When operating "at web scale", users often simply don't have "real names"

Governments essentially avoid this problem, and they have for generations, because they realized that names are intractably hard. This is why they give people numbers instead.

Here's my name written in my passport (US): "MC KENZIE PATRICK JOHNATHAN" The Passport Control Center is the only organization which thinks I have a space in my name.

If you go to Cook County and grab a copy of my birth certificate, it says "Patrick Jonathan McKenzie". I was a poor speller as a kid and thought Johnathan had two Hs until I was a teenager. Whoopsie. Now it does because it's just too much hassle to go get it changed now.

The Illinois DMV thinks I'm Patrick McKenzie. Ogaki City Hall thinks I'm McKenzie Patrick Johnathan in one part of the office, ミッケンジーパトリック in another part, パトリックミッケンジー in another, and ミッケンジーP in a fourth part. The national tax agency said, direct quote, "Sorry about our software being unable to accept your name. On the bright side, we really couldn't care less, as long as you pay your taxes on time."

Well, I know people who IRL insist on being called by made-up names, mostly goths, you know, something like Darkraven Bloodmisery.

I know a lot of people IRL who insist on being called by made-up names. I know Japanese and Chinese people who have "use names", because some white folks think Hideyuki is a mouthful and couldn't guess that he's a man. I know neighborhoods in Chicago where Irish Catholics are so thick on the ground that you'd better come up with a nickname if you're a Patrick or a Mary because otherwise half the class will have a hash collision with you. (I was Patrick Johnathan -- the other Patrick Jonathan beat me at rock paper scissors and claimed the coveted PJ.)

I also know some goths who use made up names, including a Robert who -- cheeky blighter -- insists he is really a Bob.

Also, just a self-preservation tip: don't ever repeat that comment near a liberal arts faculty if you value your sanity. They will be on you like vegetarian tigers/esses/etc on a fresh, juicy bit of fair trade tofu.

Today I learned that I don't have a real name.

More seriously, though, most people I know IRL insist on not going by the name on their passport. If I had one, my name would be "Christopher", but I insist on "Chris" enough that I will not make my name "Christopher" on Google.

For a less silly example, though, most people I know whose names are not derived from their full legal names are some form of non-cisgendered people who simply don't identify with their given names. And, in the US at least, for most purposes it is simply not necessary to go the court-decreed route (we don't have a strict equivalence of a deed poll form for name changes as far as I know) and bringing court and public record into things can be unnecessary trouble until they fall out of those "most purposes".

Of course, these are only a couple of reasons why one might wish not to use their passport names online, but the main point is: it's rarely as simple as you think.

Also, I know a fair number of people, who, for a variety of reasons, have their names in transition. These new names are not yet their official names, and they may change what they ultimately decide on. It's _really_ not the place of Google to effectively say "Make up your damn mind".

Because government has really one use for your name: the proper identification of a person for the purposes of the provision and execution of government responsibilities and services.

Google has a larger mandate, one where enforcing "official passport names" is not only inconvenient, but would also drive away adoption.

Not to mention, I have an English name, and a Chinese name. Only one of these appears on my passport, but depending on who I am interacting with I would very much like to (justifiably so) use my "unofficial" name. What is wrong with this? This is actually somewhat annoying for Facebook - I have relatively in Asia who don't speak English at all, and I'd like for them to be able to find me on FB... but there is only one canonical name on an account.

Google is developing a social system - a social system by the very nature of human identity cannot just have "passport names".

I have legally had a one-word name for decades. SS card. Driver license. On credit cards I fake a first initial, same with other DB-enslaved contexts.

Some time after the DHS was invented, SS changed their database systems. Where the SS used to list me as "myname," now I'm listed as "#unk myname."

Since my SS record no longer matched my driver license, when I went to renew my license I was refused, because the DHS tells the states that DL must match SS. That took weeks to sort out, but I did finally get my DL properly renewed, after they found the employee that knew how the DB system works.

Government IT.

