13 ms·

There's an interesting downside to naming your child something very unique- you become significantly more Google-able than "Tom Jones". Potential employers, lan

There's an interesting downside to naming your child something very unique- you become significantly more Google-able than "Tom Jones". Potential employers, landlords, spouses, and other people will have a very easy time seeing all of your failures and folly.

alsocasey 13y ago
Legal name and social media name don't necessarily have to match.
- wlesieutre 13y ago
  Tell that to Google and Facebook
- dangrossman 13y ago
  Not today. Do you think that will hold true for the entirety of your child's 80+ years on this Earth?
  - ngpio 13y ago
    No, but that doesn't imply that it shouldn't hold true for the entirety of the child's legal childhood. There's always been a feature of childhood that I feel is paramount: the freedom to alter one's identity. The child is still in beta; they're a person that's not officially released to the public. Forcing them, from the start, to stick a single identity can be problematic psychologically and socially. Encouraging situational pseudonymity is not equal to the revocation of one's legal identity, from now until death. I can say with certainty that, had I not had the benefits of pseudonymity offered by the internet of the 90s and 00s, I would be a fundamentally broken person.
    - dangrossman 13y ago
      The assumption that this "freedom" remain available in the future is what I challenged, not a social obligation not to avail yourself of it. It may become technically or legally impossible to operate under a pseudonym or to change your legal name in the future. If you give your child a unique name, and the ability to operate under a different name is not available, then you've guaranteed their activity (childhood or otherwise) is easily cataloged and searchable.
      - ngpio 13y ago
        > And if it becomes technically or illegally impossible to operate under a pseudonym or to change your legal name in 10 years? That this won't happen is the assumption I challenged, not some social obligation not to choose to use a pseudonym. Then we should work to make that future unlikely. Even if things come to be as you describe, we should build in strict social/technical safeguards of (at the very least) pseudonymity until we much better understand the development the human mind. [edit in response to your edited post] It seems we're pretty much in agreement, just coming at the issue from different points of devil's advocacy.
        dangrossman 13y ago
        One of the social safeguards for preserving pseudonymity (your advice) in the face of a future you cannot control is giving your child a common name, so that their activity cannot easily be discerned from that of many others. As hard as you work, you may not be able to prevent future technical and legal changes from occurring.
        ngpio 13y ago
        > One of the social safeguards for preserving pseudonymity (your advice) in the face of a future you cannot control is giving your child a common name, so that their activity cannot easily be discerned from that of many others. I agree. I'm very grateful to have a common name. Nate Perkins is about as generic as it gets. Global searches for my name come up with a variety of people completely unrelated to me. Still, there are potential downsides. For instance, searching for "[my name] [my city]" brings up a mugshot of someone who isn't me. And of course, Stephen Law of the original post has a much more frustrating issue. None of us are really in a position to say with certainty "it's better to have a common name than an uncommon one" or vice versa. I would argue that pseudonymity is necessary to overcome negative situations arising from having a common name or having an uncommon name. But this argument is strictly from my own experience and should be taken as such. Like most things, it comes down to the importance of teaching kids to think critically about how their choices will affect themselves and their environment rather than accepting truisms not backed by relevant statistics.
    - pattisapu 13y ago
      I think your sentiments and insights here are echoed in a longstanding practice in American law where minors are referred to by their initials only in case names and opinions (for example, New Jersey v. T.L.O.).
- ngpio 13y ago
  I would recommend that parents encourage their children to use a variety of usernames on the major social platforms, none of which are related to their legal name. I'm in the process of transitioning to a single username everywhere based on the domain ngp.io, which itself is essentially "[my intials] I/O". I like the elegance and conciseness of it. But I'm extremely glad that I didn't do something like this earlier. My childhood online (as well as my "online childhood", if you catch my meaning) remain obscure to all but those with the necessary time, resources and motivation. That's surprisingly powerful when you're surrounded by swarms of people whose entire histories can be looked up in a matter of minutes. It can also be damning; I'm reminded of the line in Mad Men referring to Don Draper, "He has no people! You can't trust a person like that." Being the mysterious man from out of town might be alluring from a sexual stance, but business-wise it's still difficult to advance without strong geographically-rooted social networks, and the first step to creating those nowadays is often glancing at someone's Facebook or Twitter and exclaiming "hey, I know that person too!" Personhood is partially defined by your connection to other people, so having a visible interpersonal history is, in a sense, required for passing the Turing tests you're subjected to by those around you. Gaps in your history, on purpose or by accident, can result in being treated like a subhuman.
