Actually, my suggestion appears to already be the standard in the US, at least in part. See:
Here are the SEVIS name standards:
Upper- or lower-case
Roman alphabet only
No special characters
No hyphens, apostrophes, or commas; except in the Preferred Name field
One space between names
They do allow mixed case, but I’m certain that any name search will always be case-insensitive. I checked my passport and it’s printed in all uppercase.
And they do have a separate “preferred name” field which allows some limited diacritical marks (but no Ø).
Not sure which organizations this standard applies to (I don’t think it’s just SEVIS itself), but I think US passports adhere to it.
That would almost make some sense, but both my enhanced driver’s license ( which is real ID ) and my passport (which was first issued in 2016) have my middle initial, not my full middle name. So mine don’t have exactly what is on my birth certificate. ( I assume this is because my original drivers license was issued with an initial and the passport matches the license)
Do you live in Indiana @Doreen? Because Indiana is being more draconian than most states, apparently.
I not only had to go through a bunch of legal bullshit in my case, but I frequently handle Indiana driver’s licenses and ID’s as part of my job. They all have full middle names, no middle initials allowed.
Your passport is Federal - apparently they have more sensible rules than the state I live in.
No, I’m in New York. NY may be putting full names on new licenses but they left mine with the same name as it had for 40 + years. I assume the Feds matched the passport to the license because my full middle name was on my passport application.
For a system designed to be rigidly correct, it’s awfully buggy.
My father’s Real ID has his first, middle, and surname. Fine. Except I recently came across his birth certificate: no middle name. Turns out, he says he just started using his Catholic Confirmation name as a middle name, but for whatever reason his birth certificate was ignored.
As for the “affectation” comment, when I added the family name with an accent, what I did was spell it correctly. Anyone who thinks I should pretend it’s an English word because I operate in an English-speaking world can go jump in a lake. I’ll accept the accent-free spelling where I must, but the connection to the culture of origin is really important.
I’ve never understood why some people place such importance on things like this. Honest to Dog, I’m not trying to thread shit, I just don’t get it. Can the OP share why this is important to them? I mean the part about changing it legally; I can understand being interested in one’s heritage but I’m not sure what the benefit is of going through a lot of trouble for something that doesn’t really accomplish anything. Not sure how that would be “correcting a bastardized name”. It seems to me it can only be considered bastardized by the first folks who had their original spelling changed unwillingly. Generations later, the current spelling is the “correct” spelling".
After a horrible incident of mistaken identity in college, I insist that I have both my first and middle names present as well as my last name, but a lot of times this doesn’t happen. My work ID just has my first and last, for example. One bank card has all three names; the other doesn’t. And so on. And my names are as English as they can get.
You’d think that Canada would have an easier time accepting the ç ö ø ñ in its databases, but the problem has just stepped back a level:
I think I kinda agree with you. But I think some folk just put much higher importance on their name - how it is pronounced, etc. - than you and I do.
I have a 10-letter Polish last name ending in “ski”. (Not at all as challenging as many I’ve encountered.) As a kid, I quickly got used to people pronouncing it incredibly wacky ways - adding letters and syllables that clearly aren’t there. But, when dealing with someone I’m only going to encounter a few times, I figured I really didn’t care how they pronounced my name, so long as I knew when they were addressing me. Having my name pronounced - or spelled - correctly is of ZERO importance compared to accomplishing whatever transaction was at hand.
In my job, if I have any question, I ask the person up front how to pronounce their name. Other than creative, shall I say “Black” given names, I have the most difficulty with hyphenated or multiple surnames, especially when that person presents their name differently at different times. I really don’t care what someone I’m dealing with at work’s name is. And them being pissy about it does not enhance our interaction. That’s why I usually defer to using Ma’am and Sir, until one very special attorney called me out for calling her Ma’am! (Good thing I didn’t call her what I REALLY think of her!)
And I always forget which of the multiple Spanish surnames takes precedence for alphabetizing. I could look it up now, but I’d quickly forget it again.
Aside from the character type for storage, I imagine there are other hurdles for non-standard characters and non-standard forms, such as:
-How do you sort a list alphabetically in a way that is consistent and easily and universally understood?
-Ensuring fonts contain all relevant characters (maybe they all do already?)
…and maybe the biggest hurdle: how do we ensure proper data entry when those characters are not mapped to physical keys on a keyboard, and verbal communication would depend on both speaker and listener having the same vocabulary for naming those characters?
Even if we could wave a wand and change all our systems to allow all(?) possible characters, the human barriers would still be a blocker, and are impossible to overcome.
This is a “sticky wicket” because the first priority mandated by the state is the protection of the child over and above all else. A key to this is tracking children by birth certificates, and only the parent listed on a birth certificate is allowed to register a child. The exception is any adult who has a court ordered document stating that they have guardianship of the child in question. Otherwise, I could kidnap a child, drive the child cross country, and simply register the child in a school without any documentation needed.
