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Programmers need to learn from bureaucrats of the 19th century. When bookkeeping of the people truly became a thing in the 1800s, industrialised nations sent o
by Svip 5y ago
Programmers need to learn from bureaucrats of the 19th century. When bookkeeping of the people truly became a thing in the 1800s, industrialised nations sent out bureaucrats to collect the names of people in villages. Unfortunately, people seldom had enough names to fill in the forms the bureaucrats had. The idea of a family name was not something bestowed to nor necessary for a lowborn. If you're the only Jack in town, why bother with any other name than Jack?
Not contend with simply filling in Jack, bureaucrats would simply come up with a last name for them. Or - if they felt so inclined - ask the person to come up with one themselves. They would often chose their occupation. Americans know that a lot of modern family name spellings in the US are the result of careless bureaucrats at Ellis Island.
Back then, family names, house names, last names and surnames weren't necessarily the same thing. One might have more than one. You may be of one House, but your last name was Jackson (son of Jack). Also somewhat inconvenient for these bureaucrats with few fields on their forms. And also, stop changing last name from generation to generation.
Though, fortunately for these bureaucrats, unlike modern programmers, when the map did not fit the terrain, they could simply alter the terrain.
- notum 5y agoSome airlines do this, they ask that you anglicise your name for the boarding pass.
- andrewem 5y agoFamily names weren’t changed at Ellis Island. See eg this from the New York Public Library: https://www.nypl.org/blog/2013/07/02/name-changes-ellis-island https://www.nypl.org/blog/2013/07/02/name-changes-ellis-isla... (The mandated adoption of surnames is a pretty complex topic and of course proceeded in different ways in various times and places.)
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- throw0101a 5y ago> If you're the only Jack in town, why bother with any other name than Jack? In Le Guin's The Dispossessed [1] people on the satellite planet called Anarres get assigned an unique mononymous [2] name at birth. No one else alive at the time has the same name (and usually the name isn't re-used for a number of years). The protagonist is "Shevek". [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dispossessed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dispossessed [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mononymous_person https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mononymous_person
- goto11 5y agoSo you are suggesting programmers should just assign people names conforming to some standardized schema? You might get away with that for a government website in some states, but good luck being a commercial site in competitive market and requiring customers to change their names before you will take their money.