Comment by yuye

>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.