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Comment by not2b | Hacker News Reader

My wife has a hyphen in her legal name. This is beyond the ability of most sites and companies to deal with and causes them to fail in random ways.

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Just today I was instructed by my bank to "use your full name". I have two middle names an the total length is 33 characters. The length limit was 20-something characters.

(the most annoying part is that I'd change it if I could because it has no value to me and is just a pain, but that my government doesn't allow it... :-/)

A someone with two middle names "only" totaling 19 characters I still run into issues with many forms, both online and offline.

I'm never quite sure what to do on offline forms that have boxes for characters that run out, I normally just continue writing past the boxes, but at least one official government documentation has been addressed to me just missing the second one.

And a few things seem to handle having multiple middle names (and thus middle initials) poorly, ignoring the length.

I only have one middle name but it’s the one I’ve gone by my whole life. At some point trying to deal with forms got old and so I started just putting my middle and last names down and claiming no middle name. Most places that demand your full legal name don’t actually care enough to check, banks included. It’s never caused me problems.

In Hawaii, Mrs. Keihanaikukauakahihuliheekahaunaele can sympathize with you...

My name is often truncated

Mine gets munged with my first name and middle initial happening to form a different name anywhere where names get smashed together -- like plane tickets. Think 'ADRIAN A' vs 'ADRIANA'.

Same. My last name is 11 characters which is a little long but not that crazy, and my first and middle name are extremely common English names, and yet I can't often fit my full name in places that need it. Usually the issue is on paper forms (especially ones that have specific boxes for characters, which are usually the most important/official ones!), but it's also caused issues in various places on the web and in computer systems before.

We need you to capitalize that, Mr. Often Truncated.

I'm always thankful that my name has no hyphens, spaces, punctuation, or alternate spellings.

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