would go on your team. Customer service sends in a ticket
to your Product owner, complaining that a customer has a problem, and called
in not only reporting it, but telling you exactly what their expected fix was.
Even if the team acknowledged the problem and wanted to fix it, would it
really be bumped to the #1 priority, and would the team really just take the
fix from the customer instead of designing their own solution?

Or would it be triaged and prioritized, taking into account all other product
and customers needs at the same time?

I'm not arguing that airline customer service is great. But a post on
stackexchange venting about a customer service team's lack of communication
gives us zero insights into what is really going on.

~~~
Waterluvian
All the Agile nonsense is irrelevant if you're not communicating with the
individual.

~~~
a012
True, where I worked for, they'd scrap a sprint to fix something that went
over CxO's channel.

------
Smithalicious
>Recently, another smart developer decided to prevent people with first name
less than 2 characters from checking-in.

PSA, don't assume everyone has a name of at least 2 characters; it isn't
remotely true. Some people don't even have more than one name.

~~~
a3n
My entire "legal" name is "Aaron." (And now you know what my HN name means.) I
was born with the usual three names. When I was thirty, years before 9/11 and
DHS, I got a court order and dropped the middle and last. Because, OK?

Never a problem, often a conversation. Sometimes I'd have to spend a little
effort to be sure it said "Aaron" on my driver license. Other areas like
credit cards and employment I've been more flexible, going by "A Aaron" or
"Aaron Aaron," etc.

SS used to call me "Aaron." At some point they renamed me to "UNK Aaron."

All fine.

Coming on two years ago, as part of a "pivot," I got my CDL, Commercial Driver
License.

Up to this point my DL said "Aaron." During training my learners permit said
"Aaron."

When it came time to take the CDL road test, the CDL office, separate in some
way from the DMV, would not schedule my test.

"Because there _must_ be something in the first and last name fields _on the
driver license_."

Without investigating, I'm quite sure that they populate some CDL office
record from some DMV record, and _their_ software was written assuming that
there must be two names _and_ assuming that the DMV records would all have at
least two names. But not three or more, because the programmer or requirements
writer had personal experience with people without a middle name.

So I had to go back to the DMV and get my driver license changed to something
else.

It too a while, phone calls, "can't you just ..." etc.

The clerk finally agreed to list me as "Unknown Aaron." Which, note, is not my
legal name, just what the DMV agreed to call me. So my legal name and "wallet"
name are not the same.

Now the CDL office recognized me as "Unknown Aaron." Took my test, got my
permanent CDL. Which says "Unknown Aaron."

Hired on with a company which knows me as "Unknown Aaron," because they have
to use my CDL name because the feds know me that way now.

Which means my health and other insurance knows me that way.

Which means my doctors know me that way.

So thanks, anonymous programmer.

~~~
gota
> I've been more flexible, going by "A Aaron"

I'm sorry, but if I found that name IRL I'd have a hard time not laughing.
Have you seen the Substitute Teacher sketch by Key and Peele?

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dd7FixvoKBw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dd7FixvoKBw)

~~~
a3n
Yup. Funny.

------
rco8786
I have an apostrophe in my name and it causes allll sorts of issues like this.
(Think Bobby Tables). To the point where I’m pretty convinced that the
internet is going to wipe out apostrophes from people’s actual names. In fact
I just omitted it in my most recent drivers license.

~~~
LeonM
My name is officially spelled as Léon.

The letter e with an acute accent causes all sorts of UTF-8 encoding issues
with many services, not just airliners. If you interpret the UTF-8 é (0xC3A9)
as ASCII it becomes Ã (0xC3) + © (0xA9), so my name often comes out as
'LÃ©on'.

Airlines make it worse, because they strip both characters during sanity
checking, so my name comes out as 'Lon', which has caused me problems a couple
of times as the name on my passport did not match the name on the ticket.

~~~
deathanatos
> _If you interpret the UTF-8 é (0xC3A9) as ASCII it becomes Ã (0xC3) + ©
> (0xA9)_

As latin1 (ISO-8859-1) or Win-1252; ASCII doesn't have either Ã or ©.

latin1 is the default for text, including HTML, if you don't specify in
protocols such as HTTP (modulo some stupidity from the WHATWG where it might
be Win-1252 instead) and Windows-1252 is the default encoding in Windows in
the USA (at least, prior to the Unicode APIs being added. The old APIs
probably still exist though…). So these codecs pop up a lot in places where
people who don't know what they're doing end up touching text.

