4 ms·

I'm glad California regulators are focusing on the critical issue of what characters may appear in children's names. Does it ever occur to people in government

I'm glad California regulators are focusing on the critical issue of what characters may appear in children's names. Does it ever occur to people in government that some things may not be their problem?

panzagl 5y ago
As long as you don't expect it to be the government's problem when they can't get a SSN, driver's license, etc.
- JasonFruit 5y ago
  Why is it my problem to make my children conform to government tracking and enumeration, rather than their problem that my children are hard for them to easily assimilate? Government exists for my children, not my children for government. Their technical problems are their problems, not mine. And practically, in a world where people cross borders, where people come to this country for refuge and opportunity, how does it make sense to force them all to have only basic English characters in their names?
  - michaelt 5y ago
    > Their technical problems are their problems, not mine. You’ve never interacted with the government or a large corporation, have you?
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - JasonFruit 5y ago
      I'm not asking what is, but why it should be that way. Why should I name my children for the government's convenience? Why are Jürgen, Hafþór, Renée, or Noël unacceptable names?
      - IIsi50MHz 5y ago
        The government(s) will be happy to receive & evaluate your generous donation of upgrades to the myriad existing record keeping systems, and further generous donations of your time to train all staff on how to enter and search for the additional written characters, so long as the process does not significantly disrupt operations. "Patches welcome!" (^o^)/ But in seriousness: it is their concern because changes that seem minor can require major changes to electronic systems, and allowing special cases that necessitate lookup in ways the electronic systems can't handle (perhaps even requring manual search through hardcopy!) really throw a star-mangled spanner in the works. Naming is already a special case problem in Japan, where people are accustomed to having no idea how to pronounce most people's names because the parents used non-standard readings of the kanji characters and/or used kanji from a special exempted list of archaic kanji that almost nobody can read. If you're wondering why the government doesn't require people use only the official "common use" kanji, at least just for this one problem, then I should tell it has been tried — enough people raised a fuss about being unable to register their child's "perfect name" that gradually a list of "allowed only in names" kanji was created and expanded. And if I recall correctly, when registering a name, you can specify a totally unrelated pronunciation using the simpler non-kanji phonetic characters, so even just "common use" kanji are almost "all bets off". A relative few kanji have such common pronunciation in names that they can 'usually' be guessed. And the problem is the same with many Japanese place-names, having little or no correlation between written form and pronunciation or meaning. So, why is the spelling of a chosen name any concern to a government? It gets crazy out there, in Name Land. How mäný variatǐons of spelliñg cån ße ællowèd before people give up on pronouncing it?
        JasonFruit 5y ago
        Why is everyone trying to convince me that handling names is hard for computer systems? That's obvious to everyone, even me. What's fascinating to me is that none of you consider that government might not need to have a list of everyone it governs, or that such a list might not need to be centralized or computerized. When faced with a facet of humanity that's too complex to be easily reduced to consistent data, private groups either do their best and work with what data they can extract, or else have people handle it, with our flexible, tolerant minds. When government is involved, though, the immediate response is, "We have to force people to be less complex!" I'm beginning to see technocracy as the biggest threat to a diverse, human, and humane society.
crysin 5y ago
This is actually probably good. My wife has a hyphen in her first name and the amount of government systems including Social Security itself will most of the time result in some validation error when the hyphen is included and it even adds confusion for employees when in an office and their ancient software doesn't even result in an error, it'll just straight up not work and not give them any context on what could be wrong.
scbrg 5y ago
That's definitely a reasonable thing for governments to care about, since governments generally need to keep track of people's names in some way or other. It's probably a good idea if government computers can keep track of the name, so a minimum requirement would probably be "can be represented by unicode glyphs". So attempts like Prince's should probably be disqualified. And even in the unicode set there are characters that may be problematic - Record Separators, Zero Width Space, Pile of Poo emoji springs to mind as examples, even if the later one might be doable. It's hard to address a letter to a person whose name just consists of a mix of different whitespace characters (especially when their neighbor is a different mix whitespace characters). So, yes, government probably should care about this, at least a little bit. That said, Æ should probably be allowed. It's a standard character in several living languages.
- CaptainZapp 5y ago
  I totally agree with your take, except maybe: > That said, Æ should probably be allowed This may cause all sorts of issues, from typing a letter to issuing a passport. Else than that, exactly what I was thinking.
  - scbrg 5y ago
    The reason I think that maybe Æ should qualify is that it's not entirely unlikely to occur in immigrants' names anyway (or at least the lower case version). There are systems for transforming such characters to something that appears in passports - my own name has an umlaut, and I've obviously got a passport. I'm not American, so my passport is of course not issued in USA, but I suspect few countries would see a name diversity as great as USA so it can't be a new problem for the authorities there.
klyrs 5y ago
Does it occur to you that changing a database schema across an entire state government might incur significant costs and take multiple years to implement? Every courthouse, DMV, hospital, etc. might be running different, decades-old proprietary software, and who knows if the disparate, original contractors are still around.
nkingsy 5y ago
My wife and I changed our last names in California when we got married. There are quite specific rules: The new name must be in the format {substring of original name 1}{?-}{substring of original name 2}, or you have to go through the much more arduous and expensive full name change process (though you get a 2 for 1 discount).
- frenchy 5y ago
  Can't you also just take the surname of your partner? In Canada that's the most common practice.
  - wnoise 5y ago
    That follows the template he provided

panzagl 5y ago

As long as you don't expect it to be the government's problem when they can't get a SSN, driver's license, etc.

