# Is it really remarkable to have people close to you in your phone book with their actual full name? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [January 19, 2023, 10:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-really-remarkable-to-have-people-close-to-you-in-your-phone-book-with-their-actual-full-name/978450 "2023-01-19T10:11:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![doreen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/858c86/32.png) [@doreen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doreen)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2023, 1:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-really-remarkable-to-have-people-close-to-you-in-your-phone-book-with-their-actual-full-name/978450/61 "2023-01-21T01:06:04Z")
If there are two Lisa’s in my phone , at least one will have a last name or some other identifier. But I doubt if I have even 150 individuals in my contacts ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2023, 1:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-really-remarkable-to-have-people-close-to-you-in-your-phone-book-with-their-actual-full-name/978450/62 "2023-01-21T01:16:56Z")
Yeah, my phone says i have a bit over 1300 contacts. I need enough info to tell them apart. ---
**Author:** ![Icarus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/icarus/32/72_2.png) [@Icarus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Icarus)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2023, 1:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-really-remarkable-to-have-people-close-to-you-in-your-phone-book-with-their-actual-full-name/978450/63 "2023-01-21T01:56:19Z")
I have about 750 contacts and I’m certain that I have deleted over 150 contacts over the years. I’ve moved to a different state so I no longer need Sal the plumber or Dr. Finebaum, or they’ve died, I’m no longer working so don’t need all of the work contacts, etc. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2023, 4:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-really-remarkable-to-have-people-close-to-you-in-your-phone-book-with-their-actual-full-name/978450/64 "2023-01-21T04:33:21Z")
> [@doreen](#): > > In Wai Duck Tang ( and this is the way most Chinese people I know write their name) which is the family name and which is the personal name ? How do you know how Arndis Jónsdóttir should be alphabetized People will fill in the fields for their own names or someone will ask them where they come from when completing it for them. ---
**Author:** ![Spiderman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spiderman/32/230_2.png) [@Spiderman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spiderman)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2023, 4:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-really-remarkable-to-have-people-close-to-you-in-your-phone-book-with-their-actual-full-name/978450/65 "2023-01-21T04:37:07Z")
Most of mine are firstname, lastname with a few exceptions. - Professionals & trades people are firstname = ‘Plumber John’, lastname = ‘Doe’ - Some people will be a sub of the main person, by phone type, meaning I’m mostly friends with Bob Smith & I have phone #s for him with labels of Mobile, Home, Work, & the fourth one is a custom label where I typed in ‘Mary’ in case I need to call his wife instead of him. I have a bunch of contacts, some of them going back years. I don’t necessarily take someone out of my ~~phone book~~ contact list the day you move away or one of us takes a new job. By putting in ‘Neighbor’ or the job we worked at or the club/team/event I know (knew?) you from so when I’m looking thru my contacts list & see Norman Osborn, Otto Octavius, or Flint Marko & can’t remember who that person is when I click on their contact & see Company = “Arch Enemy” or “Neighbor” or “” - Oh, _that’s_ who that is. The one other exception is a friend who’s been married 20+ years & has hubby in her phone as, “Baby” somehow that got imported into my contact so if I go to email them & I type the first few letters of his real name it pops up & replaces his name with “Baby”. Of course most of the time I email him, it’s a group email to a bunch of people in that group. It’s easy enough to change but I find it too amusing to fix. The native Google phone app sucks; can anyone recommend a better one. If I search for someone in contacts, as opposed to scrolling down thru the list I can only call them; can’t see any of the other info in their contact, & you can’t easily see call history, I can only see the most recent time I called a number, not that I called you yesterday & you didn’t answer. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2023, 4:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-really-remarkable-to-have-people-close-to-you-in-your-phone-book-with-their-actual-full-name/978450/66 "2023-01-21T04:38:47Z")
> [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > - People’s names do not contain numbers. > - People’s names are not written in ALL CAPS. > - People’s names are not written in all lower case letters. From my point of view, these rules can be handled by general style guides rather than individual preferences. That’s how it’s generally done now anyway, alumnus a small number of obstreperous iconoclasts. > [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > - People’s names are written in ASCII. > - People’s names are written in any single character set. I have no illusion that name lists are going to be completely universal. I can read the Latin alphabet and its derivatives. I have no interest in a database that goes beyond that. These are matters to be settled by the people controlling the database. You use the character set that is chosen by the database owner. Names from places where they use different character sets will be transliterated; if the person has no preferred transliteration, a style guide will be chosen. I work with a federal agency. The relevant database accepts only the unaccented 26 Latin characters used in English. That’s a completely appropriate decision. I know how my name is written in that character set and in the Bengali script. If I need my name to be in a database that uses Cyrillic or Greek or Chinese characters, I’m perfectly comfortable for someone who understands the relevant system to figure out a method for standardising transliteration of my name. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2023, 7:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-really-remarkable-to-have-people-close-to-you-in-your-phone-book-with-their-actual-full-name/978450/67 "2023-01-21T07:36:28Z")
> [@Spiderman](#): > > The native Google phone app sucks; can anyone recommend a better one. If I search for someone in contacts, as opposed to scrolling down thru the list I can only call them; can’t see any of the other info in their contact, & you can’t easily see call history, I can only see the most recent time I called a number, not that I called you yesterday & you didn’t answer. I use the native Google contact app, which gives me a choice of call, text, video, email, directions for each person. It doesn’t give me my phone history with them. But i almost never make phone calls with my phone, so I don’t care. The text app it calls up (Signal) shows my history texting that person. The calling and email apps it invokes don’t. But i guess I’ve never expected them to. The directions option doesn’t give me history, either, but i use it all the time to drive to someone’s house. I don’t even know what it would do if I tried the video option. Hmm, looks like it would invoke Google Meet. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2023, 2:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-really-remarkable-to-have-people-close-to-you-in-your-phone-book-with-their-actual-full-name/978450/68 "2023-01-23T02:46:42Z")
My closest contacts are all listed by first name only. In the cases where one of my closest contacts shares a first name with a less-direct contact, the less-direct contact gets a last name, and I know which one is which, because obviously I know whom I’m closer to. ---
**Author:** ![Mortimus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e36b37/32.png) [@Mortimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mortimus)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2023, 5:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-really-remarkable-to-have-people-close-to-you-in-your-phone-book-with-their-actual-full-name/978450/69 "2023-01-23T05:31:44Z")
My contact list has been exported/imported thru many phones going back to flip phone days. For whatever reason some of the earlier contacts didn’t port over correctly. I have the wrong info in the wrong fields for some contacts. Address fields are particularly screwed up. But it’s not a huge deal because all the info I need is there, just have to dig a little to find it. Every once in a while I’ll go through and clean up my contact list but some of the real old contacts with mis-mapped fields still pop up. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-really-remarkable-to-have-people-close-to-you-in-your-phone-book-with-their-actual-full-name/978450.md?page=3)