~~~
perl4ever
I ran across some code once for descrambling data that had been incorrectly
processed like that, which I found common in legal documents. It's an
interesting problem, because strictly speaking, it's lossy, but you can use
probabilities to figure out something plausible. You can decode/encode one
thing as another, or you can decode/encode multiple times...

~~~
OkGoDoIt
Any chance you have a link? I’ve had implement solutions to this myself and
it’s very tedious. If someone has built a more complete solution I would love
to just use that instead

~~~
bulatb
This HN thread has some links and discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16103356](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16103356)

~~~
perl4ever
That might be what I'm remembering; then again, I don't really do Python, so
maybe it was something else. I doubt it was anything better than the link
above, regardless.

------
adrianmonk
As a general rule, the earlier an industry automated their systems, the worse
the implementation.

In the earlier decades of computing, the software industry really just didn't
know what it was doing too much. (Not that we're perfect now, but we were even
worse back then.)

And replacing an implementation is a huge undertaking, and a lot of industries
just don't bother.

This leads to a paradoxical situation where industries that most obviously
need automation are the ones that have the worst automation. Before others,
they pushed to get it done, and they got locked in to something primitive
and/or outmoded.

~~~
wayoutthere
I mean, it doesn't hurt that hardware now is so fast and scalable that
performance and efficiency can take a back seat to usability and clarity.
Guarantee this was done because storing the title as part of the first name
field saved a few bytes over having a separate field, and that really mattered
in the 70s when these systems were designed.

~~~
kingbirdy
Based on the top answer, this appears to be an error in the CLI "helpfully"
re-interpreting Amr as { First name: A, Title: Mr }, not an issue on the data
storage side.

~~~
naniwaduni
This interpretation imputes a principled separation of the "CLI" from the
"data storage side". Not a winning bet.

------
alboy
My first name ends with "-dr" and I've been awarded doctorates by quite a few
airlines.

~~~
sidewndr46
An honorary Doctorate from American Airlines, quite the impressive feat.

------
canada_dry
I was prevented from doing an _advance online check-in_ with Emirates (while
overseas) because - I was told later - my son and I have the same (first/last)
name and their system couldn't handle it. Subsequently, the flight was
overbooked and we got bumped (which would have been avoided had I been able to
use their online advance check-in).

I still can't get my head around how their online check-in system was setup
where this could happen.

 _updated for clarity_

~~~
thiscatis
So my best guess with my limited knowledge about GDS:

\- You were on the same booking with an infant with the same name

\- You were the primary passenger

\- Due to overbooking people get bumped

\- They usually start with comfort seats (both in your name) or an accidental
double booking

\- Because your son, probably underage at that time, was bumped the primary
passenger was bumped too

~~~
rovr138
It says that the issue was 2 persons on a flight with the same name. The
system can’t handle it.

~~~
thiscatis
Cool, but not being able to checkin online is usually a sign of already being
bumped, not the other way around.

~~~
canada_dry
Well, that's certainly plausible. Though I was told - after escalating the
issue - that their system had an _" issue with our names being the same"_
causing some bug in their online system.

Normally our middle initials are carried forward to the carrier's booking
system and that differentiates my son and I when we fly together... but in
Emirates case it seems they weren't.

------
vmilner
I noticed while watching the Athletics World Championships, that the 5000m
runner Ben True always had his name shown in the results as:

SMITH John

True Ben

JONES Fred

BLOGGS Bill

~~~
iso-8859-1
So it probably means that a "dynamically" typed system is used. Is there a
database where if you INSERT the string 'TRUE' you get an actual boolean
stored? IIRC MySQL used to not actually coerce types into the type the column
is declared as.

