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Comment by joeframbach | Hacker News Reader

The reporter's name, Jennifer 8. Lee, is not a typo.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_8._Lee

> Lee was not given a middle name at birth so she chose "8." when she was a teenager. In Chinese culture, the number eight symbolizes prosperity and good luck.

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We ran into this when working at ZenPayroll. Not her specifically but a similar circumstance where a security check triggered based on an unexpected non-alpha character in a signature. Turned out the person really did have a number as a name.

Names are hard.

http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-b...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1438472

In your case, I'd just say you need the same name that the IRS/department of revenue would need though.

Yet her Chinese name continues to just be "李競", rather than "李八競", even though the latter reads far more naturally than "Jennifer 8 Lee" does (probably because an ideograph is an ideograph (and plenty of people have number-ideographs in their names), while letters and numerals are different in kind.)

Well, it could also be "李８競". "8" can be written spaced as if it were an ideograph.

Recently I was watching "The Dictator" in which Sacha Cohen's character told someone that his name was something like "Imumoccupancy120", to which the other one replied "There is a number in your name?".

But, I guess, it isn't impossible in real life ;)

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