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Comment by slowpoke | Hacker News Reader

I always wonder during those discussions - what exactly is a "real" name supposed to be? I don't have "real" name. Rather, I have many chosen names, and a name my parents gave me. I consider all of these names real, as they refer to a facet of my personality, a part of me.

I do have a legal name - my birth name. It's but one of many. Why is my legal name important? It isn't. I don't even consider it my primary name. The concept of one single "real" name is severely retarded and flies in the face of reality. We need to get rid of this concept, along with the illusion of a single identity. I simply am not the same person when I am with my parents, when I'm with my meatspace friends, or if I'm hanging out on IRC with people I know pretty well, but have never seen or met. I'm someone different here on HN than I am on 4chan, or any other message board. That's perfectly human, and no company or law will ever change that.

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> Why is my legal name important? It isn't. I don't even consider it my primary name. The concept of one single "real" name is severely retarded and flies in the face of reality. We need to get rid of this...

No, sorry. No.

Your legal name is important. If you ever get incarcerated, your legal name will be on the docket. If you have a license or passport, your legal name will be on it. Your taxes have your legal name, as well as any other government certificates you may ever have.

If we're talking about legal purposes, then names are a pretty poor primary key. In such situations, SSN or other UUID would be superior.

For any recreational/social purpose, what's the point of requiring legal name? How many "John Smith"s are there in the world?

The SSN is technically a NUID, not an UUID. So legal names are more important in international context (an Indian SSN doesn't mean anything in the US, for example).

But yeah, assigning GUIDs to everyone born in the world, like as "a93sz0sz" would allow uniqueness for thousands of years.

Yet somehow, I doubt many people would appreciate that kind of uniqueness...

Actually legal names are a problem even within the US. I recently had problems with getting a California driver's license because my second middle name was abbreviated on my green card, but spelled out fully on my North Carolina driver's license, which I was transferring to California.

Yes, it will be in all these places. But in for example Sweden that is more of a convenience rather than of any actual significance. What is really used is your national identity number.

I virtually never write my entire name in forms. I bet I could use a pseudonym or fake name and nobody would care as long as the identity number is there. The only exception is passports where my legal name is important.

Your examples only make a legal name important if you consider these things important. I don't, and they aren't. Part of why we need to get rid of the concept of a legal name is exactly for this reason. A government has no business and no authority to decide who I am.

They don't decide who you are...you tell them.

More accurately, you have the option to tell them. In most cases somebody already told them on your behalf.

You are not your name. The fact that you have an official name does not mean the government is "deciding who you are." And beyond that, in most places, you can choose which name is your official one if you care that much about it. I do not understand what your beef is here.

If you don't think that Facebook should require your official name, I get that. But trying to deny that people generally have one seems odd.

Government tracking methods and Facebook are two different worlds, though, aren't they? (I know I left the door wide open for a sarcastic reply)

No. There are, in fact, ongoing discussions in the US about Facebook being used for authentication at banking and government sites.

You mean your legal name is used in legal scenarios? Say it isn't so...

Guess what, my "street name" is used in "street" scenarios, my "immediate and extended family name" is used by my immediate and extended family (not my legal name btw, nor has it ever been).

What makes the legal name special in any regard? They are all used in their niche.

But which legal name? I (along with everyone in this country) have 2.

The concept of one single "real" name is severely retarded and flies in the face of reality. We need to get rid of this concept, along with the illusion of a single identity.

Skkkkrrrrriiiiittttcccchhh

No, most of us are pretty happy with it because it works. OK, so you feel restricted by it, but you don't get to make the call on what people 'need' to do. These philosophical excursions are entertaining, but the fact is that your legal name is important because it enables the relationship between you and the complex society you inhabit. Money's an abstraction, but one which justifies itself daily by allowing people to buy and sell conveniently. Your legal name serves a similar function.

Prove it.

Reply here with a link to a scan of your State-issued Driver's License and national passport proving that your legal name is, in fact, "anigbrowl" in the next 24 hours or your account will be deleted and you personally (i.e., your legal identity) will be perma-banned from this service.

(Not really, I don't admin HN at all. But you won't do it either.)

I don't believe you're really responding to what Anig said. He didn't say that you weren't allowed to ever be called anything but your real name; he just said that your legal name does have some special status in society.

Similarly, I was recently informed that it was my Twitter birthday. It was not the same as my legal birthday. This does not, however, deprive my legal birthday its significance.

I interpreted slowpoke to be arguing that the single identity theory was oversimplistic and illusory, a position with which I agree.

anigbrowl then came in with his "Skkkkrrrrriiiiittttcccchhh No, most of us are pretty happy with it because it works" remarks, which I felt was rather flippant. My response was meant to show anigbrowl the logical conclusion of his position. It's not an unrealistic possibility either, I believe it's been at times the official policy of Facebook, Google Plus, Blizzard, and S. Korea.

My point is that, no, a single identity doesn't work and really it never did. We all use many different context-dependent identities as we interact in life.

All you really pointed out is that his legal name is not "anigbrowl." And all he argued that was legal names do have some special importance, and it's out of touch with societal norms to say they don't. The fact that his name isn't "anigbrowl" is irrelevant to the fact that legal names have some special importance — both of these facts can coexist at once.

The logical conclusion of anigbrowl's position is not "You will be permabanned from this service if you can't produce a driver license reading 'anigbrowl'." This is an argument against a much more ridiculous stance than the one he took.

'anigbrowl isn't anonymous or even pseudonymous. He just uses a nick. His name is Edward On-Robinson. It's linked from his profile; all you had to do was click on his name to find that out. Similarly, my name isn't "t".

My response is as germane to this thread as your comment was.

I did click on his name and check his profile but, alas, I didn't copy-and-paste to retrieve the URLs in his profile (which were not links) to see if any of them revealed his "real" name.

I think you missed my point, rather badly. I'm saying the concept of a legal real name is a valid one, not that you should have to use it everywhere. Anigbrowl is not my real name; I don't think people should always be required to go under their real name, which is why I don't use Facebook, for example. The use of pseudonyms does not invalidate the concept of a legal identity.

Skkkkrrrrriiiiittttcccchhh

The record scratch sound effect is a bad enough affectation when used in movies and television. Your point is more than strong enough to stand alone without it.

your legal name is important because it enables the relationship between you and the complex society you inhabit

While I agree with this statement, it also occurs to me that society may be becoming sufficiently complex to warrant a level of flexibility in naming that we don't have. A legal name may be important for interfacing with some things, but it does not follow that all things must interface with your legal name. Facebook and Google seem to think it should, but mostly because they're advertising companies, not because it's a requirement of the services they provide, or a requirement for all the kinds of human relationships they're offering to mediate.

This mechanical imposition of a single identity where it has not previously been mandatory is what gets people calling it "severely retarded", etc.

There are entire groups of people for which this isn't necessarily the case. For example a significant portion of mainland Chinese people use a chosen western name when interacting with services that operate in English. Just because a given use case for names is not a use case common to your social strata, does not mean that it may be common within other groups.

No, you're you. You're just presenting different facets (whether conscious or not) of you.

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