10 ms·

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 hi

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…)

kevinherron 7y ago
I have a suffix as well (II), but I stopped using it years ago. I have one old credit card that has my full name including suffix on it that I have to remember to include the suffix with, but that's about it.
- DonHopkins 7y ago
  Maybe it would help to spell out II as "The Second" or IV as "The Fourth"? People with hyphenated or apostrophed last names could even spell out their punctuation too. But then how do you standardize on the spelling of punctuation? FORTH solved the punctuation spelling problem by systematically documenting how every word (including punctuation) is pronounced, so you could unambiguously speak FORTH programs over the telephone. http://forth.sourceforge.net/standard/fst83/fst83-12.htm http://forth.sourceforge.net/standard/fst83/fst83-12.htm -Don O Apostrophe Dell Hyphen Hopkins The Fourth (Not to be confused with Don O Tick Dell Minus Hopkins The FORTH)
  - pmarreck 7y ago
    Never knew this about FORTH, very interesting!
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
everly 7y ago
I have a similar situation, it's so frustrating. I couldn't buy insurance from Progressive because Lexis Nexis thinks I'm my father and it was too much of a hassle to resolve. Simply because I'm a Jr and we lived at the same address (obviously) for about 18 years.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- grawprog 7y ago
  I still have problems with this because I have the same name as my dad. The worst was when my bank account was locked because his boss at the time had been taking taxes off their cheques but not paying the government. For some reason they called my bank and locked my account thinking I was him(at the time they thought he wasn't paying taxes, it was all worked out eventually) despite our birth dates being nearly 30 years apart. It happened without any explanation. I had to go to the bank and ask why I couldn't use my debit card. They explained.the government had a hold on my account. I ended up having to prove I was not my dad with a bunch of pieces of ID. It took like half a day to get access to my account restored. I was 20 or something at the time. There was no way I could me mistaken for someone in his 40's.
  - lowercased 7y ago
    I'm surprised it was so quick. Normally when I discover things like that which require some interaction with bureaucracy at some level, I find out on a Friday afternoon at 4pm, have to wait until Monday, then things are resolved for days because people are 'backed up' on Monday...
  - lotsofpulp 7y ago
    >There was no way I could me mistaken for someone in his 40's. But when designing automated systems, you can't add in a condition of "unless person doesn't look their age". If one can't use names as a unique identifier, then that leaves a number issued at birth by a central government. But as I understand, even SSNs aren't unique and get re-used. As an aside though, cultures that use the same name for multiple people in the same family confuse me. To me, the purpose of a name is to identify, so what is the point of naming someone the same? Perhaps, historically, it was a way to establish credibility before the time of credit reports and phones.
Spooky23 7y ago
My wife has the same maiden name as her mom, with a middle initial that is one letter apart. This flags more corrective correlation, so despite having a different last name for 19 years, insurance companies and Bank of America get them confused. The insurance is worse because you cannot appeal insurance data.
sargram01 7y ago
I have a hyphen in my last name that caused the California DMV to make one of my last names a middle name, and the Social Security Administration can’t verify my name on their website also due to it. I feel like it’s time software needs to level up, ok 30 years ago sure mistakes were made, but now if you live on planet earth you have to know how names work after how many thousands of years our current systems have been in place.
- lowercased 7y ago
  "how names work" part of the issue is people writing software making decisions about 'how names work', and there being multiple interpretations of it. I've wanted - many times - to build in just 'name' in systems, vs "first name", "last name", "middle name", "suffix", etc. Because... inevitably, clients have to support someone that doesn't fit that mold. The end user probably has dealt with it dozens of times already, but it's still bad for them, and usually unnecessary. MOST of the time, we only ever take "first" and "last" and concat them on the screen anyway, then keep them separated for someone to sort via excel...
  - sargram01 7y ago
    We used to have problems with non-ASCII chars in names, we fixed that with UTF, we had problems with currencies and numbers, we made libraries that understand locales and even directions of writing, time zones same thing. So it’s time for us to resolve names now with standard libraries that have been thought through like the above.
    - lowercased 7y ago
      While I'd probably run in to edge cases, it would be nice to actually point to a standard and say "the libraries all support standard XYZ. that's built in - doing it any other way is going to mean problems ABC and cost $$".
  - bartread 7y ago