mcv 13y ago
And having an unusual name can also make you run afoul of Google+'s "no unusual name" policy, where accounts get blocked just because someone at Google thinks it can't be a real name (they're often wrong).
- alex_anglin 13y ago
  Some might consider that a feature.
  - illuminate 13y ago
    "Some might consider that a feature." Yes, and those people would be rather utopian about how a lack of anonymity helps clean up the internet. Most trolls are proud of their idiocy.
- officemonkey 13y ago
  Facebook also has a "no unusual name" policy, but it's very randomly enforced. My friend's first name is "Spider." It is not her birth name, but she's used it professionally and personally her entire adult life. When she signed up for Facebook they told her she couldn't be "Spider" because somebody (Sony probably) decided that wasn't a "real" name (Spider Robinson and Spider Sabich notwithstanding.) If she wanted to use "Spider" Facebook needed a legal ID with that name on it (which she does not have.) So she registered under "Spidie" instead with no further problems.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
Alex_MJ 13y ago
THIS. I have a unique last name - there is absolutely no ambiguity whenever anything shows up. Whenever a website (or anything offline that might put rankings or whatever online) wants me to use my real name, I usually default to "Alex", "Alex M/MJ" or "Alex (gibberish)" depending on their guidelines. What they view as a policy that "encourages openness", I view as something that will guide first impressions when people google me unto eternity. Even if it's not controversial, it's the first thing a potential client or employer sees when they type things into google, and I don't want to be reckless with that. I don't want to have to view every minor action that I make on a website as something that's potentially going to be on the front page of google's results for my name. When I was in HS, my friends had a poker league, and we all had nicknames and personas - someone put up a page with hilarious (but decidedly unprofessional) caricatures and quotes and it was the first thing that showed up under my name. I noticed it and asked my friend to change it, which he though was hilarious but understood and did. Same for Meetup. A long time ago I went to some meetups that could potentially be alienating to some folks (agnostics and whatever, way back in the day when I felt it was worth arguing about) and BOOM, google front page for my name. If I had a client who was somewhat religious, I don't care at all but I don't want that to show up and all of a sudden I'm accidentally alienating people. For showing up to something. Whenever I run a 5k or do anything remotely prestigious I always use my full name so that the front page of google just gets filled with that kind of thing in case anything else that's potentially a liability pops up and I don't notice it. It's annoying.
- CWuestefeld 13y ago
  I also have a very unique name. BOOM, google front page for my name Trying to fly under the radar, as you do, may be some solution, but it makes the mistakes like this one stick out even more boldly. I've found that over the years, there's enough of a heap on the web that matches my name, that garbage like you mention is overwhelmed by the more meaningful stuff. A search for me typically turns up my LinkedIn profile, the product page on Amazon for a book I co-authored, some CodeProject articles, and stuff like that. Just having a life's worth of stuff out there lets a smart search engine ignore much of the stuff that I'd want them to ignore.
- SomeCallMeTim 13y ago
JshWright 13y ago
I enjoy the fact that my name, Josh Wright, is reasonably common. Even if you try to make it a bit more specific by adding the city I live in, Syracuse, I'm buried under results for a guy who used to play basketball for Syracuse University.
5teev 13y ago
It's bad enough having a nearly--but not actually--unique name and frequently getting confused for the other one.
TeMPOraL 13y ago
I always considered this to be an upside. Being googlable always felt to me like a synonym to existing; it's a way for potential employers to see that I know stuff because of all the texts and hobby projects; for potential future spouses/other people to see that I'm an interesting person who does something creative, etc. Funny how I didn't notice when being easily googlable started to be considered a bad thing.
- ShirtlessRod 13y ago
  Then you've never had a bad run-in with someone who was decidedly unhinged.
  - TeMPOraL 13y ago
    I admit I haven't, though I know people who had. I wonder how many people encounter such situation.
    - ShirtlessRod 13y ago
      I'm not sure. I've been lucky enough to not have to worry about it, but I've definitely seen it (mostly of the "stalker" variety) and can easily understand why someone would want to remain on the "down low". I don't mean to pile on you personally, but this issue always pushes my buttons. It seems like whenever it comes up, there's always those who are absolutely incredulous that anyone wouldn't want to be all over the internet. Worse, I've even seen the reaction where some people think that it means the person must be untrustworthy, as if they are the ones who did something wrong. If someone wants to be all over the front page of Google when someone searches their name, I think that's fine if that's what they want. Just don't assume that everyone wants (or should want) the same thing.
marklit 13y ago
If they find you on linked in, they can google reverse image search your profile picture and probably come up with quite a bit. Now imagine google introducing facial recognition search.

