My Name Would Not Match (and I am no terrorist)
I thought I would share some of my unique experiences as a result of having two last names, since I noticed I am the only person in class who has them. Here are some examples: It’s been two months since I passed my California driver’s license test, and I am still waiting for the license. The reason: the DMV representative omitted the space between the two names. Having experienced similar problems with my name before, I anticipated the problem and encouraged her to add a space while I was there, but she explained that the DMV system accepts a slash instead of space, and that they are in the process of fixing it. Not surprisingly, two weeks later I received a letter explaining that my name didn’t match my SSN. It asked me to fill out a form and indicate whether there is a space in my name. I did, and as indicated above, I am still waiting.
A similar thing happened when I asked my former university to send me an official transcript. “Our computer allows for only 15 characters for a last name, and yours has 19 all together”. Indeed, the admin confirmed that all future documentations related to my studies would print the name “Karen Braverman Bujan”, but also mentioned that the university is “just about to update its system to allow endless names”.
It goes on and on: issuing a passport or getting my name right on the utility bills are always complicated tasks. Since matching my name doesn’t even require culture-specific information, I didn’t expect it to be such an issue. I am just wondering whether each of those organizations would update their information management systems during my lifetime. Probably not. I should just give up and accept it. As long as the license gets here before elections, I should be fine.
Ryan Greenberg Said,
September 21, 2008 @ 8:20 pm
I hope your conundrum gets resolved. In the meantime, this seems like an illustrative example showing the limitations of systems created by experts, including categorization systems. Any system will not correctly anticipate all its possible uses and should be desired to accomodate new additions as soon as their need is perceived. In your case we need a system that handles different name arrangements; in categorization, we need a way to add new topics as they arise (either via tagging or an addition to the LOC subject headings).
Here’s another example of poor systems design not anticipating that “Fake” is a valid last name:
http://www.caterina.net/archive/001011.html
Sarah Van Wart Said,
September 27, 2008 @ 12:41 pm
Sounds like a nightmare, Karen! I also wanted to comment on this phenomenon — I don’t have two last names, but I do have a space in my last name, which has been a real drag. As you mentioned, many databases don’t allow for spaces in last names, or else they assume that the first part of you last name is your maiden name. I get documents addressed to me all the time as “Sarah Van,” “Sarah Van-Wart,” or “Sarah Wart” (yikes), and people can never find me on alphabetized rosters. In fact, my brother answered the phone once, and a telemarketer called asking for “Mengis Van Wart” (we now assume he was looking for my mother, ‘Jane Menges’). My brother simply replied “it’s in the bell tower…please hold on while I summon it.”
One other thing to remark upon — something I just found out this week — is that my sister, who has the same last name as me, has always spelled it VanWart (no space). She never runs into issues! It’s funny that after all these years, I never realized that my sister and I spell our own last names differently — talk about people being bad at their own metadata! I’m not sure which one of us is actually spelling out last name correctly. Funny