
Personal names around the world - gulbrandr
http://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-personal-names.en.php?changelang=en
======
_delirium
Another sorting oddity: you can't correctly sort proper names in Danish
without knowing if the name is a Scandinavian or foreign name, e.g. via some
big lookup table (or maybe heuristics). If it's a Scandinavian name, 'aa' is
an alternate rendition of 'å' (retained mainly in proper names), and is sorted
after 'z'. But if it's a foreign name, 'aa' is just two 'a' in a row, and is
sorted at the front. Therefore the city of Aalborg goes towards the end of an
encyclopedia, but the city of Aachen goes towards the front. Also the case
with personal names, e.g. Kierkegaard (a Danish surname) is sorted as if it
were Kierkegård, but Haas (a German and Dutch surname) is sorted as H-a-a-s,
not H-å-s.

On the other hand, people are getting more used to just sorting 'aa' as 'a-a'
rather than 'å', because many computer systems do so. Encyclopedias still use
the traditional sort order, as do hand-ordered lists of people, but if you get
a printout of students registered in a course from the registrar, it's pretty
likely it'll be sorted the way an English speaker would expect. Either that,
or the reverse: the computer might use a collation method where _all_ 'aa'
pairs are treated as an 'å', which isn't quite right either, and maybe
actually more confusing.

~~~
IgorPartola
Does that mean that you can use Kierkegård and Kierkegaard interchangeably?
Does that cause confusion when you are trying to locate personal records?

~~~
taejo
I don't know about Danish, but in German, ü "decomposes" into "ue" and is
sorted that way in phonebooks. Herr Müller wouldn't be surprised to see his
name spelled Mueller in ASCII-only contexts. OTOH, in some families it is
traditional to write the name without the umlaut, and in these cases it's
wrong to write it with, so Frau Mueller wouldn't like to see her surname
written Müller (though it has the same pronunciation and origin). Famous
examples are Goebbels and Goethe (not Göbbels and Göthe). There's a similar
situation with ß vs. ss.

So if Danish is like German, you can't call Kierkegaard Kierkegård, but
they're still the "same" surname and appear next to each other in the phone
book.

~~~
_delirium
That's generally the same in Danish, although one historical tidbit to add to
it is that the aa->å respelling in Danish happened only in 1948. With that
spelling reform, all normal words using 'aa' as a digraph were respelled to
use 'å', so for example "cemetery" went from "kirkegaard" to "kirkegård". The
latter is now the standard spelling, and "kirkegaard" would only be accepted
in situations where it's a technical necessity (e.g. using 7-bit ASCII).

If that had been done across the board, Danish would be easy to sort, since
the only digraph would have been eliminated, replaced with an atomic
character. However the reform was not made mandatory for personal names;
people could choose to retain the 'aa' or switch to 'å', and many retained the
traditional spelling (the traditional spelling was also retained for
historical figures). There was some discussion about officially reforming the
names of cities to use the new 'å' spellings, but both Aarhus and Aalborg (the
2nd- and 3rd-largest cities) strongly objected. So placenames were not
reformed (unless a specific locality opted in). You do _occasionally_ see the
spellings Århus and Ålborg, especially in writing closer to the time of the
reform, but those spellings didn't catch on.

~~~
Svip
Actually, Århus changed its name immediately after the reform, but Aalborg did
not. It was not until 2012 that Århus decided to change its name back to
»Aarhus« to become 'easier to spell internationally' (which was the argument).

I still spell it Århus to taunt the idea that it was the »å« that prevented
Århus from the same business opportunities as Copenhagen -- I'm sorry,
København.

------
PeterisP
To sum it up:

TL;DR - Names are complex, simply ask the person for an unicode representation
of how they'd like to be called and use exactly that.

1\. Any reasonable assumptions or generealizations that you could try to make
about names are wrong for millions of people, so don't make any.

2\. There is no reasonable way to automatically split a person name in
meaningful parts, because there is no such thing as a single universal
ontology of meaningful name parts that will fit everyone. Treat personal names
as indivisible, immutable items; don't try to separate them in parts.

3\. There is no reasonable way to automatically generate a short-polite-
addressable form from a full name, aside from (a) asking the user or (b)
limiting yourself to a whitelisted subset of names that won't work for
millions of USA citizens, much less globally. So don't even try.

