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At the time I moved out of New Jersey 8 years ago, the state was still unable to represent my completely vanilla name on my driver's license. My first name is "

At the time I moved out of New Jersey 8 years ago, the state was still unable to represent my completely vanilla name on my driver's license. My first name is "Christopher", but their computers can't/couldn't handle an 11-character name. It was always truncated on my driver's license. This led to problems when they instituted their trusted ID compliance. When renewing the license we were required to provide some combination of documentation to corroborate our identity, and obviously that documentation needs to match the name shown on the driver's license - and of course mine did not. There was one way out for Christophers like myself. A birth certificate was considered the ultimate truth, so as long as I had a notarized (with the raised seal) birth certificate to prove my identity, they would allow me to renew my license. The State of New Jersey is very awful at IT. My wife, who works in healthcare finance, told me about problems she was having with the State because - get this - their field for what amounts to "Medicaid ID#" was too narrow, so they had to recycle ID#s for new recipients! And to make that worse, they discarded old backup data so when checking the data for a patient several years ago, it's only possible to find that of the latest owner of ID# 12345.

pickledcods 5y ago
I have the exact same problem with my European passport. maximum name length, that is total first+middle+surname must be less than 30 characters. Officially I am not who I am.
- toyg 5y ago
  That's not a limitation of the European format, which is in fact not agreed on in the original resolution [1]. Your country is doing it wrong. In the UK, where the format has been set in 2014 so still in an EU context, the limit is 60 (30 for surnames, 30 for the rest). Interestingly, it looks like we're actually going backwards on this: accented characters have actually been dropped from the main passport page in recent years, to be replaced with ICAO transliterations. Which is shameful, to be honest, since it implies passports are now incomplete as a form of ID (unless the real name is recorded somewhere else). Airline lobbying clearly won the day, years ago. This seems to be a UK-only thing at this point. [1] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:41981X0919:EN:HTML https://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX...
  - wdb 5y ago
    UK likes to put your full name on bank cards and spend a long time to convince Lloyds to put my initials + last name instead. Why would I want a random user in a shop to know my full name?!?
    - tialaramex 5y ago
      > UK likes to put your full name on bank cards Do they? I had three unexpired bank cards to compare. My good bank issued me my non-contactless credit card, which is a backup and also the card my Phone "is" when I use that to pay for stuff, which is most of the time. That card (which a little worn) has my first and last name with middle initial. My good bank also issued me a debit card very recently. This card is entirely black on the front except for the name of the bank and the logo of the card network. However on the back it has my initials and surname. The other bank I use that does card transactions issued me a more traditional looking card with just my initials and surname on the front.
      - wdb 5y ago
        That's not my experience, Monzo, Revolut, Lloyds, my private bank, and Halifax (they even misspelled it) all put my full name on the card until I called them and asked for it to be changed. I think they should ask you how you want your name on the bank cards
        tialaramex 5y ago
        It seems like that's another question most people don't care about, which hurts your acquisition flow if you insist on asking it. Just allowing you to call up and change it seems adequate to resolve strong preference from customers like you. If you ask people fifty questions they don't care about, and they don't need to complete the process, they just won't do it at all. "Would you prefer our letters to you addressed you by your first name, your surname and initials or just Dear Sir/Madam?" "If we have to call you about your account, should we text first or is it OK to just call immediately?" "Our cards can be doused in artificial lemon scent instead of smelling of plastic when new. Would you prefer the lemon scent?" "If you had to fight either one angry goose every Tuesday, or an enraged orangutan on a random day once per year, which would you prefer?" "Would you prefer Contactless cards or should we disable the Contactless feature on your new card?" "Going back to the goose question, does your answer to the previous question change if the orangutan has a sword?"
