
Ask HN: Single Letter Last Name or First Name - jsudhams
Hi all,
Question is : Can i request for Web RFC to ensure nameing first and last to have minimum as 1 letter than 2?<p>Reaso : See below.
I am from southern part of India where we use to give names in School like &quot;V F Myself&quot; which is basically V for Village , F for Father and followed by my Name. So name like P N Giri was the name written in school certificate and with absemse of birth certificate school certificate forms as basic validation artifact of name and birth date. Now until about Year 2000 we did not have any issue as most websites either not used validation in names or it hand written forms and registers. Now after coming in contact with west we had to that name to Giri N otherwise US people will call me Hello N (huh!!) which was also ok. But the issue most of the websites now dont accept my last name as single letter which N so my face Giri Ns (S for space) i have option of expanding the name but 1. i dont like it blooks like alien name to be 2. all proofs including my bank passbook , school certificate and other have N.Giri as name.  (I heard from a friend in thailand who had issue it name X and he change to Xe or something)
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greenyoda
It's sad that people who implement computer systems keep on assuming that they
can somehow "validate" names:

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

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a3n
I'm with you, but why stop at one character? Why not zero. My entire legal
name is a single word. Is it my first name? My last name? Where it matters, I
use it as a last name, for consistent sorting and searching. I attempt to use
nothing for the first name, and I rarely succeed. Once in awhile I'll use Name
Name, like Amorymeltzer's professor.

If there was a group dedicated to this issue, they might call themselves the
Harry S Truman society.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_S._Truman#Early_life_and...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_S._Truman#Early_life_and_career)

~~~
greenyoda
_" The 'S' [in 'Harry S Truman'] did not stand for anything, a common practice
among the Scots-Irish ..."_

Neither of my parents (who were born in central Europe) had a middle name at
all. The fact that middle names are optional (can be zero characters long)
does seem to be recognized by people who create forms asking for full names. I
never provide mine, and nobody complains.

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Amorymeltzer
I had a professor with this problem, his solution? Duplicate it: "P N Giri"
becomes "Giri Giri"

