Post

Isobel
@appsolutelynot.bsky.social

I had an argument with an old manager who wanted to run every name through a function to capitalise the first letter and lower ever other. This is "the standard way of doing things in data engineering". I'd recently married and had a hyphenated name that wouldn't survive this transformation.

Isobel
@appsolutelynot.bsky.social

Yeah, he wound up hiring a contractor to do all the things everyone else pushed back on and relegating them to menial tasks until they all quit. Fortunately that company went bust so that particular issue is no more.

François Potvin Naud
@elfteiroh.bsky.social

I also have a composite family name, but no hyphen... you don't know how many systems automatically change my first family name into a middle name... They are lucky I don't use my TWO middle names on top of that...

Isobel
@appsolutelynot.bsky.social

I grew up with a composite name (Dutch, with a van, lower case) that was constantly getting mangled. I changed that when I came out as changed and then married and got a hyphenated surname. I hate assumptions about names. No computer knows how every name works.

François Potvin Naud
@elfteiroh.bsky.social

Yup. As soon as you think you know how to "validate" a name, that's where you got wrong. There's too many cultures around the world that do things differently than you (general you, not you you), there's NO way you won't miss one... and then there's the parents that want their kids to be special.