alsocasey 13y ago

Legal name and social media name don't necessarily have to match.

wlesieutre 13y ago
Tell that to Google and Facebook
dangrossman 13y ago
Not today. Do you think that will hold true for the entirety of your child's 80+ years on this Earth?
- ngpio 13y ago
  No, but that doesn't imply that it shouldn't hold true for the entirety of the child's legal childhood. There's always been a feature of childhood that I feel is paramount: the freedom to alter one's identity. The child is still in beta; they're a person that's not officially released to the public. Forcing them, from the start, to stick a single identity can be problematic psychologically and socially. Encouraging situational pseudonymity is not equal to the revocation of one's legal identity, from now until death. I can say with certainty that, had I not had the benefits of pseudonymity offered by the internet of the 90s and 00s, I would be a fundamentally broken person.
  - dangrossman 13y ago
    The assumption that this "freedom" remain available in the future is what I challenged, not a social obligation not to avail yourself of it. It may become technically or legally impossible to operate under a pseudonym or to change your legal name in the future. If you give your child a unique name, and the ability to operate under a different name is not available, then you've guaranteed their activity (childhood or otherwise) is easily cataloged and searchable.
    - ngpio 13y ago
      > And if it becomes technically or illegally impossible to operate under a pseudonym or to change your legal name in 10 years? That this won't happen is the assumption I challenged, not some social obligation not to choose to use a pseudonym. Then we should work to make that future unlikely. Even if things come to be as you describe, we should build in strict social/technical safeguards of (at the very least) pseudonymity until we much better understand the development the human mind. [edit in response to your edited post] It seems we're pretty much in agreement, just coming at the issue from different points of devil's advocacy.
      - dangrossman 13y ago
        One of the social safeguards for preserving pseudonymity (your advice) in the face of a future you cannot control is giving your child a common name, so that their activity cannot easily be discerned from that of many others. As hard as you work, you may not be able to prevent future technical and legal changes from occurring.
        ngpio 13y ago
        > One of the social safeguards for preserving pseudonymity (your advice) in the face of a future you cannot control is giving your child a common name, so that their activity cannot easily be discerned from that of many others. I agree. I'm very grateful to have a common name. Nate Perkins is about as generic as it gets. Global searches for my name come up with a variety of people completely unrelated to me. Still, there are potential downsides. For instance, searching for "[my name] [my city]" brings up a mugshot of someone who isn't me. And of course, Stephen Law of the original post has a much more frustrating issue. None of us are really in a position to say with certainty "it's better to have a common name than an uncommon one" or vice versa. I would argue that pseudonymity is necessary to overcome negative situations arising from having a common name or having an uncommon name. But this argument is strictly from my own experience and should be taken as such. Like most things, it comes down to the importance of teaching kids to think critically about how their choices will affect themselves and their environment rather than accepting truisms not backed by relevant statistics.
  - pattisapu 13y ago
    I think your sentiments and insights here are echoed in a longstanding practice in American law where minors are referred to by their initials only in case names and opinions (for example, New Jersey v. T.L.O.).
ngpio 13y ago
I would recommend that parents encourage their children to use a variety of usernames on the major social platforms, none of which are related to their legal name. I'm in the process of transitioning to a single username everywhere based on the domain ngp.io, which itself is essentially "[my intials] I/O". I like the elegance and conciseness of it. But I'm extremely glad that I didn't do something like this earlier. My childhood online (as well as my "online childhood", if you catch my meaning) remain obscure to all but those with the necessary time, resources and motivation. That's surprisingly powerful when you're surrounded by swarms of people whose entire histories can be looked up in a matter of minutes. It can also be damning; I'm reminded of the line in Mad Men referring to Don Draper, "He has no people! You can't trust a person like that." Being the mysterious man from out of town might be alluring from a sexual stance, but business-wise it's still difficult to advance without strong geographically-rooted social networks, and the first step to creating those nowadays is often glancing at someone's Facebook or Twitter and exclaiming "hey, I know that person too!" Personhood is partially defined by your connection to other people, so having a visible interpersonal history is, in a sense, required for passing the Turing tests you're subjected to by those around you. Gaps in your history, on purpose or by accident, can result in being treated like a subhuman.

mcv 13y ago

And having an unusual name can also make you run afoul of Google+'s "no unusual name" policy, where accounts get blocked just because someone at Google thinks it can't be a real name (they're often wrong).

