What a Dead Man Named FM-2030 can tell us about the future of user names

Of course, the obligatory article about programmers and names must be linked to here: <a href="http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/" rel="nofollow">http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-b...</a>

&#62; <i>"Future generations are going to find it impossible to register themselves on social networks with their actual birth names, because older generations have used them all."</i><p>Only if we presume:<p>1. Registering people with the same name is difficult-to-impossible. -- And/Or -- 2. Systems that future generations care about will have been invented at some problematic chunk of time before they attempt to register for them.<p>As to 1) I believe even Facebook can handle the multitude of "John Smith"s fairly painlessly. And 2) is borderline laughable.

&#62; "How would you process a credit card payment for someone who has only one name?" The Sripe API doesn't require a name at all, so they're clearly ahead of the curve here!

I worked with a guy called "Comet." That was his full legal name. He logged a bug against the HR system, because it insisted on both a first name and a last name.

I actually find that interesting. Why can't we change our names at will? Is it because government needs them as a unique ID (combined with birth date and what not)? If governments had other IDs (and they do have social security numbers), why bother keeping track of names?

How's that new? What about Seal, Madonna and Louis C.K.? Programmers should already handle that. Handling 1 name instead of 2 is a lot easier than let say change your system because instead 2 now you need 5 because people decided to have 3 middle names. Running out of IPs and upgrading Internet to 2.0 version sounds more complex than shrinking names from 2 to 1 IMHO. is it enough for a specific situation (security, verification, banking, etc.)? Probably not. But I am sure there will be plenty fo ways to do so. Every other man in China is Li or Lee and they somehow managed to deal with it :)

Just a note for the author of this piece - FM-2030 played in the Olympics in 1948, not 1984.

My name is "Robert'); DROP TABLE Students;--"<p><a href="https://xkcd.com/327/" rel="nofollow">https://xkcd.com/327/</a>