------
thanatropism
A simpler case is Hispanic surnames. Suppose I'm writer Miguel de Cervantes
Saavedra. From airline tickets to name tags in networking/speaking engagement
programs, I show up as Miguel Saavedra. But I'm Cervantes.

I'm not Cervantes and I suppose I'm a little patriarchal, but I'm very proud
of my dad's achievements and wear his name (whenever they let me) with pride.

~~~
mcpeepants
Also with a name like "Firstname Last Name" I love having my initials show up
in software as "FN"

~~~
plibither8
Telegram does this in chat icons and it's very annoying.

------
johnobrien1010
My name is John O'Brien. I can't tell you the number of times using my name
breaks web forms.

One time at work, I insisted on getting access to a system I manage. When they
added my name, the whole system came down for a day in production. I told them
never mind, they deleted my name from the list of registered users, and the
system came back up.

True story.

------
DonHopkins
Congress should pass the Little Bobby Tables Act, that outlaws SQL injection
bugs, legalizes the use of full Unicode in all names, and requires all
software to be updated to fully support its requirements.

Then you could give your kids cool names with colorful emojis, and even
invisible &ZWNBSP; zero-width no-break space word joiners and &SHY; soft
hyphens!

~~~
mises
Legislators tend to do a very bad job of creating technical standards. There
is no constitutionally-enumerated power for Congress to regulate which
character-encoding standard is used. On the other hand, updating all gov't and
military systems to unicode-only would force the change pretty quickly, I'd
guess.

You also can't outlaw a vulnerability. It's an honest development mistake.

I assume you're joking about emojis and other esoteric characters?

~~~
philwelch
> There is no constitutionally-enumerated power for Congress to regulate which
> character-encoding standard is used.

If you squint, it's kind of covered by the weights and measures clause, in the
same way that the clause that allows Congress to establish armies covers
Congress establishing the Air Force.

~~~
rswail
You don't really need to squint. A combination of the weights and measures
clause, the interstate commerce clause, the federal postal service, is more
than enough for Congress to have jursidiction on how names are to be encoded
and processed.

~~~
philwelch
It’s also unquestionably legal to have an Air Force, too.

------
sek
My official full name is too long, I just have a second and a third first name
with are all not so short. This is not uncommon here in Germany and therefore
usually not a problem. But a lot of foreign IT systems where it says "put it
exactly like in your official document" it doesn't work or it cuts it of.
Witch made my third name once "Al". It also happened that it took my second
name as my last name....

The German state isn't much better with foreign names. I have a lot of friends
who are from eastern europe. Everybody has a weird story about how their
current passport name came about.

Why isn't there some ISO name parsing standard that can understand a weird
title of a prince of a city state and give you an appropriate output of it?

This is acutally a research topic, so the information is right there.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthroponymy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthroponymy)

Our globally connected society didn't figure out how to deal with names yet.
Weird if you think about it.

~~~
stefs
if you start parsing names, you have already lost:

[https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-
programmers-...](https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-
believe-about-names/)

~~~
sek
The standard could have fallback field, where you just put your UTF-8 string
in there and then the system knows it's something that doesn't fit in all the
other categories.

Better than not trying at least, the current situation just sucks.

------
thenewnewguy
Question for HN commenters:

What is the most appropriate way to store names in a way that is unlikely to
run into issues?

~~~
alwayslearning0
I'm hardly a professional but what's the big issue with just having a string
field for the name. Why separate first last middle suffixes etc. Seems
entirely pointless. When you want to search for someone you can just search
for a substring instead of a particular field.

Did I just win database?

~~~
perl4ever
Things that come to mind offhand:

\- First initial and last name are used for some things, such as usernames.

\- First name and last initial are used for some things, such as public
displays where you don't want to have the full name

\- Last name is used to sort lists

\- Names are entered differently due to error or constraints in different
places, so you want a way to search the parts that stay the same. Sure, you
can imagine everybody just had a string field, but it can't happen all at
once. And on a global scale, there are definitely people who will enter their
name differently anyway.

~~~
nitwit005
There are people who only have one name, so anything that relies on having two
names is essentially broken.

You commonly see companies with user names that started as first character of
first name + last name, and then you see later ones that don't follow the
pattern when they realize they can't make it work.