4\. Don't assume that you can infer [non]existence of family relations from
their names. You can't.

~~~
LaGrange
> Treat personal names as indivisible, immutable items; don't try to separate
> them in parts.

Unfortunately, that's (often) not an option; as soon as you have to interact
with external entities such as banks (but not exclusively them), you're going
to be asked for the first and last name of the user.

EDIT: and, by the way, I think that's horrible. Mangling someone's identity
like that is pretty bad.

~~~
saraid216
Don't treat those as personal names, then. Expose the bank's interface to your
user. If the bank is asking for "first and last name", then say, "the bank is
asking for your first and last name; what do you wish us to tell them?"

~~~
LaGrange
The customer doesn't really care if it's going into a bank, CC processing (my
case), a hotel registration system (also my case), or a soulless SAP
installation somewhere in the guts of your company (yes, this is also my
case). They're also used to dealing with this (in my opinion unfortunately),
but usually not that interested in reading excuses.

FWIW, we only ask for first/last name where relevant (i.e. billing
information), but splitting hairs and asking for both is more bother for the
user than it's worth.

~~~
saraid216
> but splitting hairs and asking for both is more bother for the user than
> it's worth.

Then don't. Be honest and don't ask for personal names at all. Ask for billing
information.

The "name" fields in billing forms are not personal names. They're keys by
which the billing system can correctly identify the account to access. Don't
try to pretend that you know someone's name just because you have their
billing information. That's lying.

Especially in cases as simple as a customer who is using someone else's credit
card to pay for your service. That name is definitely wrong even if one is
John Smith and the other is Jane Doe.

------
reuven
Fascinating article.

Back in the early 1980s, my sleepaway camp went to Boston, where we visited
the Children's Museum. It had a computer with which you could interact.

Ever the aspiring nerd, I went over the computer. It asked me to enter my
name. I did so.

It answered: "Reuven isn't a real name. Please enter a real name."

(I ended up entering "David," my counselor's name, just to get through that
first screen.)

Be very careful when you vet names; for format, spelling, or anything else: As
this article points out, there is a lot of variety among names in the world.

However, even well-meaning people can make mistakes, and it's useful to be
forgiving. I have been teaching programming courses for years, and in one of
my examples, I create a Person class. However, when I got to China, I realized
that all of my slides talked about a "first name" and a "last name," which was
both confusing and backwards from what my students expected. I'm working on
updating these slides, so that they will be appropriate for all of my
audiences. But as this article points out, it's a struggle to do so.

~~~
blt
Unbelievable, especially in the days of few-hundred-kb memories, that someone
had that idea and thought it was good.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
Well, if you restrict people to a list of 65536 names, you can just use the
index into the list to save space on representation ;)

~~~
GFischer
Some countries have a list of "approved" names, and it's very hard to register
a name not in it, for example in Argentina, every province has a list of
approved names, and you have to write a letter with the etymology of the name
for it to get approved:

[http://www.planetamama.com.ar/nota/ley-nombres-como-
registra...](http://www.planetamama.com.ar/nota/ley-nombres-como-registrar-un-
nombre-raro)

Law:

[http://www.sdh.gba.gov.ar/comunicacion/normativanacyprov/pue...](http://www.sdh.gba.gov.ar/comunicacion/normativanacyprov/pueblosoriginarios/nacional/nac_ley18248.pdf)

~~~
byoung2
How do these countries handle immigrants from countries where there are no
such regulations?

~~~
taejo
Usually, I think, by the simple expedient of allowing them to keep their
names. However, ISTR that in Thailand there is a requirement for anyone who
becomes a Thai citizen to adopt a new, unique Thai-style surname (only people
who are actually related may share a surname).

------
IgorPartola
I am a naturalized US citizen who was born in the former USSR republic, which
then became the independent country Ukraine. (PSA: it's pronounced ukrAIne,
not UKraine, and definitely not "the UKraine"). My original name was Igor
Andreevhich Partola, where Andreevich is my father's name with a -vich ending.
My birth certificate was issued in the USSR with this name, but since the USSR
was no more, and Ukraine started using Ukrainian as the official language,
before coming to the US, my middle name on my birth certificate translation
got changed to Andriyovich (Ukrainian version). Thankfully my first name did
not have to change.