    It's actually interesting that frameworks provided by platforms such as .NET, Java, etc., don't include an abstraction for the representation of names. Such abstractions exist for dates, times, calendars, currencies, calculations with money, and so forth, but not names. On the one hand I can understand it, because names are so complicated, and how would you sit down and come up with something good enough to represent all of them? On the other hand they're prevalent in such a high percentage of line of business and consumer facing apps that it's almost ridiculous that every single developer on the face of the earth at one time or another has to come up with their own half-baked implementation. It's especially ridiculous when you consider that so many of these home-rolled implementations, if not all of them, are rife with terrible flaws that constantly cause frustration and inconvenience to a small but significant number of users.
somehnguy 7y ago
I also have a roman numeral suffix and experience the exact same issues all the time, its insane! I understand what my parents were going for with the suffix but that tradition will end with me if I have kids. The credit agencies also started attributing debt to my name from someone with a very similar name and social. Of course they don't like paying their loans and so every once in a while my credit tanks while I go through the process to get it cleared up. As far as I've been able to find there is no long term solution to this, I just have to deal with it every couple years.
kingbirdy 7y ago
I also have a numeral. Sometimes as a child, when I went to the local hospital they would initially pull up my father's information instead of mine. I'm not sure how they thought that could be correct, given I was a child in the 2000s and my father was born in the 70s.
ipqk 7y ago
My first name differs from my sibling's by two letters (and same last name), and I often get credit history "verification" questions about him. I mean, they're two very different names, and whatever BS company it is that's behind this is complete crap.
pickle-wizard 7y ago
I can’t use online question verification systems. The people I bought my house from have the same last name as me. So every time I do one of those, it asks me questions about them. I know none of their information as I never met them.
OnlineGladiator 7y ago
I have the suffix III which often gets written iii, and sometimes get attached to my last name so they just say it and then and accented "ee" sound on the end. There have even been other variations, but those have all been one-off exceptions. Even at the government level, identity isn't solved. I have two government issued IDs, both current, that contradict each other and once barred me from getting on a flight. I also have to visit the IRS in person regularly to confirm my identity. I had multiple issues with standardized tests when I was younger, including one instance where they both wanted to delete my score because they thought I couldn't fill out my name correctly and they also wanted to give me an award (which ultimately made me a National Merit Scholar) - the best part is because of the confusion on my name they had a hard time figuring out whether or not they were supposed to give it to me (as in they thought I both did and did not exist in their system due to the naming error). The above are just a handful of examples, there are many more and those aren't even necessarily the most extreme. The only thing I know for certain is my children will not share my name, or have any weird shit attached to it.
rectangletangle 7y ago
I actually wrote an API for handling personal names, because software mangling people's names irked my pedanticism. The fundamental takeaway is that names are ridiculously complex, equivalent to any other part of natural language. For every rule you could contrive there are exceptions, and many more legitimately ambiguous cases. You shouldn't ever use first/last name fields, because they force users to adapt around your system (many names don't follow this structure). A long unstructured text fields is best, because it can accommodate nearly anyone who's name can be spelled with unicode. Finally always check your interpretation of a name with the person in question, seeing as they're the end authority. https://www.alphanym.com/demo/?jm1 https://www.alphanym.com/demo/?jm1
packet_nerd 7y ago
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_with_names_local_name_customs_in_a_global_village https://www.ted.com/talks/cynthia_ma_shwe_sin_win_not_good_w...
- universenz 7y ago
  Just whatever you do don’t put ‘null’ into the fields lol
  - HankB99 7y ago
    Or "DROP TABLES"!
- thaumasiotes 7y ago
  > 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.
scolby33 7y ago
I had a friend in college named jane smith, capitalized as so—that is, not capitalized. She always entered it this way and it always appeared to be correct until the next nightly database cleaning job ran and gave her initial capitals. Eventually the registrar told her that nothing could be done but that a note was made in her file to ensure her diploma was printed properly. Of course it wasn’t, but they did re-print it free of charge without complaint. (Name changed to protect the innocent.)

kevinherron 7y ago

I have a suffix as well (II), but I stopped using it years ago. I have one old credit card that has my full name including suffix on it that I have to remember to include the suffix with, but that's about it.

