Comment by wolfhumble | Hacker News Reader

Comment by wolfhumble | Hacker News Reader

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If you move to another country I am of the opinion that you should have a certain respect for the conventions of the welcoming country. So you might not agree with their naming conventions, but why should I expect the country to change just because I show up on the scene?

In an English speaking county, having a separate surname aids in sorting and presentation of family unities. The character set is typically A-Z. In Spain e.g. one expects a person the have two surnames. The default — but this can be changed – is that first name is from the father and the second one from the mother. By looking at the order of your name you can get information about family structures. Character set is A-Z + Ñ + umlauts and accent marks.

Going to an English speaking country I could expect them to spell my first name correctly; but since it contains a character outside A-Z I change my name to comply with their modus operandi. Yes, their computer system probably supports UTF8, but most people have never heard of this character and you won't find it on their keyboard. No problem, I change my name to comply with their system.

In Spain official forms often expect two surnames and certain characters. No problem, I use an extra hyphen, change my name, use my middle name as a surname or whatever makes the system happy.

Is it perfect? No. Does it really matter? No. So I just respect their customs and get on with my life as a respectful guest in the country where I am living.

If it's a government office or some service that only serves people from one country, then sure whatever, be a hard-ass if that's what you want to do.

The problem is it's every SaaS online service in the world many of which happily do business in Myanmar. You can't just tell an entire country with its own unique culture and 50 million citizens "FU, you're wrong", and when you do, it's you that's wrong not them! Everyone from Facebook, LinkedIn, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, to federated platforms like Matrix or Mastadon, to developer tools, to every forum on the Internet [1] requires a first and last name! These platforms have literally millions of users or customers around the world - and at least one entire country - that don't fit the <first> <last> mold and I find it highly disrespectful to force it on them like this.

[1] My info might be out of date on some of these as I've been out of the country and not paid much attention for a few years. I would hope that by now at least some of these big multinational companies would get it right. However, suffice it to say, the vast majority of SaaS platforms today are disrespectful to people with one name.

I also translate my name into a more pronounceable string of letters for English speaking people's sake; forcing a different language on people is disrespectful. We don't disagree there.

However, I don't see how if a person has no first/last name, and expects to be referred so, can be construed as disrespect to the English-speaking culture. There is no need to learn another language; all it takes is to "know" that the person has one string as a name.

You said it helps with sorting, and that is exactly why I said cutting a foot to fit a shoe. It's asking people to change their name for the sake of paper work.

I don't expect to show up and make a country change, for the sake of me. My name is already in first/last form.

I wish countries, and systems (frankly many of which are expanding to be used worldwide) to change, because I believe it to be the right direction, and in the end will save everyone's time.

One does not agree or disagree with naming conventions, one merely comes from a place that has one. Everything would be a lot simpler if theres just a single Name field accepting any Unicode string in forms across the globe. The goal should be to describe a person, not to propagate local naming conventions.

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