When I got to the US, I stopped using my middle name altogether, both to avoid
having to spell it on the phone, etc. and to minimize this type of confusion.
In most cases I had no issues, but the immigration process was stumped by
this. In general, immigration officers are not really prepared to deal with
foreign documents and foreign names. You'd think by now they would have seen
it all, but seeing a birth certificate from the USSR and a translation of it
in English was something that stumped most of them. Going from being here on a
visa to getting a green card is a grueling process because of issues likes
this. By contrast, going from green card to citizen is a cake walk since they
can simply refer to your US-issued green card as a form of ID.

P.S.: I am lucky that my last name does not change between genders. For
example Ivanov and Ivanova is the same last name but one is masculine one is
feminine. I have heard from friends about having issues with this too.

~~~
chrisBob
I am pretty disappointed with our name handling also. I was helping an Iraqi
move to the US, and someone translated his name as Hogar instead of Hoger on
one document, and it cost him a few months. As far as he was concerned his
name doesn't have any english letters in it, so Hogar and Hoger are just about
the same.

~~~
IgorPartola
To me the best solution really would be to issue documents with two fields:
your name as an unbreakable set of characters in your mother tongue, and
pronunciation of your name in Latin1. That way I could be:

Игорь Партола / Igor Partola

The trouble with this is when you have to spell your name over the phone.
Nobody would figure that out. One day that won't be a problem. That'll
probably be the same day that all manner of government computer systems stop
using all caps.

------
orng
OT and nitpicking but the part about Icelandic names is actually slightly
incorrect. The typical Icelandic "surname" is made up of the genitive case of
the father's name (in rare cases the mother's) followed by "son" or "dóttir",
not "sson" or sdóttir". It just so happens that the genitive case of most
names ends with an "s", e.g. Gunnar->Gunnars or Guðmundur->Guðmunds. There are
however many names where this is not the case. My name for instance, "Örn", is
"Arnar" in genitive case and thus if I had a son his surname would be
"Arnarson" and my daughter's surname would be "Arnardóttir".

~~~
steanne
what do you do if the parent has a foreign name?

~~~
orng
I am far from being an expert but I think the most common thing to do is to
just take on the surname of the parent as a sort of family name. So if Björk's
father was John Smith then she would be Björk Smith. Family names are not
unheard of and there are even a few Icelandic ones (although they are
definitely the exception). Name laws in Iceland are really strict[0] but they
mostly regard peoples "given name". I think you actually get to choose the
surname of your child. I have seen cases where people have gone with the
"-son" or "-dóttir" formula, typically in cases where the foreign name has an
Icelandic counterpart, e.g. "John" and the Icelandic "Jón". The surname of the
child could then be either "Johnson" or "Jónsson".

[0]: [http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/26/iceland-
strict-...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/26/iceland-strict-
naming-convention-cardew-family)

------
bgdam
In a similar vein:

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

~~~
binarymax
I too though of this post while reading the article. Great insight on both
counts, but I appreciate how the W3C article gives some strategy for how to
account for most cases that you will run into. Trying to turn Patrick's list
into a practical design is quite an undertaking.

------
gulbrandr
It exists a gender API [1] which predict the gender of a personal name on a -1
(Male) to +1 (Female) scale. Examples:

[http://api.namsor.com/onomastics/api/gendre/John/Smith](http://api.namsor.com/onomastics/api/gendre/John/Smith)

[http://api.namsor.com/onomastics/api/json/gendre/Alix/Dupond](http://api.namsor.com/onomastics/api/json/gendre/Alix/Dupond)

[http://api.namsor.com/onomastics/api/json/gendre/声涛/周](http://api.namsor.com/onomastics/api/json/gendre/声涛/周)

[http://api.namsor.com/onomastics/api/json/gendre/淑珍/張](http://api.namsor.com/onomastics/api/json/gendre/淑珍/張)

[http://api.namsor.com/onomastics/api/json/gendre/معين/المرعب...](http://api.namsor.com/onomastics/api/json/gendre/معين/المرعبي)

[http://api.namsor.com/onomastics/api/json/gendre/Илья/Коваль...](http://api.namsor.com/onomastics/api/json/gendre/Илья/Ковальчук)

[http://api.namsor.com/onomastics/api/json/gendre/בנימין/נתני...](http://api.namsor.com/onomastics/api/json/gendre/בנימין/נתניהו)

[http://api.namsor.com/onomastics/api/json/gendre/Julia/Rober...](http://api.namsor.com/onomastics/api/json/gendre/Julia/Roberts)

[http://api.namsor.com/onomastics/api/json/gendre/Olga/Sokolo...](http://api.namsor.com/onomastics/api/json/gendre/Olga/Sokolova)

[http://api.namsor.com/onomastics/api/json/gendre/Kjell/Bergq...](http://api.namsor.com/onomastics/api/json/gendre/Kjell/Bergqvist)

[1] [http://namesorts.com/api/](http://namesorts.com/api/)

~~~
Piskvorrr
...and it gets my gender wrong (USian bias, I suppose?). A nice idea, but not
very reliable.

