Comment by Whitespace | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Whitespace | Hacker News Reader

Somewhat tangentially related, the company I work for was recently acquired by a very large corporation with 30,000+ employees. They auto-generated login and email addresses for everyone in my company, using the following schema (my legal name is Thomas Takashi Clark, but I go by Tom Clark):

- tclark - ttclark - thclark - thoclark - thomclark - etc.

The first ones being already taken, I got "thoclark" as my login. I'm not sure why, but I became extremely upset at this, almost as if I was having an anxiety attack. I think the reason was that in no way, shape or form did I view "thoclark" as my personal identity, and for someone to assert that "tho" was me was akin to being charged with a crime I didn't commit. I wasn't comfortable with the thought of having to type that in multiple times per day, and I definitely wasn't comfortable telling others what my new professional email was.

They changed it to tomclark after a lot of pleading, but I'm curious as to why I had became so upset. I think the whole process would have been a lot better if I had the opportunity to choose my own login/email instead of someone saying, "hey, this is you now!"

Has anyone here had such a reaction before?

I've had that experience: the logins that get automatically assigned at the Big Enterprise Company where I work, are sometimes nonsensical. I've seen some coworkers with just surname@example.com, but many more with an arbitrary combination of their given name and surname. The hash they made of my legal name was to my eyes ugly, and it didn't help that it's difficult to speak. I also have a lot of coworkers whose backgrounds are in Asia or the Indian subcontinent, and I can't imagine they're happier about their names getting mangled.

As a Chinese guy, we are used to having our names mangled, because our family name comes first. Any site that requires a "first" name and a "last" name will almost always display our names backwards. Ex: If your name is Lee Kuan Yew, your name will usually be rendered as "Kuan Yew Lee".

A good example of this is noted director Ang Lee - whose real name should be Lee Ang.

Indians also face name issues, mostly because of the length. 20-30 character names are not uncommon.

(Also, the Indian subcontinent is part of Asia.)

When you say if should be Lee Ang, do you mean that the family name is Lee and should go first according to the Chinese rules?

That's right.

I see, thank you.

You're right about that. Though my name itself is quite short, being one of the vast majority of South Indians who don't have a last name, quite like Srinivasa Ramanujan, I was quite annoyed that my login id was based on my father's name, rather than mine, at one of the large companies I worked at. And, yes, I was a fussbudget until they fixed it.

I worked at a company that was acquired by Yahoo several years ago. They actually gave us a choice of user names. Each employee sent in a list of names. I was lucky enough to get my first choice.

Yes - I've had a similar reaction but not quite as extreme. Before we were acquired, my domain name was smeatonj (self chosen). After, it was changed to jsmeaton, and it really really frustrated me. Worse, was that I had to use my domain name as my email address instead of my first name.

I know it shouldn't really matter, but it did.

I can't help but notice that you self identify as "jsmeaton" on HN. The name you didn't like, or choose, initially.

What happens over time to change how we perceive ourselves?

I noted that when writing my comment too. I think, in my case, the annoyance stemmed from change or being forced to change. It's not really that I didn't "like" jsmeaton.

I think your question is a good one though. I change my online identities subtlety over a fairly long period of time - and they seem to be converging towards my actual name and away from anonymity.

Sure. My given name is James but I go by Jamie. However, the common familiar of James is Jim. Yet, calling me Jim is a fast path to a punch in face. It shouldn't be a big deal but I suspect that the fact that my father's name is Tim has a lot to do with the reaction as we do not have a good relationship.

I had a similar thing when signing up for my universities email system. Somehow managed to become the most important thing during enrollment to me. Luckily only took a couple of emails to tech department to get it changed.

David Campbell (who probably reads HN) has used the email "campbed" for years. I assume he likes it!

Transsexuals come to mind.

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