Man, what a drag.

But I think the problems you encounter with your real, valid name would make a great talk for a (UI? UX?) conference on problems we people who aren't called Fake would never think of, with lots of larger-world tie-ins. Like unresponsive help-functions (I bet there's no link where you can tell Facebook 'hey, this is my real name, fix the problem please), helpdesks that can't help (North West), etc.

Suggested title: 'I am a Fake'. I for one would love to hear that talk.

That is really bad. I couldn't get an Orkut account because my name contained "profanity". If they only knew what Orkut means in Dutch.... And Flickr for that matter ;-)

Yow. I wonder how it would like a person I met recently. His name (quite officially) is "Fuzzy Bunny."

If Northworst Aircrime is as bad it is was pre-9/11, you're actually better off flying with anyone else.

Butterfield. Caterina Butterfield is the solution.

For some reason "United Kingdom" isn't listed as a country either. (It's also not under "Great Britain" or "England".) And I'm guessing that people who live in "The Bahamas" or "The Gambia" aren't expecting to find their countries listed under "T".

I wonder how the system feels about diacritics. Stick an umlaut over the "a," drop the "e," and you've got a homophone (provided people know how to read it).

I worked with a guy once who's name is (no joke) John Doe. He chose "John" as his first name when he emigrated to the United States from Korea as a child, and his Korean last name ended up being spelled "Doe", I guess. I suspect he may have chosen a different first name had he understood the headaches and questioning he'd face later in life...

Now he just needs to marry a Jane.

Yeah, but didn't your last name once score you a first-class flight on SAS once? Being a Fake has it's privileges.

Yeah, but didn't your last name once score you a first-class flight on SAS once? Being a Fake has it's privileges.

Hey Mark Zuckerberg is a genius and he went to Harvard, and he's worth, what, $300 billion at least I've heard. If he says your name is illegitimate then it must be. Who are we to disagree with him.

I believe that I was born with my name because I can't believe my parents were mean enough to give me two first names. This usually is not a problem, but the Army insists on taking roll by snapping out, "Last name, first name, middle initial!" My reply would invaribly earn me a tongue lashing and the need to pull out my dog tags to prove I knew what my name was. Considering your situation, my advice is -- never join the army.

Can you get around it by using a e with an accent mark on top? Not that you should have to.

Wanskasmith is clearly a frabricated name. I'm contacting the authorities at the facebooks.

Caterina Real. Eh, not so much.
Caterina Fo'shizzle. Hey, now you got street cred.

Yup & yup.
I often get this,
"yah, yah, now whats your real name"?
to which I reply,
"you got me, smarty pants, yup, my real name is
Jeniseev Vladimirovich"
heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

My wife thought I was making a statement about your personality when she saw your name in my addressbook.

I once met a refugee in the UK whose name was Ng On. It took a refugee charity SIX MONTHS to get the government to accept that was his real name. They kept sending the forms back marked "Please supply correct name" even though they had written "This man's name is spelt Ng On" in big letters. Unvelievable.

At least the refugee's first name didn't have three more letters ("Kling"); it would have taken much longer than six months to be accepted. ;)

This made me laugh - hard. I've honestly never encountered any true logistical problems with the name, like you have - only the standard ridicule and blank stares.

Just explain to them that it's spelled "fake" but it's pronounced "Throatwobbler Mangrove".

A friend's surname is the same as a major town in Sweden, where she actually lives!

She often has some issues booking travels :-)

Lotta, a Swedish friend of a friend married an US guy with the surname Dick. Not a pleasant combination either!

I went to high school with a guy named John Hancock. He had a hard time signing up for things his Freshman year, because everyone assumed it was a joke. This went away once teachers were familiar with him, however.

One of my University friends had to carry his passport every where. His name - Julius Caesar!

I met a John F. Kennedy once.

nathaniel, unlauts are not diacritics. an umlaut is a character in its own right which is _typeset_ by putting the diacritic mark on top of its non-umlaut cousin, but linguistically it's a different concept. e.g. the german word 'schön' ('beautiful') may also be written 'schoen', but you can't write 'schon' (which would mean 'already'). it's different with proper names, though. mr. Schön and mr. Schoen are two distinct persons.

back to the topic at hand ... i have no experience with the site, but could it be that this problem is just emblematic of the general stupidity of their programmer(s)?

Well, on the flipside, someone recently asked if "Caterina Fake" is involved with our site, FAKETOWN.com... where users are called "Fakers"! Now THAT made me laugh... If only!! Try doing a username search with the word "fake"... the most popular word in our fake world, Faketown. :-)

Heh. Tough break.

The little town where I live has a cop named "Mike Dick".. and his wifes name? "Sandy Dick". No joke.

http://www.web.ci.calistoga.ca.us/police/Chiefs.htm

He's at the bottom of that page listed as "Chief Michael R Dick".

I felt bad for his daughter. Went to school with her.