JasonFruit 5y ago
Why is it my problem to make my children conform to government tracking and enumeration, rather than their problem that my children are hard for them to easily assimilate? Government exists for my children, not my children for government. Their technical problems are their problems, not mine. And practically, in a world where people cross borders, where people come to this country for refuge and opportunity, how does it make sense to force them all to have only basic English characters in their names?
- michaelt 5y ago
  > Their technical problems are their problems, not mine. You’ve never interacted with the government or a large corporation, have you?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - JasonFruit 5y ago
    I'm not asking what is, but why it should be that way. Why should I name my children for the government's convenience? Why are Jürgen, Hafþór, Renée, or Noël unacceptable names?
    - IIsi50MHz 5y ago
      The government(s) will be happy to receive & evaluate your generous donation of upgrades to the myriad existing record keeping systems, and further generous donations of your time to train all staff on how to enter and search for the additional written characters, so long as the process does not significantly disrupt operations. "Patches welcome!" (^o^)/ But in seriousness: it is their concern because changes that seem minor can require major changes to electronic systems, and allowing special cases that necessitate lookup in ways the electronic systems can't handle (perhaps even requring manual search through hardcopy!) really throw a star-mangled spanner in the works. Naming is already a special case problem in Japan, where people are accustomed to having no idea how to pronounce most people's names because the parents used non-standard readings of the kanji characters and/or used kanji from a special exempted list of archaic kanji that almost nobody can read. If you're wondering why the government doesn't require people use only the official "common use" kanji, at least just for this one problem, then I should tell it has been tried — enough people raised a fuss about being unable to register their child's "perfect name" that gradually a list of "allowed only in names" kanji was created and expanded. And if I recall correctly, when registering a name, you can specify a totally unrelated pronunciation using the simpler non-kanji phonetic characters, so even just "common use" kanji are almost "all bets off". A relative few kanji have such common pronunciation in names that they can 'usually' be guessed. And the problem is the same with many Japanese place-names, having little or no correlation between written form and pronunciation or meaning. So, why is the spelling of a chosen name any concern to a government? It gets crazy out there, in Name Land. How mäný variatǐons of spelliñg cån ße ællowèd before people give up on pronouncing it?
      - JasonFruit 5y ago
        Why is everyone trying to convince me that handling names is hard for computer systems? That's obvious to everyone, even me. What's fascinating to me is that none of you consider that government might not need to have a list of everyone it governs, or that such a list might not need to be centralized or computerized. When faced with a facet of humanity that's too complex to be easily reduced to consistent data, private groups either do their best and work with what data they can extract, or else have people handle it, with our flexible, tolerant minds. When government is involved, though, the immediate response is, "We have to force people to be less complex!" I'm beginning to see technocracy as the biggest threat to a diverse, human, and humane society.

crysin 5y ago

This is actually probably good. My wife has a hyphen in her first name and the amount of government systems including Social Security itself will most of the time result in some validation error when the hyphen is included and it even adds confusion for employees when in an office and their ancient software doesn't even result in an error, it'll just straight up not work and not give them any context on what could be wrong.

scbrg 5y ago

That's definitely a reasonable thing for governments to care about, since governments generally need to keep track of people's names in some way or other. It's probably a good idea if government computers can keep track of the name, so a minimum requirement would probably be "can be represented by unicode glyphs". So attempts like Prince's should probably be disqualified. And even in the unicode set there are characters that may be problematic - Record Separators, Zero Width Space, Pile of Poo emoji springs to mind as examples, even if the later one might be doable. It's hard to address a letter to a person whose name just consists of a mix of different whitespace characters (especially when their neighbor is a different mix whitespace characters). So, yes, government probably should care about this, at least a little bit. That said, Æ should probably be allowed. It's a standard character in several living languages.

CaptainZapp 5y ago
I totally agree with your take, except maybe: > That said, Æ should probably be allowed This may cause all sorts of issues, from typing a letter to issuing a passport. Else than that, exactly what I was thinking.
- scbrg 5y ago
  The reason I think that maybe Æ should qualify is that it's not entirely unlikely to occur in immigrants' names anyway (or at least the lower case version). There are systems for transforming such characters to something that appears in passports - my own name has an umlaut, and I've obviously got a passport. I'm not American, so my passport is of course not issued in USA, but I suspect few countries would see a name diversity as great as USA so it can't be a new problem for the authorities there.

klyrs 5y ago

Does it occur to you that changing a database schema across an entire state government might incur significant costs and take multiple years to implement? Every courthouse, DMV, hospital, etc. might be running different, decades-old proprietary software, and who knows if the disparate, original contractors are still around.

nkingsy 5y ago

My wife and I changed our last names in California when we got married. There are quite specific rules: The new name must be in the format {substring of original name 1}{?-}{substring of original name 2}, or you have to go through the much more arduous and expensive full name change process (though you get a 2 for 1 discount).

frenchy 5y ago
Can't you also just take the surname of your partner? In Canada that's the most common practice.
- wnoise 5y ago
  That follows the template he provided