Interesting Links for 11-11-2019

[andrewducker]

No, Christmas trees are not an ancient pagan tradition

(tags:Christmas trees history )

Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names - With Examples

(tags:names society language )

Nobody wants to be automated. Everybody wants everyone else to be automated

(tags:automation )

I Am Just Trying to Have a Civil Online Conversation About Vampires

(tags:vampires funny internet debate satire )

How the police are making life harder and harder for Travellers

(tags:life UK police racism )

When Britain and France Almost Merged into One Country

(tags:history France UK Europe wwii )

Lovely lovely stories of people meeting Tom Baker

(tags:drwho fandom History children )

Japanese women demand right to wear glasses at work

(tags:women glasses Japan OhForFucksSake )

Boris Johnson blocked report naming Tory donors linked to Kremlin

(tags:UK Russia security OhForFucksSake )

How to make an earthquake early warning system out of cats.

(tags:cats earthquake )

Cock Destroyer: how Rebecca More went from meme to the UK's most loved adult star (totally nsfw)

(tags:nsfw porn UK )

Comments

[cmcmck]

Indeed they are not- it's a Victorian things introduced by Prince Albert because it was a thing in his native Germany.

With my Romani ancestry, why am I not surprised? :o(

[naath]

That says nothing about whee the German custom came from (I have no idea) though

[cmcmck]

It seems to be 18th century and Lutheran.

[naath]

Oh names, why are you so hard.

You should ask for what you need "name we will address you by" "name on your credit card" "name to send post to" "user name that you log in with" etc. and stop assuming.

I have two middle names, UK banks can fuck this up in a variety of ways which nearly fucked up a mortgage offer and it isn't even that long (the bank and my solicitor had chosen different amounts of name); but I invariable want to be addressed as either 'FirstName' or 'NickName' but my mother prefers 'Mrs LastName' - you just can't guess even by 'cultural norm', not to mention that some people flip their name for some purposes and some don't. And titles - a total minefield, let people type them in, don't assume you can enumerate them.

[andrewducker]

One I rarely see is that sometimes people's names are *all* title. They may have a legal name of "Elizabeth Windsor", but send an account statement to anyone other than "Your majesty" and they'll move to a new company *really* quickly...

[cmcmck]

I'm trans and therefore changed my name in my mid teens.

I also have a pen name under which I write and publish poetry.

And people's assumptions are a minefield. 'Previous names' turns up on so many forms and I have three- deadname, present name with maiden name and present name with married name............

These forms ask me to out myself every time!

Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names - With Examples

[jack]

I'm still wondering how you SHOULD do this.

I mean, working out that you need a name for "Dear Jane," for "Dear Ms Johnson", for "Jane Johnson" etc, is a big step, as is "just accept it in unicode and don't try to force conformity on it"

But it sounds like you're always sometimes going to end up comparing names from different sources, like for ID checks. How do you do that? Do you rely on common sense that "Bill Bryson" and "William M Bryson" count as "the same"? Would you know that for a name from a different culture?

Does it help to be able to enter multiple names, e.g. variant spellings, or varying transliterations if you can't transcribe the original. Maybe. But do you have a procedure, for what you allow? You can't pre-emptively list every variation. Does that actually reduce ambiguity? Do you have a way of recording ex-names that you might want to compare against but never use (e.g. deadnames, maiden names, etc) and how do you keep them from leaking? Would listing "allowed variations" along with the name help? Probably not, but then what WOULD help?

Re: Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names - With Examples

[naath]

ASK for WHAT YOU NEED. "name on official ID" may be what you need; "name on credit card" may be what you need (mine are different, the passport office spells out the whole thing, my credit card uses initials). If I am paying you money I expect you need the CC vrsion.

Re: Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names - With Examples

[andrewducker]

Yup. Guessing based on vague data is a terrible idea.