------
bowlofpetunias
At least once every 2 years I have to deal with trying to explain why the
following set of requirements is a bit of an issue:

1\. We want separate first name and last name fields, but no additional
fields.

2\. We want to be able to sort by last name.

3\. We want to go international.

The worst part is: this happens in the Netherlands, where "van" and "de" are
common and people should really know better. It is so hard to explain why
beyond a simple "full name" field naming conventions are tricky to design and
code for.

------
billpg
My legal name is "William Godfrey". (No middle name.)

My stage name is "Bill P. Godfrey". (Because Google have too many called Bill
Godfrey ahead of me.)

In an informal setting I prefer to be called "Bill", 4 characters which appear
nowhere in my legal name.

So yes, please have "What should we call you" field on your forms.

~~~
a3n
And also, if you ask "what should we call you," DO NOT use that as any sort of
unique identifier. I just registered on a site that did not let me use my
given name as "what should we call you" because it was taken. The stupidity.

If you need something unique, generate it, and keep it to yourself. I don't
care a whit about your database.

~~~
darylfritz
It sounds like the form you filled out just poorly labelled their "Pick a
Username" field; The concept of a website generating something to call you is
interesting though. It could lead to hilarious scenarios.

~~~
a3n
No, the login is your email. Or is there a login _and_ a username? Stupid
again.

And no, I don't mean generating something to call me. I'm assumming they need
a unique digital identifier, and they're just falling back on "name," whatever
"name" means.

~~~
k-mcgrady
>> "Or is there a login and a username? Stupid again"

Lots of sites allow you to login with a username or an email address. I agree
it can complicate things but is you need an email address to validate a user
is real and a unique username for the service (e.g. it's social) allowing
either for login will probably result in less forgotten logins.

~~~
bostonpete
How does an email address validate that a user is real?

~~~
k-mcgrady
Not real, I meant 'not a bot'. Ask for email, send a link that must be clicked
etc.

~~~
frenchy
That doesn't answer the question. There's no particular reason a bot can't
have an email address.

~~~
k-mcgrady
Maybe I'm wrong, I was always under the impressions one of the main reasons to
ask for an email address was to make things more difficult for bots. Rather
than just setup a script to create accounts on your server they would also
need a valid email address for every attempt.

------
j2kun
When I see forms that ask "what should we call you?" I have a very hard time
(and often fail) resisting the urge to put "Captain ..." or "Beloved Leader
..."

------
hc5
> People in Korea, who typically do have 3 names but who don't usually
> initialize them...

No, not really. This is a completely wrong interpretation of Korean names.
Most of us have two names: family/clan name ("last" name like "Park", "Kim",
etc) followed by given name ("first" name like "Chan-Ho" or "Geun-Hye"). The
given name typically consists of two parts, but that doesn't mean we have
three names.

~~~
x1798DE
I was always curious as to why nearly every Korean person I've met has "two"
first names. According to Wikipedia [1], traditionally Korean names were
"generation names", where everyone in a specific family of a specific
generation shares part of the first name. The example they give of an
equivalent Chinese name would be someone named Xia Zhou-jin might have a
brother named Xia Zhou-sui, and children Xia Han-zheng and Xia Han-Li (in this
case Xia is the family name, Zhou and Han are generation names, Jin, Sui,
Zheng and Li are personal given names).

I'm curious - is this no longer the case, or do you (either you personally or,
if you can speak to it, the zeitgeist in Korea) not think of the "generation"
part of the "generation name" to be a separate name?

1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_name#Given_names](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_name#Given_names)

~~~
yongjik
The "generation" part is only _part_ (one syllable) of the given name and
doesn't constitute a separate name. The "yong" in my name is "generation
name", but no Korean will call me "Yong" any more than an English speaker
would call Richard "Chard".