I had a Swiss friend (male) who's first name was spelt "Jan" - the equivalent of John really. He had an awful time with travel as his tickets were always issued as "Ms Jan..." and the airline was less than understanding when he tried to explain that he was, in fact, male.

I have a first/last name problem. My first name is unusual and short. My last name is Thomas. Whenever I have to tell somebody my name, I speak the same mantra: "My name is XXX Thomas, surname Thomas, firstname XXX". Often this is ignored and, in situations such as checking in somewhere after arriving, people will STILL search using my firstname. Then, a few minutes later, with a confused expression, they'll ask me again what my name is and this time around will actually listen.

It's a similar situation when filling in forms. People assume that I've got the first and lastname boxes mixed up, so mail comes through with my names reversed. I can't do anything about this because writing outside of text boxes on most forms automatically invalidates them.

That's as bad as the Google ads for "swingers in Orange County" I get when my friend emails me videos of his little kid on the swing.

I work in IT, which has a computer security aspect.
My name's been auto-shortened to "C Hacking" on a lot of ID badges, email address lists and access lists over the years.
It has made first impressions more interesting, in the past.

I am of South Indian origin where it has become customary (since the mid-20th century) for one's last name to be one's father's (or husband's) first name [like it used to be Scandinavia). I have one heckuva time in the US when I take my son over to visit a doctor or pharmacist. The insurance company is completely confused and keeps flipping my first and last names to align with my son's. When I am asked for my name and that of my son's in any situation, I have to prepare myself for a long explanation. I am worn out enough now to gruffly insist that the person accept the names as they are and get with it.

That sucks, but at least you dont have a first name of Blaze like I do. ;) Seriously. I dont get much flak though, just strange looks. Oh and if you think the first name is strange, I'm not telling you the last.

Unicode has a lot of character that look like A's. Perhaps, "Cyrillic Small Letter A" (а) could help?

The downside is that your friends won't be able to search for you by name unless they know to use Cyrillic.

one of my friends named "kshitiz" (meaning horizon in hindi) couldnt get a gmail account for the same reasons. Notice the sh*t ?

It's an honor - and I really mean this - to know someone with an illegitimate name.

That's a good one!

Living in Dubai (United Arab Emirates) I am facing a similar issue: Dubai doesn't have ZIP codes and therefore it is sometimes impossible to register without making up a ZIP code.

I really feel for you. Getting a government ID in the U.S. has been tough since 1999 when the U.S. government started using a main database that refused spaces in last names. With enough demanding I can get my name done correctly.

Recently the Northwest Airlines database removed spaces from names. This makes it hell going through customs or checking in as all of my government IDs have a space. Ironically the Northwest partner KLM had me with the two spaces in my last name (which is correct for my Dutch last name). I nearly missed my flight as they tried to correct things (I was there well ahead of time too, but backed the line up).

I also can not use credit cards to check-in with the automated kiosks for flights as the all airlines kiosks think my last name is Wal and there are never any matches. I also have problems checking in with my passport.

I suppose if somebody suggested you start being "Christina Butterfield" it wouldn't go over well, right?

Reminds me of the story of the African man named M'Ba who they gave a hard time at US immigration. They kept yelling at him that they wanted to know his name and not his title.

PS: US Airways is *much* worse than Northwest. Seriously. I now take any connection - incl. gratuitous layovers - over flying with US Airways.

rotfl.

p.s.
don't buy 'em :-)

p.s.p.s.
your commenting system is not too smart either, Caterina. On the first page it gives me the choice between preview (ok) and... "cancel".

Hahaha, that must suck...

I guess you are happy when you get to deal with people instead of machines these days.

Reminds of a friend of mine from Myanmar, his surname is Oo, quite a common surname there.

He has a hell of a lot of trouble registering for things online as most systems require at least 3 characters for a surname.

Same as another friend whose first name is "y" (prounounced "e") they always tell him not the initial, the full name..but that is his name!

I have a non-alphabetic character in my name. It's a real pain. What it means is i have many variations depending on what the programmer thought were legit. Sometimes it's "Henshaw Plath" with a space, sometimes it's "henshawplath" which is funny to watch people try and pronounce as one word. Often i get the your name is not valid error. Sometimes one of the two last names just gets dropped. Often i get the whole, your name isn't the same name you used to buy this ticket thing. My passport, birth certificate, drivers license, and marriage certificate all deal with it differently! What is so wrong with being flexible enough to account for the reality of names in the world?

When I was going to school, I lived in Evanston, Ill. I was updating my address with some credit card company, and they mistakenly changed my last name instead of the city. "Rakesh Evanston" still shows up as an alias when I pull my credit file.

Woeah, that's sad :)

do i even need to tell a story? ;)

LOL - this is the funniest article I have read in ages. I too am a south indian and expecting some major confusion amongst the insurance folks when I have children :D

KLM (Northwest's partner) has cancelled every reservation I've had with them. Last time, I had to show my passport to 3 of their reps, before they would reinstate me on the flight from Amsterdam to Houston... Never Again.