Hacker News Reader

I guess Elon Musk had the right idea giving his kid a non-alphabetic name.. less chances of this stupidity to affect them.

(The above is a joke, I'm guessing US government systems can't handle non-ASCII characters, and a German named Müller would have to be Mueller or Muller)

View on HN

It's definitely not a terrible idea to have a unique(ish) name. Your name is somewhat like your username for non digital things, or at least part of your username.

I don't have a particularly common name but when I google it I share it with an English football player and someone from South Africa who has been convicted of real estate fraud.

I've never been to South Africa but I have worked for a real estate portal, and it's on my LinkedIn (which I barely use, but still). I can see how someone outside would not be able to separate the two.

Or the opposite, I imagine a name like "John Smith" couldn't have this issue because there would be so many matches.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com