this post was submitted on 16 Nov 2024
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[–] [email protected] 81 points 1 day ago (20 children)

There are a frightening number of systems that don't allow "-", which isn't even an edge case. A lot of people - mostly women - hyphenate their last names on marriage, rather than throw their old name away. My wife did. She legally changed her name when she came of age, and when we met and married years later she said, "I paid for money for my name; I'm not letting it go." (Note: I wasn't pressuring her to take my name.) So she hyphenated it, and has come to regret the decision. She says she should have switched, or not, but the hyphen causes problems everywhere. It's not a legal character in a lot of systems, including some government systems.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (6 children)

And you'd think a simple solution is just leave out the hyphen when you put you name in, but that can also lead to problems when the system is looking for a 100% perfect match.

And good luck if they need to scan the barcode on your ID.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 day ago (5 children)

Then the first part is interpreted (in the US, anyway) as a middle name, not as part of the last name. I did run into a recently married woman who did that: dropped her middle name, moved her last to the middle, and used her spouse's last name.

More commonly, places that don't take hyphens tend to just run the two names together: Axel-Smith becomes AxelSmith.

Programmers can be really dumb.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

As someone who's mexican I encounter that more than one would think since I have 2 last names and it gets weird sometimes since I also have a middle name.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

God, the French. My friend has two first names, two middle, and thankfully only one surname.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago

Something that could happen in Mexico for a name is Juan Maria as a first, Guillermo David as a middle and Gonzales De Mercado as a last name. Technically 7 words and totally a thing but not common at all, anymore at least.

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