~~~
packet_nerd
> There are people who only have one name

My wife for one. At the very least make the last name field optional.

------
jakewins
Since hyphenating my last name, I can no longer check into AA flights without
human intervention.. minor inconvenience I guess, but annoying.

In general it seems we make bad assumptions about names - like that everyone
has a "first name" and a "last name" to enter into two separate database
fields.

~~~
alexhutcheson
[https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-
programmers-...](https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-
believe-about-names/)

------
Pxtl
I work with people from India who don't have a Western first-name last-name
structure and have gotten very used to seeing their full multipart names
written in both the first and last field. It seems a common workaround for
these folks with names that break the system - just write their full name in
all name fields.

------
YeGoblynQueenne
Nothing on the level of inconvenience that man experiences, but the other day
I went to the Argos to buy some stuff and they have a new system where they
ask you to input your first name as an identifier for your order.

So I entered mine, which is "stassa", and ... I got an error message saying my
"memorable word is invalid". I got a screenshot and all:

[https://imgur.com/a/En4dBQO](https://imgur.com/a/En4dBQO)

The error message says "Sorry, your memorable word is invalid; please enter a
different word".

So I entered "alice" and that was accepted. I guess, they originally had a
message prompting the user for a "memorable word" not to enter their "first
name". I didn't try it because I was in a hurry but I bet their system is
setup to accept only dictionary words, but then they realised that most people
will just enter whatever comes to their mind and often fail to match the
dictionary that (I assume) the Argos developers have chosen as "standard".

So now they're asking people to enter their names... and that also fails
because people often have names that are not in the dictionary. Like mine that
just happens to be foreign (for the UK; it's a Greek name).

I just imagine the looks of confusion on people called Sandeep (not a British
English dictionary word) or LaRonda (not one either) or Marek (also not) etc.
"But, it says my name is invalid. What do I do?".

Automation, eh?

Edit: I wasn't buying what's partly showing on the left of the image, btw :)

~~~
0x0
Or maybe it is a ban on

    
    
      /.*ass.*/
    
    ?

~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
Oh.

Well, thanks. Now I will never say my own name in the same, care-free and
innocent way I've always said it until now.

Ever. Again.

------
OJFord
While at school I went on a group booked international trip with most of the
year, including someone unrelated but with the same surname.

In both directions we had to check-in together and claim to be brothers,
because whatever booking system had somehow assumed we were, and for whatever
reason it was more important (or perhaps easier and without consequence) (the
staff told us) to go along with that booking mistake than to be honest.

------
ByThyGrace
From the SE comments:

> My friend's last name is Test: he says airline tickets are silently deleted
> about 25% of the time. Awful!

Yikes...

------
ovi256
Another victim of in-band signalling.

------
bluedino
DJ Delorie (of DJGPP game) used to complain about similar broken systems

------
steve_taylor
Last year, I integrated a Zuora payment iframe into a popular sports streaming
product. We had a customer who couldn’t sign up, because his surname contained
the word _resize_ , which is a command that the iframe sends to its host
script to adjust the iframe’s height. It was some of the most rubbish code
I’ve ever seen. Zuora continued to deny it was their fault, so I doubt it’s
been fixed. I worked around it by uppercasing the cardholder’s name.

~~~
yolanda_zuora
hi Steve, we happened to notice this so to give you an update that the issue
mentioned here has already been fixed ;)

------
zmix
Reminds me of "Mr. Buttle" and "Mr. Tuttle" (reference to the movie "Brazil")

------
seanmcdirmid
My last name causes lots of problems in China. Is there a space after the Mc
or not? They’ve decided there must be because my passport has one, woe is me
if I leave it out (I’ve been in banking hell a few times because of this).
Also, your given name is your first name + middle name.

------
hanoz
I don't understand why this isn't causing him serious problems travelling.

I'm also surprised this isn't a more widely recognised phenomenon, because
whilst there are very few first names ending mr, there are quite a few more
ending miss or ms.

~~~
trentdk
I thought as a joke that the API is so old, that they didn’t treat women
passengers with the same formality. Well... that might be true. In the
documentation linked, I see no example of “MS” or “MISS”.

