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I actually find that interesting. Why can't we change our names at will? Is it because government needs them as a unique ID (combined with birth date and what n
by Tichy 14y ago
I actually find that interesting. Why can't we change our names at will? Is it because government needs them as a unique ID (combined with birth date and what not)? If governments had other IDs (and they do have social security numbers), why bother keeping track of names?
- MrMcDowall 14y agoI think mostly it is because of the legal status that names convey - contracts can only reference tangible names for people or organizations in them, not abstract concepts. So I guess it's not the Government who would and do happily use SSNs to identify us, but the legal system.
- pavel_lishin 14y agoIANAL, but I believe that in the United States you're free to use whatever name you like so long as it's not done for fraudulent purposes.
- antidoh 14y agoEssentially true.
- drzaiusapelord 14y agoSure you can. When I worked at a large non-profit we had a name change request from our affiliate members for a user named "Jack." That's right. Just Jack. He said that was his legal name. In Active Directory or LDAP, names (or lack of) are just attributes. So I just put 'First Name: Jack' and give him 'jack' as his username.