On Thu, 15 Oct 2009 09:05:12 -0500, "Shawn P. Stanley" <sh...@nbs-inc.com> wrote:
> I worked with a man who had no middle name (Vankatesh Presaud), but the > networking people needed a middle initial because three letters were > required for a login. FCK, LOL, and other three-letter acronyms spring to mind ... In the Netherlands there is IIRC a law that forbids letter groups on the new licence plates that refer to `bad' things like the WW-II, so we won't get plates with "40-NSB-5" > So he was given an "I" as a middle initial for network access, and became VIP. That is funny. My *middle* name is the name people know me by: "Merijn" My initial is *in front* of that: H.Merijn Brand Try to enter that in the braindead US forms > On Thu, Oct 15, 2009 at 7:07 AM, Philip Newton <philip.new...@gmail.com>wrote: > > > 2009/10/15 Aristotle Pagaltzis <pagalt...@gmx.de>: > > > Yes, it's complicated, but it's also the only way to do it right. > > > Intersections between culture and computing are invariably > > > complex and complicated. See also: writing systems; calendars and > > > clocks; person names. > > > > Speaking of which, I pity the people who have a personal name but no > > family name, and so don't fit neatly into the "first name - last name" > > mould of so many websites out there (or, worse, the "first name - > > middle initial - last name; all fields mandatory" mould). > > > > Though I'm not sure whether to pity them more or those who do > > conventionally use two names but which are not "given name, family > > name" (for example, those Indians who put their father's given name in > > front of their own, so the second name is their given name, not their > > family name, and their "first name" isn't really theirs at all; or > > Icelanders, whose second name is a patronymic in most cases, rather > > than a family name, and who are typically addressed by their given > > name rather than as "Mr Paul's Son"). -- H.Merijn Brand http://tux.nl Perl Monger http://amsterdam.pm.org/ using & porting perl 5.6.2, 5.8.x, 5.10.x, 5.11.x on HP-UX 10.20, 11.00, 11.11, 11.23, and 11.31, OpenSuSE 10.3, 11.0, and 11.1, AIX 5.2 and 5.3. http://mirrors.develooper.com/hpux/ http://www.test-smoke.org/ http://qa.perl.org http://www.goldmark.org/jeff/stupid-disclaimers/
