Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!wucs1!jps
From: jps@wucs1.wustl.edu (James Sterbenz)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: Standardizing Email?
Message-ID: <242@wucs1.wustl.edu>
Date: 9 Sep 88 18:27:10 GMT
References: <788@vsi.UUCP> <79700010@p.cs.uiuc.edu> <738@etive.ed.ac.uk> <27078@think.UUCP>
Reply-To: jps@wucs1.UUCP (James Sterbenz)
Organization: Washington University, St. Louis, MO
Lines: 26

In article <27078@think.UUCP> barmar@kulla.think.com.UUCP (Barry Margolin) writes:
>In article <738@etive.ed.ac.uk> jcb@lfcs.ed.ac.uk (Julian Bradfield) writes:
>>Well, without thinking about it, I can come up with the following
>>problems: how would you deal with

[various "nonstandard" name forms]

Even though I usually use just my first and last name, on official documents
I use my full name: James Philip Guenther Sterbenz.
When I got married, both my wife and I assumed her maiden name as a SECOND
middle name (we decided not to hyphenate, but wanted to keep her name as well).

It's great fun getting four names on driver's licences, insurance policies, 
etc.  Most systems are not designed to handle more than three standard names.
Amazingly enough, getting it right on the Social Security card was easy,
and was good amunition when organizations didn't like the marriage licence
as proof of name.  To get a driver's licence I had to go all the way to
the state's attorney general's office.

>>I'm sure if I knew about more countries, I could come up with more
>>naming schemes! But even if the `standard' is intended solely for
>>American use (the structuring you give seems to be only for American
>>Anglo-Saxon(ized) names), not everybody in the U.S. has an American name!

Even in the U.S. "native americans" (yes, "indians" are the REAL native
americans) have non-standard forms.