I will remind everyone that there are a minimum of three identifiers here. The UID, which is an integer. Ownership resides here; it's the primary key. Can be u

I will remind everyone that there are a minimum of three identifiers here. The UID, which is an integer. Ownership resides here; it's the primary key. Can be used by programs. The username, each of which must be unique and maps to one UID -- but multiple usernames can map to the same UID. Used by humans and programs to login. The GECOS field, or "human readable name", which is only used as a display label. Some systems include a structure inside this for additional info like phone number, office number, or similar". I don't think anyone would object to UTF-8 here.