DonHopkins 7y ago
Maybe it would help to spell out II as "The Second" or IV as "The Fourth"? People with hyphenated or apostrophed last names could even spell out their punctuation too. But then how do you standardize on the spelling of punctuation? FORTH solved the punctuation spelling problem by systematically documenting how every word (including punctuation) is pronounced, so you could unambiguously speak FORTH programs over the telephone. http://forth.sourceforge.net/standard/fst83/fst83-12.htm http://forth.sourceforge.net/standard/fst83/fst83-12.htm -Don O Apostrophe Dell Hyphen Hopkins The Fourth (Not to be confused with Don O Tick Dell Minus Hopkins The FORTH)
- pmarreck 7y ago
  Never knew this about FORTH, very interesting!

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

everly 7y ago

I have a similar situation, it's so frustrating. I couldn't buy insurance from Progressive because Lexis Nexis thinks I'm my father and it was too much of a hassle to resolve. Simply because I'm a Jr and we lived at the same address (obviously) for about 18 years.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
grawprog 7y ago
I still have problems with this because I have the same name as my dad. The worst was when my bank account was locked because his boss at the time had been taking taxes off their cheques but not paying the government. For some reason they called my bank and locked my account thinking I was him(at the time they thought he wasn't paying taxes, it was all worked out eventually) despite our birth dates being nearly 30 years apart. It happened without any explanation. I had to go to the bank and ask why I couldn't use my debit card. They explained.the government had a hold on my account. I ended up having to prove I was not my dad with a bunch of pieces of ID. It took like half a day to get access to my account restored. I was 20 or something at the time. There was no way I could me mistaken for someone in his 40's.
- lowercased 7y ago
  I'm surprised it was so quick. Normally when I discover things like that which require some interaction with bureaucracy at some level, I find out on a Friday afternoon at 4pm, have to wait until Monday, then things are resolved for days because people are 'backed up' on Monday...
- lotsofpulp 7y ago
  >There was no way I could me mistaken for someone in his 40's. But when designing automated systems, you can't add in a condition of "unless person doesn't look their age". If one can't use names as a unique identifier, then that leaves a number issued at birth by a central government. But as I understand, even SSNs aren't unique and get re-used. As an aside though, cultures that use the same name for multiple people in the same family confuse me. To me, the purpose of a name is to identify, so what is the point of naming someone the same? Perhaps, historically, it was a way to establish credibility before the time of credit reports and phones.

Spooky23 7y ago

My wife has the same maiden name as her mom, with a middle initial that is one letter apart. This flags more corrective correlation, so despite having a different last name for 19 years, insurance companies and Bank of America get them confused. The insurance is worse because you cannot appeal insurance data.

sargram01 7y ago

I have a hyphen in my last name that caused the California DMV to make one of my last names a middle name, and the Social Security Administration can’t verify my name on their website also due to it. I feel like it’s time software needs to level up, ok 30 years ago sure mistakes were made, but now if you live on planet earth you have to know how names work after how many thousands of years our current systems have been in place.

lowercased 7y ago
"how names work" part of the issue is people writing software making decisions about 'how names work', and there being multiple interpretations of it. I've wanted - many times - to build in just 'name' in systems, vs "first name", "last name", "middle name", "suffix", etc. Because... inevitably, clients have to support someone that doesn't fit that mold. The end user probably has dealt with it dozens of times already, but it's still bad for them, and usually unnecessary. MOST of the time, we only ever take "first" and "last" and concat them on the screen anyway, then keep them separated for someone to sort via excel...
- sargram01 7y ago
  We used to have problems with non-ASCII chars in names, we fixed that with UTF, we had problems with currencies and numbers, we made libraries that understand locales and even directions of writing, time zones same thing. So it’s time for us to resolve names now with standard libraries that have been thought through like the above.
  - lowercased 7y ago
    While I'd probably run in to edge cases, it would be nice to actually point to a standard and say "the libraries all support standard XYZ. that's built in - doing it any other way is going to mean problems ABC and cost $$".
- bartread 7y ago
  It's actually interesting that frameworks provided by platforms such as .NET, Java, etc., don't include an abstraction for the representation of names. Such abstractions exist for dates, times, calendars, currencies, calculations with money, and so forth, but not names. On the one hand I can understand it, because names are so complicated, and how would you sit down and come up with something good enough to represent all of them? On the other hand they're prevalent in such a high percentage of line of business and consumer facing apps that it's almost ridiculous that every single developer on the face of the earth at one time or another has to come up with their own half-baked implementation. It's especially ridiculous when you consider that so many of these home-rolled implementations, if not all of them, are rife with terrible flaws that constantly cause frustration and inconvenience to a small but significant number of users.

