4 ms·

Many organizations handle this very poorly. US immigration and customs forms do not have sufficient space or characters for many common Hispanic names. Famous

Many organizations handle this very poorly. US immigration and customs forms do not have sufficient space or characters for many common Hispanic names. Famously, people with the last name Null are often at the mercy of SQL database input validation. I'm having trouble finding the article (haha) but there's a person named either A or Aa (a not-uncommon Southeast Asian name) who has problems with flight ticketing systems that use that string as a special code. There are multiple competing romanizations of most Asian languages (Mumbai vs Bombay, Peking vs Bejing, Sato vs Satou) which can result in mismatched name records. Recommended reading: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/ https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-... The most inclusive format is a text field that accepts arbitrary length unicode strings. At the same time, you probably don't want people to put their names in as the Eggplant Emoji or USA flag. It's not a trivial problem.

FDSGSG 5y ago
> It's not a trivial problem. It seems pretty trivial. You just follow existing international standards and use the transliterated version of the name found on the passports MRZ if accepting unicode strings isn't easy for your particular use case.
- dharmab 5y ago
  What if there are multiple standards? (Hint: there are.) What if the passport has the same issue as US immigration and doesn't actually fit the name? What about LGBT users whose passports may or may not reflect their names, depending on varying government policy? What about people who have never had a passport? (Common in the US, as well as displaced/vulnerable persons worldwide) These are not hypothetical edge cases, these are millions of real people. My own name doesn't fit in a lot of older forms and gets incorrectly parsed a surprising amount.
GekkePrutser 5y ago
> US immigration and customs forms do not have sufficient space or characters for many common Hispanic names. Also the other way around. I can't officially order from IKEA here in Spain because their online order entry demands a second surname (segundo apellido) which I don't have :D This is a typical Spanish thing. I do however have a middle name which tends to trip them up a lot (my middle name is more recognisable as a first name so it often confuses them) I just put '-' or 'NA' or something but technically the delivery guys could make issues about it considering that is not on my passport. However the rules are not taken very strictly in Spain which is one of the nice things about living here.

FDSGSG 5y ago

> It's not a trivial problem. It seems pretty trivial. You just follow existing international standards and use the transliterated version of the name found on the passports MRZ if accepting unicode strings isn't easy for your particular use case.

dharmab 5y ago
What if there are multiple standards? (Hint: there are.) What if the passport has the same issue as US immigration and doesn't actually fit the name? What about LGBT users whose passports may or may not reflect their names, depending on varying government policy? What about people who have never had a passport? (Common in the US, as well as displaced/vulnerable persons worldwide) These are not hypothetical edge cases, these are millions of real people. My own name doesn't fit in a lot of older forms and gets incorrectly parsed a surprising amount.

GekkePrutser 5y ago

> US immigration and customs forms do not have sufficient space or characters for many common Hispanic names. Also the other way around. I can't officially order from IKEA here in Spain because their online order entry demands a second surname (segundo apellido) which I don't have :D This is a typical Spanish thing. I do however have a middle name which tends to trip them up a lot (my middle name is more recognisable as a first name so it often confuses them) I just put '-' or 'NA' or something but technically the delivery guys could make issues about it considering that is not on my passport. However the rules are not taken very strictly in Spain which is one of the nice things about living here.