Now, the “some people” of which you speak are migrants. Some have the birth certificate and some don’t. In that case, we need an ID from their Consulate showing that they were cleared there. We accept those.
Keep in mind that ALL, and I mean A-L-L adults working in a school district are classified as “Mandated Reporters” and are required to put child safety above all other things. Failing to do so can result in termination and, in some cases, even criminal prosecution.
In NJ during lock down there was a huge spike in unemployment claims. The department’s computer system couldn’t handle it. The problem was the decades old mainframe that housed the the system ran on COBOL. They had to find retired programmers to come in and fix it. Those are the types of things you have to try and fight through to have your non-standard spelling work.
Or they could have non-retired programmers read COBOL manuals. The same exact ones the retired COBOL programmers will be reading to get up to speed, because while COBOL supports Unicode just fine, that was not the case in 1959 or whenever those old-timers were working on it.
Or you could try to understand in context of the thread instead of trying to second guess what the governor did a few years ago.
I’m sure there were a combination of older programmers rehired along with younger programmers who were still playing around with COBOL for their own reasons. It doesn’t matter. What matters is someone with a Unicode name isn’t dealing with one system. They are dealing with dozens of systems all the time. Some old, some new. Some well maintained, some unmaintained. Some easy to work with, some impossible to find out who can enter your name right. Regardless of who they brought in to work on the system, what do you think the chances are that the 50 year old system would let you have an ø in your name? What do you think your chances are that as the customer you can find someone to fix it?
Your dad is old, and managed to set up his affairs before the US got so id conscious. I never had to show a birth certificate to enroll my kids in school. I never had to show proof of ssn when i started my final job (or any other job), i just wrote it in. The bank manager knows me by sight.
The world (or at least the US) has gotten much nastier to people with irregular or inconsistent names over the years, with “real ID” ramping it up a level.
My grandfather was born in Prussia a couple years after Germany became a country. As far as I know he had no proof of birth. Around 1915 or so he just decided to go by a completely different name. As far as I can tell there was no paperwork for that either. We all just carry the name he made up. Things like that were just accepted.
My grandfather’s birth certificate has a slightly different name from his baptismal certificate which is different from early census records which is different from social security records. They aren’t that different ( think “Johnny Braun” instead of “John Brown” ) but that would never be acceptable today.
And then there’s the place I order from sometimes whose European address software has no concept of “province”. Instead of “me, 5 Streetname, City, Province, PostalCode Canada”, I get a package addressed to something like “me, Streetname 5, CA-PostalCode City” with no province at all!
There’s nothing to set up, though. Every ID of his shows his birth name. Every time he interacts with either the government he uses his birth name. His Navy dog tags have his birth name. I’m not sure what his credit cards say–maybe they’ve gotten pickier. Sure, on the first day of school or whatever he had to tell them his preferred name, but that wasn’t a problem. His friends and family have always known him by his middle name and most probably don’t know his “real” name.
To be clear, I’m not against name changes for anyone that desires them. My point is just that it’s not actually a problem to go by a different name than what’s on your government forms, as long as you’re careful to keep them straight. No one is being discriminated against because they couldn’t have an ø in their name. They can sign their name however they like (I mean, your signature can be a doodle of a kitten if you like), and write their name how they like in personal correspondence. Is ø pronounced differently than o? No, because this is English and o can be pronounced any damn way you please.
As another analogy–my sister, as she was planning her marriage, found it convenient (for military related reasons) to get married immediately. So they went to the county clerk and got married. They didn’t tell anyone aside from immediate family and didn’t celebrate except maybe to have a nice dinner. The actual marriage ceremony was months later. That’s the date they celebrate their anniversary on and the date that everyone thinks they got married. It doesn’t matter one whit that some database records the date a few months early. They probably can’t “correct” it since legally speaking, the first date is the right one. In the unlikely situation that it ever matters, they’ll have to dig up the original date, which I’m sure they’ve forgotten. Big deal.
It just seems strange to me that anyone would care how a database records some personal bit of information. Caring what people call you is understandable. But not whatever this is.
Even if they do not care about some database, they might care if some bureaucrat calls them by the wrong name or tells them they do not know their own name or how to spell it, and this happens repeatedly. What is in some organization’s internal computer system may not be the core issue here, though a shared government database misspelling you name seems like it could just keep on bearing poison fruit.
Hence why the person should choose their preferred spelling and character normalization. Then, anything aside from that is an error that should be corrected.
There are some dense bureaucrats out there but surely they are all dense in the direction of doing what the computer says. They don’t need to know what name you go by, only that the name you give them matches what’s in the computer.
(Good thing I didn’t call her what I REALLY think of her!)