somehnguy 7y ago

I also have a roman numeral suffix and experience the exact same issues all the time, its insane! I understand what my parents were going for with the suffix but that tradition will end with me if I have kids. The credit agencies also started attributing debt to my name from someone with a very similar name and social. Of course they don't like paying their loans and so every once in a while my credit tanks while I go through the process to get it cleared up. As far as I've been able to find there is no long term solution to this, I just have to deal with it every couple years.

kingbirdy 7y ago

I also have a numeral. Sometimes as a child, when I went to the local hospital they would initially pull up my father's information instead of mine. I'm not sure how they thought that could be correct, given I was a child in the 2000s and my father was born in the 70s.

ipqk 7y ago

My first name differs from my sibling's by two letters (and same last name), and I often get credit history "verification" questions about him. I mean, they're two very different names, and whatever BS company it is that's behind this is complete crap.

pickle-wizard 7y ago

I can’t use online question verification systems. The people I bought my house from have the same last name as me. So every time I do one of those, it asks me questions about them. I know none of their information as I never met them.

OnlineGladiator 7y ago

I have the suffix III which often gets written iii, and sometimes get attached to my last name so they just say it and then and accented "ee" sound on the end. There have even been other variations, but those have all been one-off exceptions. Even at the government level, identity isn't solved. I have two government issued IDs, both current, that contradict each other and once barred me from getting on a flight. I also have to visit the IRS in person regularly to confirm my identity. I had multiple issues with standardized tests when I was younger, including one instance where they both wanted to delete my score because they thought I couldn't fill out my name correctly and they also wanted to give me an award (which ultimately made me a National Merit Scholar) - the best part is because of the confusion on my name they had a hard time figuring out whether or not they were supposed to give it to me (as in they thought I both did and did not exist in their system due to the naming error). The above are just a handful of examples, there are many more and those aren't even necessarily the most extreme. The only thing I know for certain is my children will not share my name, or have any weird shit attached to it.

rectangletangle 7y ago

I actually wrote an API for handling personal names, because software mangling people's names irked my pedanticism. The fundamental takeaway is that names are ridiculously complex, equivalent to any other part of natural language. For every rule you could contrive there are exceptions, and many more legitimately ambiguous cases. You shouldn't ever use first/last name fields, because they force users to adapt around your system (many names don't follow this structure). A long unstructured text fields is best, because it can accommodate nearly anyone who's name can be spelled with unicode. Finally always check your interpretation of a name with the person in question, seeing as they're the end authority. https://www.alphanym.com/demo/?jm1 https://www.alphanym.com/demo/?jm1

packet_nerd 7y ago

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_with_names_local_name_customs_in_a_global_village https://www.ted.com/talks/cynthia_ma_shwe_sin_win_not_good_w...

universenz 7y ago
Just whatever you do don’t put ‘null’ into the fields lol
- HankB99 7y ago
  Or "DROP TABLES"!
thaumasiotes 7y ago
> 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.

scolby33 7y ago

I had a friend in college named jane smith, capitalized as so—that is, not capitalized. She always entered it this way and it always appeared to be correct until the next nightly database cleaning job ran and gave her initial capitals. Eventually the registrar told her that nothing could be done but that a note was made in her file to ensure her diploma was printed properly. Of course it wasn’t, but they did re-print it free of charge without complaint. (Name changed to protect the innocent.)