Because most Korean names are neatly split into three characters (each
character is a syllable in Korean), many people also write their names in
three space-delimited words in Latin alphabet. And then westerners get
confused and end up with patterns like "Gil D. Hong". (I'm not blaming them;
you can't expect everyone to understand all the world's naming systems.)

~~~
x1798DE
Just to push back on this a bit, the fact that the "generation name" part of
the name carries some additional semantic information in some ways makes it
even _more_ of a name than a "middle name" that is somewhat popular in the
West. In a sense, my name is my full name (first, middle and last), but it is
split into three parts. The last one has some meaning (it's a family name),
the first two are given names, and the cultural default here is that I would
go by my first name, and if a conflict is found, I'd go by the first + last,
and if a conflict _still_ exists, you'd default to first + middle name or
first + middle initial. I don't think it's that unreasonable to consider
generation names to be "compound names", consisting of two sub-names, even if
the cultural default is to always use the full compound and not either of the
parts.

I also think that "Richard"->Chard is a disingenuous choice, because people
named Richard _often_ go by Rich. People named Andrew very frequently go by
either Andy or Drew, similarly people named Alexander often go by either Alex
or Xander. Of course, there's no semantic meaning associated with the
component parts of those names anyway, so it's not like you can infer
something from the fact that someone is named Alfred and someone else is named
Albert, and either one might go by "Al".

~~~
yongjik
Well, OK maybe Richard was a poor example. What I'm saying is: some Richards
go by Rich, but few goes by Chard, and certainly nobody interprets Richard as
a combination of two name components "Ri + Chard" (or "Rich + Ard"). The
probability a typical Korean would consider their given name as a combination
of two parts is probably higher than that of Richards, but not _much_ higher.

Maybe a better example is Anderson, which historically meant "Anders's son",
but few living Andersons would consider "Anders" an acceptable way of writing
their family name.

~~~
tripzilch
That's because it's really a combination of "Ric + Hard".

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

:-)

------
cyorir
With the spread of the LGBT+ movement, the connection between titles, personal
names, and gender can also change. Some people would rather not identify as
being male or female, and instead identify as a specific gender minority. This
has different conseqeunces for different languages, since some have gender-
specific naming and others have gender-specific titles, prefixes, suffixes,
etc., but the fact is that most websites ignore gender minorities.

There is also the distinction between gender and sex, which websites often
neglect (in some cases to the detriment of intersex individuals).

I would love to see either more websites that, like Facebook, offer treatment
of gender as more than just a binary data value, or forgoe it altogether. Of
course, gender is always going to bring up problems when attempting to
translate both names and standard text.

------
sirn
Thais don't have family name system until early 1900, everyone was named by
short syllables like Daeng, Maew, Pu, Chai, etc. Once the family name system
is introduced, the custom of naming someone using short syllables continues in
a form of family nickname. The trend continues to today, thus Thais have a
nickname that don't related to the full name.

Except in formal situation, everyone here would refer to each other with their
nickname. Calling Thais by first name or family name is equally awkward (even
more so for ex-nobles, who have "na $Location" suffix in their family name,
e.g. "na Ayudhaya"). So yes, please have a "What should we call you" in your
form.

------
michaelt
What's the advice if you have a business requirement to support both formal,
informal and full names?

For example, the order confirmation e-mail might say "Good news Joe, your
order is on its way" while the apology e-mail might say "Dear Mr Biden, we're
sorry but your order isn't on its way" and the parcel might say "Joe Biden,
White House, Washington DC"

Should you ask the customer to fill out three different fields?

~~~
alkonaut
If you want to be international, you don't even try that. You let the
communication say "Dear $Name" and you are done. Even if it means none of the
emails say what you want it to say. And yes, even for a US system I don't
think it's a good idea to ask for first/initial/last _or_ to ask for
formal/informal. Chinese users in the US will be happy to just see a "Name"
field. Just ask for a name!

