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If you just use the {Alphabetic} Unicode character class (100K code points), together with a space, hyphen, and maybe comma, that might get you close. It includ

If you just use the {Alphabetic} Unicode character class (100K code points), together with a space, hyphen, and maybe comma, that might get you close. It includes diacritics. I'm curious if anyone can think of any other non-alphabetic characters used in legal names around the world, in other scripts? I wondered about numbers, but the most famous example of that has been overturned: "Originally named X Æ A-12, the child (whom they call X) had to have his name officially changed to X Æ A-Xii in order to align with California laws regarding birth certificates." (Of course I'm not saying you should do this. It is fun to wonder though.)

nicoburns 2y ago
Apostrophe is common in surnames in parts of the world.
poizan42 2y ago
You forgot apostrophe as is common in Irish names like O’Brien.
- bloak 2y ago
  Yes, though O’Brien is Ó Briain in Irish, according to Wikipedia. I think the apostrophe in Irish names was added by English speakers, perhaps by analogy with "o'clock", perhaps to avoid writing something that would look like an initial. There are also English names of Norman origin that contain an apostrophe, though the only example I can think of immediately is the fictional d'Urberville.
gus_massa 2y ago
Comma or apostrophe, like in d'Alembert ? (And I have 3 in my keyboard, I'm not sure everyone is using the same one.)
- ahazred8ta 2y ago
  Mrs. Keihanaikukauakahihuliheekahaunaele only had a string length problem, but there are people with a Hawaiian ʻokina in their names. U+02BB
Seb-C 2y ago
> I'm curious if anyone can think of any other non-alphabetic characters used in legal names around the world, in other scripts? Latin characters are NOT allowed in official names for Japanese citizens. It must be written in Japanese characters only. For foreigners living in Japan it's quite frequent to end up in a situation where their official name in Latin does not pass the validation rules of many forms online. Issues like forbidden characters, or because it's too long since Japanese names (family name + first name) are typically only 4 characters long. Also, when you get a visa to Japan, you have to bend and disform the pronunciation of your name to make it fit into the (limited) Japanese syllabary. Funnily, they even had to register a whole new unicode range at some point, because old administrative documents sometimes contains characters that have been deprecated more than a century ago. https://ccjktype.fonts.adobe.com/2016/11/hentaigana.html https://ccjktype.fonts.adobe.com/2016/11/hentaigana.html
- crazygringo 2y ago
  Very interesting about Japan! To be clear, I wasn't thinking about within a specific country though. More like, what is the set of all characters that are allowed in legal names across the world? You know, to eliminate things like emoji, mathematical symbols, and so forth.
  - account42 2y ago
    I imagine at least Sealand has relatively lax (or at least informal) restrictions.
  - Seb-C 2y ago
    Ah, I see. I don't know, but I would bet that the sum of all corner cases and exceptions in the world would make it pretty hard to confidently eliminate any "obvious" characters. From a technical standpoint, unicode emojis are probably safe to exclude, but on the other hand, some scripts like Chinese characters are fundamentally pictograms, which is semantically not so different than an emoji. Maybe after centuries of evolution we will end up with a legit universal language based on emojis, and people named with it.
GolDDranks 2y ago
What if one's name is not in alphabetic script? Let's say, "鈴木涼太".
- crazygringo 2y ago
  That's part of {Alphabetic} in Unicode. It validates.
shash 2y ago
There’s this individual’s name which involves a clock sound: Nǃxau ǂToma[1] [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/N%25C7%2583xau_%C7%82Toma https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/N%25C7%2583xau_%C7%82Toma
- crazygringo 2y ago
  Click characters are part of {Alphabetic}! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Click_consonant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Click_consonant https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/category/Lo https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/category/Lo https://stackoverflow.com/a/4843363 https://stackoverflow.com/a/4843363
- kens 2y ago
  > There’s this individual’s name which involves a clock sound: Nǃxau ǂToma I was extremely puzzled until I realized you meant a click sound, not a clock sound. Adding to my confusion, the vintage IBM 1401 computer uses ǂ as a record mark character.
golergka 2y ago
דויד Smith (concatenated) will have an LTR control character in the middle
- crazygringo 2y ago
  Oh that's interesting. Is that a thing? I've never known of anyone whose legal name used two alphabets that didn't have any overlap in letters at all -- two completely different scripts. Would a birth certificate allow that? Wouldn't you be expected to transliterate one of them?
  - golergka 2y ago
    I haven't known anyone like that either, but I can imagine how the same person would have name in Hebrew in some Israeli IT system and name in English somewhere else and then have a third system to unexpectedly combine them in some weird way.
Mordisquitos 2y ago
> I'm curious if anyone can think of any other non-alphabetic characters used in legal names around the world, in other scripts? The Catalan name Gal·la is growing in popularity, with currently 1515 women in the census having it as a first name in Spain with an average age of 10.4 years old: https://ine.es/widgets/nombApell/nombApell.shtml https://ine.es/widgets/nombApell/nombApell.shtml
- enriquto 2y ago
  beautiful map of the Catalan Countries when you search for that name here
lmm 2y ago
> I'm curious if anyone can think of any other non-alphabetic characters used in legal names around the world, in other scripts? Some Japanese names are written with Japanese characters that do not have Unicode codepoints. (The Unicode consortium claims that these characters are somehow "really" Chinese characters just written in a different font; holders of those names tend to disagree, but somehow the programmer community that would riot if someone suggested that people with ø in their name shouldn't care when it's written as o accepts that kind of thing when it comes to Japanese).
- crazygringo 2y ago
  Ha, well I don't think we need to worry about validating characters if they can't be typed in a text box in the first place. ;) But very interesting thanks!
  - lmm 2y ago
    > Ha, well I don't think we need to worry about validating characters if they can't be typed in a text box in the first place. ;) They are frequently typed in text boxes, any software seriously targeting Japan supports them, you just have to use Shift-JIS (or EUC-JP). So your codebase needs to actually support text encodings rather than just blindly assuming everything is UTF-8.
jlhwung 2y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perri_6 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perri_6

nicoburns 2y ago

Apostrophe is common in surnames in parts of the world.