- markstos 5y ago
  My wife's name was adjusted by the Department of Motor Vehicles in Indiana because the format she wanted "wasn't allowed in the computer". Of course, the name on your driver's license becomes your legal name for many practical purposes.
- anthk 5y ago
  I call it bullshit because a lot of Basque names+surnames could pass the 30 char limit with ease.
- Bayart 5y ago
  Seems short sighted, considering it's normal in a lot of European countries to have three given names (and completely legal to have far more).
jjice 5y ago
The absurdity of not being able to support a name as common as Christopher or anything as long or longer just screams "government work". What the hell went through everyone's head when they built this system? Absolutely no testing or real data was used either, but that shouldn't matter, because having a max limit on someone's (very common) name is honestly impressive. The fact they developed this system without addressing this issue is a testament to the quality of government software development. I'm sure there is good government software out there, but there are plenty of showcases of the opposite (especially since these are systems that NEED to work).
- Uehreka 5y ago
  CVS also has trouble with my name (I’m also a Christopher) as do some other private entities like my doctor’s office. So this may not be entirely a government thing.
  - zdragnar 5y ago
    You can go to a new doctor or pharmacy. The consequences for them not having your full first name recorded are between minimal and nonexistant. To be a US resident, you must be known to the government. To leave, the government will tax a percentage of your wealth. Try to tell the government to pound sand while remaining, and they can bring the full legal weight of their monopoly on force against you. The difference in scale of harm between what CVS is capable of versus the government means we should have no issue with holding government to a much higher standard, And be proactive in pointing out when it falls short.
- MonkeyClub 5y ago
  > What the hell went through everyone's head when they built this system? Not sure what did go through, but I'm sure that "Christofer" as a test string didn't.
- nikanj 5y ago
  > What the hell went through everyone's head when they built this system? The way to make a profit on government contracts: 1) Underbid 2) Find every possible use case that’s OBVIOUSLY needed, yet not in the specs 3) Leave them unimplemented 4) Charge through the nose for the extra work. The system has already been paid for and put to production. It’s too late for the buyers to back out, lest they be out both money and face
adolph 5y ago
Cue patio11 link: Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/ https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-...
nhoughto 5y ago
yep this is fairly common where the original form-factor, a piece of paper/plastic card, was the target. The intent of capturing the name was to put it on the card, and long names can't fit so we have to truncate them or abbreviate etc. Nevermind that that might not be your name or that in the future having the untruncated name might be useful. Definitely a big problem for then using that data to form the base of an identity system like trusted ID compliance.
throwaway946513 5y ago
As a fellow Christopher -thank the IT overlords of my state (MO) that my driver's license uses my name in its entirety and not cutting off the 'r'.
kova12 5y ago
Ask them to refund your taxes, since they clearly can't support you
Loranubi 5y ago
Using a ASCII name in a Chinese speaking country is fun too. The majority of Chinese names are 2 to 4 characters long. So even if you have a short English name, it will either get abbreviated to 5 chars or so or just printed over whatever comes next to the name field.