Here in Ireland we can translate our name in Irish and use that. I did that once for my passport. So I've had 2 different names on my passport without going to the deed poll, getting married, etc. all legally. What would be my 'real name' then?

(For the record the 2 string have a levenshtein distance of 10, so they are dissimmilar)

It's impolite to ask what their "real name" is. I've seen someone (call her X) get upset because someone pressed the point of finding out what X's mother used to call her (if that's a a "real name" in any meaningful sense). And it was pointless too, what could you do with that information?

There's lot's of inaccurate information there anyway, I have two "Jo"s in my friends list. On is male, one female. In both cases "Jo" is a contraction, in one case of a middle name. They also chose to be called "Jo".

I don't really see why Google+ needs to know or care. What people answer to is what people know to look for, so that's what should be shown.

Names are just Unicode strings, which you should not fold, spindle or mutilate. Why do you care which bit is the family name, or if this person has a family name, or even if there is such a thing as a family name in their family's culture? Why even try for a canonical form?

Even better, make name a _list_ of Unicode strings, so people who have multiple names (Chinese/Western, pre/post marriage, pre/post op) can give you the whole list to search on.

If asking for their credit-card details, ask "Name As Printed On This Credit Card" and store that as well so you can bill them. That's really a property of the card, not the person.

And then just add a "Informal Name" field so you're not stuck guessing which bit is the informal name, or writing "Dear Roderick Frederick Ronald Arnold William MacArthur McBan" which does sound kind of dorky ...

</rant>

For most of high school years, our house was listed as "311 Behind the School" or some other variation. There were no actual street names (although I am told the electric company and only the electric company had a map with street names). When 911 service hit the area, we got actual addresses, but they really weren't useful for shipping things. The local UPS guy knew where everyone was and where they worked so he could do his deliveries. His replacement required some training time.

I tried that for a project, using the Google geocode API. Worked OK, though not flawless.

Users entered their address into a textarea. This got passed off to Google, and the app then looked at Google's response. In case of ambiguity the user would be prompted to clarify the address and try again.

The intent was to reduce crap in the application database, but at the same time we had to allow users to override whatever Google thought and provide a literal address.

(Which, I might say, is another "myth of names" to add to patio11's list: "the list of names someone goes by is objective and transitive"; I might think of that person as "that Steve from Hacker News", when other people call him "Steve Johanson", "Stevey", or even "stivox".)

Thanks to nradov above for info on HL7. Surely these major international orgs should already have been aware of it?

No matter how much effort Google put into supporting "real names", they would still disappoint somebody. Does Facebook do this any better? I believe they also require users to provide their "real name".

I twig now that the author and the HN poster are one and the same internet celeb. So... sorry about that :)

There are good communities and bad communities.

Norms play a huge role. Expectation plays a role, Participants' culture plays a huge role. Some communities work well based on in-real-life associations. Some work based on technical means (strong moderation tools). Some have weak moderation tools but an aggressive enforcement community and back-channel discussions for dealing with egregious abuse, though from my experience those back channels are used far more rarely than might generally be expected, and may even take on an inside-joke status.

In the same sense, real-world communities may or may not be well-behaved, and often have similar foundations. The better-behaved ones tend to be well-established (but often hard for outsiders to break into), highly policed, based on cultural norms (common religion, ethnicity, purpose, social class, interests). It's where multiple structures break down that problems become most severe.

Even short-lived communities can be very well behaved. There are few communities more transitory than college campuses, yet they have very few management issues.

The biggest hazard in either online or physical cultures is creation of a mob (root word: mobility), in which an antisocial mindset spreads through a population. What are needed aren't strong authentications ("papers, please"), but circuit breakers and dampers to dissipate these energies.

If it is in fact civility and community which are valued.

Secondly, I also agree that there's definitely some edge cases where it make sense for people to be anonymous, or pseudonymous. If you need to shield yourself from your employer for legal reasons, I think it makes sense for you to do so. What I'm arguing is that in most cases, though, it's good for the overall community to enforce true names.

Additionally, as a member of the Google+ community, I'm glad to see Google cares for its quality.