poizan42 2y ago

You forgot apostrophe as is common in Irish names like O’Brien.

bloak 2y ago
Yes, though O’Brien is Ó Briain in Irish, according to Wikipedia. I think the apostrophe in Irish names was added by English speakers, perhaps by analogy with "o'clock", perhaps to avoid writing something that would look like an initial. There are also English names of Norman origin that contain an apostrophe, though the only example I can think of immediately is the fictional d'Urberville.

gus_massa 2y ago

Comma or apostrophe, like in d'Alembert ? (And I have 3 in my keyboard, I'm not sure everyone is using the same one.)

ahazred8ta 2y ago
Mrs. Keihanaikukauakahihuliheekahaunaele only had a string length problem, but there are people with a Hawaiian ʻokina in their names. U+02BB

Seb-C 2y ago

> I'm curious if anyone can think of any other non-alphabetic characters used in legal names around the world, in other scripts? Latin characters are NOT allowed in official names for Japanese citizens. It must be written in Japanese characters only. For foreigners living in Japan it's quite frequent to end up in a situation where their official name in Latin does not pass the validation rules of many forms online. Issues like forbidden characters, or because it's too long since Japanese names (family name + first name) are typically only 4 characters long. Also, when you get a visa to Japan, you have to bend and disform the pronunciation of your name to make it fit into the (limited) Japanese syllabary. Funnily, they even had to register a whole new unicode range at some point, because old administrative documents sometimes contains characters that have been deprecated more than a century ago. https://ccjktype.fonts.adobe.com/2016/11/hentaigana.html https://ccjktype.fonts.adobe.com/2016/11/hentaigana.html

crazygringo 2y ago
Very interesting about Japan! To be clear, I wasn't thinking about within a specific country though. More like, what is the set of all characters that are allowed in legal names across the world? You know, to eliminate things like emoji, mathematical symbols, and so forth.
- account42 2y ago
  I imagine at least Sealand has relatively lax (or at least informal) restrictions.
- Seb-C 2y ago
  Ah, I see. I don't know, but I would bet that the sum of all corner cases and exceptions in the world would make it pretty hard to confidently eliminate any "obvious" characters. From a technical standpoint, unicode emojis are probably safe to exclude, but on the other hand, some scripts like Chinese characters are fundamentally pictograms, which is semantically not so different than an emoji. Maybe after centuries of evolution we will end up with a legit universal language based on emojis, and people named with it.

GolDDranks 2y ago

What if one's name is not in alphabetic script? Let's say, "鈴木涼太".

crazygringo 2y ago
That's part of {Alphabetic} in Unicode. It validates.

shash 2y ago

There’s this individual’s name which involves a clock sound: Nǃxau ǂToma[1] [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/N%25C7%2583xau_%C7%82Toma https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/N%25C7%2583xau_%C7%82Toma

crazygringo 2y ago
Click characters are part of {Alphabetic}! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Click_consonant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Click_consonant https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/category/Lo https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/category/Lo https://stackoverflow.com/a/4843363 https://stackoverflow.com/a/4843363
kens 2y ago
> There’s this individual’s name which involves a clock sound: Nǃxau ǂToma I was extremely puzzled until I realized you meant a click sound, not a clock sound. Adding to my confusion, the vintage IBM 1401 computer uses ǂ as a record mark character.

golergka 2y ago

דויד Smith (concatenated) will have an LTR control character in the middle

crazygringo 2y ago
Oh that's interesting. Is that a thing? I've never known of anyone whose legal name used two alphabets that didn't have any overlap in letters at all -- two completely different scripts. Would a birth certificate allow that? Wouldn't you be expected to transliterate one of them?
- golergka 2y ago
  I haven't known anyone like that either, but I can imagine how the same person would have name in Hebrew in some Israeli IT system and name in English somewhere else and then have a third system to unexpectedly combine them in some weird way.

Mordisquitos 2y ago

> I'm curious if anyone can think of any other non-alphabetic characters used in legal names around the world, in other scripts? The Catalan name Gal·la is growing in popularity, with currently 1515 women in the census having it as a first name in Spain with an average age of 10.4 years old: https://ine.es/widgets/nombApell/nombApell.shtml https://ine.es/widgets/nombApell/nombApell.shtml

enriquto 2y ago
beautiful map of the Catalan Countries when you search for that name here

lmm 2y ago

> I'm curious if anyone can think of any other non-alphabetic characters used in legal names around the world, in other scripts? Some Japanese names are written with Japanese characters that do not have Unicode codepoints. (The Unicode consortium claims that these characters are somehow "really" Chinese characters just written in a different font; holders of those names tend to disagree, but somehow the programmer community that would riot if someone suggested that people with ø in their name shouldn't care when it's written as o accepts that kind of thing when it comes to Japanese).

crazygringo 2y ago
Ha, well I don't think we need to worry about validating characters if they can't be typed in a text box in the first place. ;) But very interesting thanks!
- lmm 2y ago
  > Ha, well I don't think we need to worry about validating characters if they can't be typed in a text box in the first place. ;) They are frequently typed in text boxes, any software seriously targeting Japan supports them, you just have to use Shift-JIS (or EUC-JP). So your codebase needs to actually support text encodings rather than just blindly assuming everything is UTF-8.

jlhwung 2y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perri_6 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perri_6