alex_anglin 13y ago
Some might consider that a feature.
- illuminate 13y ago
  "Some might consider that a feature." Yes, and those people would be rather utopian about how a lack of anonymity helps clean up the internet. Most trolls are proud of their idiocy.
officemonkey 13y ago
Facebook also has a "no unusual name" policy, but it's very randomly enforced. My friend's first name is "Spider." It is not her birth name, but she's used it professionally and personally her entire adult life. When she signed up for Facebook they told her she couldn't be "Spider" because somebody (Sony probably) decided that wasn't a "real" name (Spider Robinson and Spider Sabich notwithstanding.) If she wanted to use "Spider" Facebook needed a legal ID with that name on it (which she does not have.) So she registered under "Spidie" instead with no further problems.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]

Alex_MJ 13y ago

THIS. I have a unique last name - there is absolutely no ambiguity whenever anything shows up. Whenever a website (or anything offline that might put rankings or whatever online) wants me to use my real name, I usually default to "Alex", "Alex M/MJ" or "Alex (gibberish)" depending on their guidelines. What they view as a policy that "encourages openness", I view as something that will guide first impressions when people google me unto eternity. Even if it's not controversial, it's the first thing a potential client or employer sees when they type things into google, and I don't want to be reckless with that. I don't want to have to view every minor action that I make on a website as something that's potentially going to be on the front page of google's results for my name. When I was in HS, my friends had a poker league, and we all had nicknames and personas - someone put up a page with hilarious (but decidedly unprofessional) caricatures and quotes and it was the first thing that showed up under my name. I noticed it and asked my friend to change it, which he though was hilarious but understood and did. Same for Meetup. A long time ago I went to some meetups that could potentially be alienating to some folks (agnostics and whatever, way back in the day when I felt it was worth arguing about) and BOOM, google front page for my name. If I had a client who was somewhat religious, I don't care at all but I don't want that to show up and all of a sudden I'm accidentally alienating people. For showing up to something. Whenever I run a 5k or do anything remotely prestigious I always use my full name so that the front page of google just gets filled with that kind of thing in case anything else that's potentially a liability pops up and I don't notice it. It's annoying.

CWuestefeld 13y ago
I also have a very unique name. BOOM, google front page for my name Trying to fly under the radar, as you do, may be some solution, but it makes the mistakes like this one stick out even more boldly. I've found that over the years, there's enough of a heap on the web that matches my name, that garbage like you mention is overwhelmed by the more meaningful stuff. A search for me typically turns up my LinkedIn profile, the product page on Amazon for a book I co-authored, some CodeProject articles, and stuff like that. Just having a life's worth of stuff out there lets a smart search engine ignore much of the stuff that I'd want them to ignore.
SomeCallMeTim 13y ago

JshWright 13y ago

I enjoy the fact that my name, Josh Wright, is reasonably common. Even if you try to make it a bit more specific by adding the city I live in, Syracuse, I'm buried under results for a guy who used to play basketball for Syracuse University.

5teev 13y ago

It's bad enough having a nearly--but not actually--unique name and frequently getting confused for the other one.

TeMPOraL 13y ago

I always considered this to be an upside. Being googlable always felt to me like a synonym to existing; it's a way for potential employers to see that I know stuff because of all the texts and hobby projects; for potential future spouses/other people to see that I'm an interesting person who does something creative, etc. Funny how I didn't notice when being easily googlable started to be considered a bad thing.

ShirtlessRod 13y ago
Then you've never had a bad run-in with someone who was decidedly unhinged.
- TeMPOraL 13y ago
  I admit I haven't, though I know people who had. I wonder how many people encounter such situation.
  - ShirtlessRod 13y ago
    I'm not sure. I've been lucky enough to not have to worry about it, but I've definitely seen it (mostly of the "stalker" variety) and can easily understand why someone would want to remain on the "down low". I don't mean to pile on you personally, but this issue always pushes my buttons. It seems like whenever it comes up, there's always those who are absolutely incredulous that anyone wouldn't want to be all over the internet. Worse, I've even seen the reaction where some people think that it means the person must be untrustworthy, as if they are the ones who did something wrong. If someone wants to be all over the front page of Google when someone searches their name, I think that's fine if that's what they want. Just don't assume that everyone wants (or should want) the same thing.

marklit 13y ago

If they find you on linked in, they can google reverse image search your profile picture and probably come up with quite a bit. Now imagine google introducing facial recognition search.