I think the parent was more interested in whether someone would use a string of letters within a word in the name, as opposed to just starting a word somewhere

I think the parent was more interested in whether someone would use a string of letters within a word in the name, as opposed to just starting a word somewhere in the name. That is to say in your example, the parent wasn't questioning whether the code should support 'Congo', but whether it should support 'ong', for example.