[http://www.amadeus.com/bg/documents/aco/bg/basic-
qrg.pdf](http://www.amadeus.com/bg/documents/aco/bg/basic-qrg.pdf)

Page 33

~~~
isbvhodnvemrwvn
They do seem to support the common ones:

[https://servicehub.amadeus.com/c/portal/view-
solution/389313...](https://servicehub.amadeus.com/c/portal/view-
solution/3893134/en_US/guidelines-on-passenger-name-record-pnr-data)

------
irrational
[https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-
programmers-...](https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-
believe-about-names/)

------
raverbashing
>Using a space, the parsing is unambiguous, however not all agents put a
space, thus if instead the agent types:

>Then the command will be parsed as (NM, 1, ELADAWY, A, MR) to be "helpful".

And that's why doing some things for "convenience's sake" is BS. If a travel
agent can't type a space between the name and the title then they shouldn't be
a travel agent

Or if they don't double check it was entered correctly (which ok, in some
terminals might have been a bit annoying)

I have two last names, GDSs just concatenates them together. Weird, but it
works.

------
TheRealSteel
Seems like the only way to get them to fix this is to make a fuss about how
it's racist. You shouldn't have to, but that's what I would do. That'll get
them to pay attention.

------
TomMckenny
They did not test-run the code change against a database of the names of
previous fliers?

Because if the change reduced some passengers to "can't be booked" I think
that should raise some flags.

~~~
cpeterso
Are there any public test data sets of name corner cases? Given the popular
"falsehoods programmers believe" lists, someone could create a public data set
of unsanitized name inputs, expected decompositions, and expected round trip
result. I think genealogy organizations have published de facto standards for
name formatting.

~~~
Sirened
Not exactly what you asked for, but [https://github.com/minimaxir/big-list-of-
naughty-strings/](https://github.com/minimaxir/big-list-of-naughty-strings/)
does have a lot of inputs which, if given as names, would turn out the bugs
you're looking for.

------
beowulfey
I too have always wondered why my name can sometimes get mangled between what
I type in and what arrived on my ticket. Fascinating insight into the airline
industry.

~~~
matwood
Airlines I fly with a lot I know how to type in my name into their boxes in
order to generate the right ticket name. If they only have a first name, last
name box where do I put my middle name and/or Jr? Some force me to pick a
Mr./Mrs/Miss/etc..., and then put it on the ticket...sigh.

------
gandutraveler
I know twin brothers who have a long name (very common in some parts of
India). So when they moved to US apparently they both were issued same SSN
number because the SSN system registered the name backwards ( last -> middle
-> first) which exceeded the limit and the first name which was unique got
changed to FNU (First name undefined).

It took them years to figure out they both had same SSN.

------
locusofself
My wife has a hyphenated first name and no middle name, Like Mary-Claire
Smith. It's very annoying for all kinds of systems, and usually results in
some kind of compromise like separating the hyphenated name into first and
middle, which isn't a huge deal, but does not match her documents and isn't
really her name. Ugh.

------
Havoc
I’ve had a similar issue. And wasn’t allowed to board as a result. Airlines
can be pretty ruthless in their incompetence

------
AndrewDucker
One I don't see often in these is where one didn't refer to a given person by
their name at all.

It doesn't matter if they're in the system as "Elizabeth Windsor", if you
don't send them their account statement addressed to "Their Royal Highness"
they'll switch to a company which does...

------
eckesicle
My middle name is my first name, and my given name is my middle name. So it's
"Middle Given Surname". It's common where I'm from and on my official
identification the given name is usually just underlined. I've had no end of
issues since moving to the UK however.

------
JoeAltmaier
Don't get me started about 'middle initial'. I have two, but good luck with
that.

~~~
cpeterso
I have a friend whose middle name is just a single letter (H), so his middle
initial is the same as his middle name.

