Hi, Newbie here.
First major point: my husband and I are weird.
Now to the point of discussion.
We were talking about how our names would be spelled in Greek, and it occurred to me that, without any phonetic compromise, my name could easily be spelled in Greek, Cyrillic, or Hebrew.
Which leads to the question: Is there anything stopping me from using any of these alphabets to sign my signature? Is it illegal, or just frowned upon and seen as a sign of a severely abnormal person?
Which leads to the question: Would it be easier or harder for potential identity thieves to forge a signature in other than Latin characters? (PS: They can have my identity if they take the job that comes with it.)
Your signature doesn’t even have to be your given name. It’s easier if it is and you’ll find places like the DMV and the SSA less easy to navigate with an odd signature, but if you really want to, you can.
My signature started off as cursive Latin characters, but it’s pretty much just an illegible scrawl that doesn’t bear any particular resemblance to any language’s standard character set. And I don’t think I’m particularly unusual in that regard.
Also, identity thieves by and large don’t forge your signature, with “forge” meaning “try to duplicate the exact shape & style”.
Nobody (& no computer) at a bank or credit card company is looking at sigs to see whether or how well they match. About the only sig matching done any more is when some clerk at some cash register compares what the customer signed to what’s on the back of a CC card. And those are hardly trained graphologists. Finally, identity theives try to avoid face-to-face purchases like the plague. Buying goods almost anonymously online is much safer for them.
What I was going to say. I don’t even know if they speak English in what. Seriously, it’s not in any language, just a scribble.
If OP wants to go all offbeat and quirky, I think it’s time to revive the “mark” – the “x” scrawled on rosters in Western (genre) movies by Shake-leg Jake and Dinky and probably even Stumpy made his mark, not a proper writing signature.
When I worked at a c-store adjacent to a university campus we had a few Asian customers sign their names in Chinese or Japanese characters on credit reciepts.
I once saw a mathematician I knew sign something. His name was E_______g and the only thing visible in his signature were the E and the g. I once had a visitor from Japan and he got a check for $1500 which I deposited in my own account and handed him the money because I knew he would have a lot of trouble cashing it. He just signed in Kanji and no one objected. The one thing that will not be acceptable is a block letter signature. I have a friend who ws born and grew up in NYC and, somehow, never learned cursive writing. He prints real fast however. But he had to fake some sort of faux cursive signature when he opened his first bank account. That would have been probably about 50 years ago.
Somewhat-related anecdote: my signature has devolved over the years to the point that it’s indistinguishable from what it was even 10 years ago. My name is A_____ N______ H______r. On my voter registration forms, you an easily make out the A, N, H and r. Nowadays you can kind-of make out the first A if you work really hard at it; and that’s it. But when I vote, I always get flack because the signatures don’t match.
One of these days I’m going to have to go to the county courthouse and get this straightened out…
When I worked in a shop (in Australia) I happily accepted all kinds of writing as credit card signatures. Japanese characters? No problem. Being in Australia, we got all kinds of oddball Asian writing systems. I just happily accepted everything. Never had a problem with it.