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Comment by seiryuz | Hacker News Reader

Oh boy, Indonesian here, I only have one name (No last name). Websites that require me to have both first name and last name are the bane of my existence.

Quora also blocked me, despite me sending an email to their appeal division with a copy of my ID. In the end I gave up fighting for it.

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Yes, I had this issue when working for some administrative software, and other problems like what date of birth do you input for the many people which have unknown date of birth? I have also seen many handwritten "identification papers" which you'd have very hard time deciphering anything from it with some degree of certainty.

We believe our times are more free than past times, but that's only partially true. In some places and in some past periods, people did not have "identification papers" and could still travel the worlds and cross borders (minus the slowness and danger of old times travels).

> in some past periods, people did not have "identification papers"

You mean last century? People are still alive from then.

Yes, absolutely. I, for example, am one, though I admit I was born only after humanity has visited the Moon. Still, more than 16 years ago.

There's one person left from the previous century too:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_Morano

Well, she is the last one born in 1800s. There might still be living people born in the year 1900, which is also XIX century.

Shouldn't "previous century" be 1900-1999?

Yep, I used to do a lot of work for indigenous communities, designing databases and the like. I was amazed to discover that something like a known date of birth was a rarity, especially amongst the Aboriginal elders. No birth certificates. Usually the data was obtained from other family members, purely from memory or based on other events around the same time.

In a lot of cases, only the year was known. If you were lucky, the month as well. We had to strip out all the DATE data types from our database because the validations were constantly failing, or we would have an inordinate number of people born on the 1st of January on a given year. We had to split the date fields out into three separate drop downs, each with a '(unknown)' option so that validation and statistical reporting would be meaningful.

my mom was born in india in the sixties. she didnt get a birth certificate till ~4 years after she was born

she immigrated to canada, and her passport/license/citizen hip in canada reflect the date of the birth certificate.

wrong month, wrong day, wrong year.

funny thing is her cousin was born 3 years after and immigrated to canada, he was born in a major city in india and in a hospital, so had a birth cert at time time of birth.

he is older according to canadian govt issued IDs, yet my mom has pictures of herself holding him when he was a new born.

we celebrate both of my moms birthdates, one on May 3rd (family recollection in relation to historical event) of her real birthday, and July 8th according to her govt issued IDs

While I was in grad school, it was possible for married students to purchase two sets of football tickets. Concerned about scalping, the university one year decided to require a marriage license at the ticket window. It was chaos.

Oh the horror.

I was in a similar situation as you (south Indian with only one name), and after trying to reason with their customer support, I found it easier to just use a fake name. If you think my real name is fake for no good reason, go ahead and have a fake name that "sounds real".

Honest question, same thing I asked above: are you able to fly? Did you ever attempt to fly to the US?

(Not sure if you'll see this reply this late, but...)

The situation regarding ID's is a mess, but I believe I'll be able to fly, to the US or wherever, without issues (though I haven't done so yet).

The reason is that, India being a multicultural country, our central government that issues passports assumes a firstname-lastname pattern as well. And back when I got the passport, I didn't yet understand the firstname-lastname concept, and just followed the passport office employee's instruction: "don't leave that 'surname' field empty, that's for your father's name". I was curious why the heck someone would label that field as surname, but just took it as part of bureaucracy. And so, I have a passport to the name "myname fathersname".

The "mess" I referred to in the first line is about how different ID's have my name in different forms: let's say my name was David and my dad's is Michael. I have government issued id's that say my name is:

* David

* David M.

* M David Michael (yes, really)

* M David

(and possibly others that I'm forgetting)

The British royal family have run into the same problem. Traditionally, they use a first name and a title, e.g. "Prince William, Duke of Cambridge". For legal purposes, they occasionally use the surname "Windsor" or "Mountbatten-Windsor". This is applied rather inconsistently - Prince William enlisted in the Air Force as "William Wales".

https://www.royal.uk/royal-family-name

Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.

(As mentioned at your link.)

Honest question, are you able to fly? Did you ever attempt to fly to the US?

No worries, it's a common question for me.

I can fly internationally just fine, however my name always gave the immigration officer a headache. Simply because, there's no standard way of resolving it and searching for the correct record of me is painful.

For example

the name on my passport: Steven

My UK Visa: Steven Steven

If I need got to US, from what I heard: Either "Steven LNU"(Last Name Unknown) or "FNU Steven" (First Name Unknown)

Some institutions prefer:

Steven -

Steven .

Steven ,

So yeah, major headaches, especially because my only name is super generic

Since you only have one name, wouldn't it be both your first and last name? Is there a reason you don't input "Steven Steven"?

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