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As a Spaniard, I have 3-word first name and 2 family names. No middle name. Now shove that into a non-space-enabled, 2 inputs web form. For plane tickets which
by franciscop 10y ago
As a Spaniard, I have 3-word first name and 2 family names. No middle name. Now shove that into a non-space-enabled, 2 inputs web form. For plane tickets which basically could leave me stranded in any country.
I normally get some trouble trying to retrieve them in the airport in those auto-check-in machines that are being deployed all around Asia. I mean, they can spend thousands of dollars in those machines but don't care about correctly accepting a name. Then the person helping there tries again the same; finally she redirects me to the counter.
I have give up and just go by my first-word first name and fist family name to handle things easily (which is a bit disrespectful for my mother's family).
- callalex 10y agoThis has an interesting parallel to having a spectrum of gender pronouns.
- franciscop 10y agoWell the first family name comes from the father and the second one from the mother (who doesn't get hers deleted when marrying). I've heard that some Argentinians can choose freely whether the first family name is the mother's or the father's.
- thaumasiotes 10y agoThis is particularly odd because multi-word last names aren't exactly obscure in the US. Here are some famous people: van der Waals, von Neumann, de Soto, van Gogh, da Vinci... We have a sizable Italian community domestically, too, plus lots of history of Dutch and German settlement. And then we have lots of Mexicans, who, intuitively enough, use the Spanish system of double surnames. But somehow they all get shoehorned into hyphenation.
- raarts 10y agoWhere is that? Dutch so I'm interested.
- thaumasiotes 10y agoNew York was a Dutch colony. They stayed when the English conquered it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_colonization_of_the_Americas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_colonization_of_the_Amer...
- gpvos 10y agoThe USA. People of German descent are, at least historically, the largest population group.
- danieltillett 10y agoActually people of English decent are the largest - Germans are second.
- gpvos 10y agoIt depends a bit on the source, or how you count, apparently.
- franciscop 10y agoI will even add that what you know as nicknames in other countries are deemed as real names here. My first full name is "Francisco de Paula", but in Spain everyone calls me "Paco" (historical reasons and all) the same as with a handful of other names. But the thing is it doesn't have a nickname status but rather these kind of names are used everyday in professional and personal spaces. I also gave up that fight and for everyone internationally I'm Francisco ( heck I even got http://francisco.io/ http://francisco.io/ ). But that is not even so different as many Chineses/Korean/Vietnamese people choose international names as well that differ from their real name.
- speeder 10y agoI am of Portuguese descent (and learned recently I can't become citizen because my Portuguese grandpa died when my father was a child :/) I have two first names, two last names, and filho (means "son"). I have yet to find any system that understand my name properly, even in Brazil where I had official documents with my name butchered in one way or another. (Nevermindt people assuming the last name was literal last name and insisting in calling me Mr. Filho, something that doesn't make sense)