~~~
teddyh
Like U.S. President Harry S. Truman:

[https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/education/trivia/use-of-
period...](https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/education/trivia/use-of-period-after-
s-truman-name)

------
GaelFG
What about doubling the 'mr' in the end of your name ? It should be (I say
that without any serious confidence) possible to explain the probleme in case
of someone wanting to know why you ticket name is'nt exactly matching your id
document.

~~~
kurtisc
Since it sometimes comes through as 'Amrmr', I guess some agents are trying
that but for their system it isn't stripped.

------
DonHopkins
>Recently, another smart developer decided to prevent people with first name
less than 2 characters from checking-in.

That would have made it difficult for The Artist Formerly Known As Prince to
fly commercially.

~~~
a3n
My best guess is that that was only his celebrity name, and he used his
original name for non celebrity business. Like Cher.

~~~
DonHopkins
He made his own font, and distributed it on floppy disks to members of the
press, along with complete step-by-step instruction for how to refer to the
artist by name in print, and how install the font on Mac and PC!

[https://milk.com/wall-o-shame/bruce_font.html](https://milk.com/wall-o-
shame/bruce_font.html)

>[P] Background: On June 7, 1993, mega-star Prince surprised fans and the
entertainment industry when he announced that he was separating from his band
New Power Generation and changing his name. At the time, the performer legally
changed his name top the symbol [P], which has no verbal pronunciation or
spelling. He did not reveal his reason for the change.

------
infinitejones
I came here expecting the author to be Little Bobby Tables...

------
throeuhweigh
My name is legally “Ed” (not Edward), and I had some trouble recently
registering on a website which required a minimum of 3 chars for the first
name.

------
stakhanov
Maybe he can just tell the agent to put in the name AMRMR instead.

~~~
elliekelly
Or MrAmr which, assuming Amr is a man, would be technically not wrong when he
enters his name as “Mr Amr” and would then be (correctly) corrected by the
system dropping the first instance of “mr” in the string.

------
z3t4
It seems the solution is for him to but mr infront of or after his name.
Another solution to a part of a name getting filtered out is to write it many
times. For example ammrr turns into amr if mr is removed.

------
dboreham
I was expecting an article about someone named "DELETE FROM USERS;"

------
dwighttk
I haven’t used an agent or gotten a ticket since back when Amadeus was new

------
OrgNet
hyphens and name length can also cause issues

------
ambyra
Hello, “Not Sure”

------
ambyra
Hello, Not Sure

------
lugg
I find it incredibly annoying that every single answer seems to just accept
that this is how things are and can't be changed.

And that it's fine because everyone knows it's buggy.

That's great, but it would be cool if one day I didn't have to explain all
this to some random airline staff 50 times during my travel.

------
droithomme
In the US at least courts have ruled that although you have a right to travel
such as by foot, your right to travel by car or plane etc is not an absolute
right but is a privilege subject to regulation.

To travel on a plane your booking name must match your government id.

Old systems written in COBOL have been tried to be updated countless times
over the last 70 years and it's simply not possible technologically.

Therefore if this gentleman wishes to travel he will need to change his legal
name.

It sucks but this is the price we pay for freedom and safety.

------
oli5679
Reminds me of this:

[https://xkcd.com/327/](https://xkcd.com/327/)

------
numlock86
I was hoping for this being a post about grown up Little Bobby Tables.

~~~
AdieuToLogic
> I was hoping for this being a post about grown up Little Bobby Tables.

You beat me to it[0]! :-D

0 - [https://www.xkcd.com/327/](https://www.xkcd.com/327/)

------
avip
Quite unusual spelling. Most Amars would be Amar or Amer (or Umar/Omar).

~~~
smashah
It's not Amar though. Amr is a very common Egyptian name. And it's literally
sounds like ah-mr. There's no vowel you can put between m and r to make that
sound.

~~~
lostlogin
What about ‘i’?

I’m not suggesting this gets done - the persons name is their name.

A system I use has a 42 character limit for the last name, at that was passed
last week with a 47 character last name.

~~~
avip
Different name, Amir starts with an Allif

------
toomuchlove
Anything other than [A-Za-z]+ causes trouble.

~~~
Sharlin
Did you read TFA? His name matches [A-Za-z]+.

~~~
Tempest1981
Maybe he meant "can also cause problems in old systems"

