Comment by b3lvedere
2 days ago
It's amazing to watch systems do things as humans initially have intended, then see those system fail in the most spectacular ways, because the humans didn't think of every possible failure scenario.
I've had great fun with my surname, which contains of two words and just a space in between. Lots of systems thought my "maiden name" was the first word and adressed me as Mrs. My wife has three first names, adopted my surname when we married and her own surname. Nobody gets it right. We don't care and have fun with it.
I've also had great stress with my surname, when some algorithm at the tax authorities decided it sounds a bit like coming from a Slavish country and along with other parameters decided to tag me as a fraud. Still an ongoing problem.
Have you come into the scenario where a doctor's office is trying to find your medical records? Or a hospital? Or an emergency room, trying to fetch them from an office in another town or country? Better to have a good attitude than not, but the phrase "it's all fun and games till someone loses an eye" comes to mind.
A tax office algo discriminating you because it believes you could have foreign roots, sounds like you’re a tax payer in the Netherlands!
>It's amazing to watch systems do things as humans initially have intended, then see those system fail in the most spectacular ways, because the humans didn't think of every possible failure scenario.
You should come to Taiwan! They've never considered non-Chinese names.
If you something online and pay by card, you can choose to ship it to a 7-Eleven or other convenience store, so you can pick it up at your own convenience. They'll ask for the name on your ID card/Passport, which the store will check before handing the parcel to you.
The problem? Many online stores do not accept names longer than a handful of characters. Chinese names are almost always two or three characters long, rarely four. Five or more characters exist according to a quick Google search, but I've never seen them myself. Good luck with western names, where even a short name like "John Doe" will be considered too long (The space counts as a character).
If you're a foreign resident, you can choose to get a Chinese name to deal with the parcel issue. Now you have two legal names: The name on your passport and the Chinese name. If you deal with public institutions, they'll prefer to use your Chinese name. Private companies have their own policies: Banks, for example, prefer to use the name on your passport. I've had issues with my insurance claims being rejected because the name on the government-provided documents did not match the name they had on file.