pickledcods 5y ago

I have the exact same problem with my European passport. maximum name length, that is total first+middle+surname must be less than 30 characters. Officially I am not who I am.

toyg 5y ago
That's not a limitation of the European format, which is in fact not agreed on in the original resolution [1]. Your country is doing it wrong. In the UK, where the format has been set in 2014 so still in an EU context, the limit is 60 (30 for surnames, 30 for the rest). Interestingly, it looks like we're actually going backwards on this: accented characters have actually been dropped from the main passport page in recent years, to be replaced with ICAO transliterations. Which is shameful, to be honest, since it implies passports are now incomplete as a form of ID (unless the real name is recorded somewhere else). Airline lobbying clearly won the day, years ago. This seems to be a UK-only thing at this point. [1] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:41981X0919:EN:HTML https://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX...
- wdb 5y ago
  UK likes to put your full name on bank cards and spend a long time to convince Lloyds to put my initials + last name instead. Why would I want a random user in a shop to know my full name?!?
  - tialaramex 5y ago
    > UK likes to put your full name on bank cards Do they? I had three unexpired bank cards to compare. My good bank issued me my non-contactless credit card, which is a backup and also the card my Phone "is" when I use that to pay for stuff, which is most of the time. That card (which a little worn) has my first and last name with middle initial. My good bank also issued me a debit card very recently. This card is entirely black on the front except for the name of the bank and the logo of the card network. However on the back it has my initials and surname. The other bank I use that does card transactions issued me a more traditional looking card with just my initials and surname on the front.
    - wdb 5y ago
      That's not my experience, Monzo, Revolut, Lloyds, my private bank, and Halifax (they even misspelled it) all put my full name on the card until I called them and asked for it to be changed. I think they should ask you how you want your name on the bank cards
      - tialaramex 5y ago
        It seems like that's another question most people don't care about, which hurts your acquisition flow if you insist on asking it. Just allowing you to call up and change it seems adequate to resolve strong preference from customers like you. If you ask people fifty questions they don't care about, and they don't need to complete the process, they just won't do it at all. "Would you prefer our letters to you addressed you by your first name, your surname and initials or just Dear Sir/Madam?" "If we have to call you about your account, should we text first or is it OK to just call immediately?" "Our cards can be doused in artificial lemon scent instead of smelling of plastic when new. Would you prefer the lemon scent?" "If you had to fight either one angry goose every Tuesday, or an enraged orangutan on a random day once per year, which would you prefer?" "Would you prefer Contactless cards or should we disable the Contactless feature on your new card?" "Going back to the goose question, does your answer to the previous question change if the orangutan has a sword?"
markstos 5y ago
My wife's name was adjusted by the Department of Motor Vehicles in Indiana because the format she wanted "wasn't allowed in the computer". Of course, the name on your driver's license becomes your legal name for many practical purposes.
anthk 5y ago
I call it bullshit because a lot of Basque names+surnames could pass the 30 char limit with ease.
Bayart 5y ago
Seems short sighted, considering it's normal in a lot of European countries to have three given names (and completely legal to have far more).

jjice 5y ago

The absurdity of not being able to support a name as common as Christopher or anything as long or longer just screams "government work". What the hell went through everyone's head when they built this system? Absolutely no testing or real data was used either, but that shouldn't matter, because having a max limit on someone's (very common) name is honestly impressive. The fact they developed this system without addressing this issue is a testament to the quality of government software development. I'm sure there is good government software out there, but there are plenty of showcases of the opposite (especially since these are systems that NEED to work).

Uehreka 5y ago
CVS also has trouble with my name (I’m also a Christopher) as do some other private entities like my doctor’s office. So this may not be entirely a government thing.
- zdragnar 5y ago
  You can go to a new doctor or pharmacy. The consequences for them not having your full first name recorded are between minimal and nonexistant. To be a US resident, you must be known to the government. To leave, the government will tax a percentage of your wealth. Try to tell the government to pound sand while remaining, and they can bring the full legal weight of their monopoly on force against you. The difference in scale of harm between what CVS is capable of versus the government means we should have no issue with holding government to a much higher standard, And be proactive in pointing out when it falls short.
MonkeyClub 5y ago
> What the hell went through everyone's head when they built this system? Not sure what did go through, but I'm sure that "Christofer" as a test string didn't.
nikanj 5y ago
> What the hell went through everyone's head when they built this system? The way to make a profit on government contracts: 1) Underbid 2) Find every possible use case that’s OBVIOUSLY needed, yet not in the specs 3) Leave them unimplemented 4) Charge through the nose for the extra work. The system has already been paid for and put to production. It’s too late for the buyers to back out, lest they be out both money and face

adolph 5y ago

Cue patio11 link: Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/ https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-...

nhoughto 5y ago

yep this is fairly common where the original form-factor, a piece of paper/plastic card, was the target. The intent of capturing the name was to put it on the card, and long names can't fit so we have to truncate them or abbreviate etc. Nevermind that that might not be your name or that in the future having the untruncated name might be useful. Definitely a big problem for then using that data to form the base of an identity system like trusted ID compliance.

throwaway946513 5y ago

As a fellow Christopher -thank the IT overlords of my state (MO) that my driver's license uses my name in its entirety and not cutting off the 'r'.

kova12 5y ago

Ask them to refund your taxes, since they clearly can't support you

Loranubi 5y ago

Using a ASCII name in a Chinese speaking country is fun too. The majority of Chinese names are 2 to 4 characters long. So even if you have a short English name, it will either get abbreviated to 5 chars or so or just printed over whatever comes next to the name field.