I'd stay away from gender/greeting too. Mr/Ms/Mrs/Dr etc. are way too
culturally narrow even for the US.

~~~
legulere
This might break if the language the name is in has a vocative case
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vocative_case](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vocative_case)

~~~
alkonaut
interesting. If the message is in English, would such rules still apply? We
are talking about formatting a message with a foreign name (origin unknown) in
a known language, e.g English.

~~~
frenchy
Not normally. Typically you'd pick the 'least marked' version of the name and
just use that.

------
byoung2
The first form we have to change is the birth certificate. When my daughter
was born, we knew that she was going to have 4 names (2 given, 2 surnames). My
wife is from the Philippines, and it is typical there to have 1 or more given
names, and then maternal surname and paternal surname. It is common for people
to have several names (e.g. the signer Sheree is actually Cherry Hazel Sweet
Fae Bautista Augustin). Unfortunately the birth certificate only had first,
middle, last. We didn't want to hyphenate the last name so we had to either
have a 2 word first name or middle name. In the end, we went with 2 names for
the first name, maternal surname as middle name, and paternal surname as last
name.

------
jccalhoun
My first name is hyphenated. I still run into web forms that insist that
having a hyphen in your first name is "invalid" or that my first name is too
long for the form. So I get mail addressed to all sorts of variations of my
name not to mention people that "correct" my name by thinking that it is my
last name that is hyphenated. And there's also the fact that search engines
seem to ignore a hyphen so someone searching for me will get lots of results
for someone whose first and last name make up my first name. That is real fun
when that person is a famous kidnapper...

------
jgreen10
I don't like the "Full name" label. It's very uncommon to be asked for your
full name in the Netherlands. You use initials in almost all formal documents.
Why not "Name"?

~~~
LaGrange
I loved that after moving in! The culture I'm from is actually more compatible
with most entry systems than the Dutch one (no vans or anything), but my full
name is _long_ , and doesn't fit e.g. on credit cards. In Netherlands, nobody
bats an eye when I just reduce my names to a bunch of initials.

------
bitwize
Fun fact: Pocahontas's given name was Matoaka. "Pocahontas" meant "little
naughty one" and was a nickname, but among the Powhatans it was customary to
give one name for ingroup people to call you and another for outgroup people
to call you; and "Pocahontas" also filled that latter role.

Complicating matters further she converted to Christianity and took the name
Rebecca Rolfe.

------
paul_f
Great article. This is forcing me to ask myself why I would ever need to
separate first and last names. Maybe it is time to stop.

------
strictfp
Don't forget about catering for the symbol formerly known as Prince :) No but
seriously, names are horrendously complex, just as adresses are. But you might
be better of ignoring some detail than trying to cater for every possible
case.

------
linux_devil
I tried something similar in my last organisation using millions of social
media profiles : check out
[http://whatsinmyname.prokta.com](http://whatsinmyname.prokta.com)

------
ludwigvan
Here is an interesting video on names by Django core dev Russell Keith-Magee:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHg6AoExYjs#t=125](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHg6AoExYjs#t=125)

------
davidw
I wonder how much people adapt to things though... I work with a company that
sells something with "first name", "last name" fields. And they do manage to
sell it around the world. To my knowledge (I'm not involved in sales), the
fact that the name fields are very Europe-oriented has never really been a
problem: people buy the system because it's very good at other things, not
because it's good at record keeping. In a newer version, we're considering
dropping the first/last name, but some people are wary of that.

~~~
PeterisP
Well, people are flexible enough to mangle their names to fit pretty much any
arbitrary criteria, and that is sufficient for selling & shipping goods. E.g.
I can misspell a few letters of my name to fit ASCII and invent a middle
initial if it's required for some stupid form.

It simply leads to names that don't really represent reality, and unhappy
customers - people often are quite attached to their names and like to see
them properly.

~~~
silencio
I didn't have a legal middle name until this year and I lost count of how many
imaginary middle initials and names I've had to make up until now.

Then... My husband decided to hyphenate one of his names and Social Security
explicitly didn't use the hyphen even though it's on the marriage certificate.
I wonder what DMV and the Department of State will do with his documents next.

Even the author of the original post kinda gets it vague by saying Korean
names are three names - maybe technically so - but the middle name is not a
middle name like in the US sense. My parents' given name is the first+middle
put together unless you're looking at their English names that got separated
out. My name they chose on purpose to match in both languages - Jane in
English, 제인 (jae-in) in Korean. My nickname Janey works in Korean too - 제인이.
;)

Speaking of Korean, I'm not sure there's even a process for changing my Korean
name like there was my English name since it's rare for women to change their
names after marriage. I'm looking into dual citizenship right now. The idea of
having passports with mismatching names is kinda sad and funny at the same
time.

Names are hard but there's definitely a nice feeling when people don't screw
it up. :)

------
danbruc
Let's just assign a UUID to every baby born and nature solves the problem in
about 100 years. ^^

...historic data you say...

