myths about names (for programmers).md

Myths Hackers Believe About Names

1. People have exactly one "official" full name.
2. People have exactly one full name which they go by.
3. People have, at this point in time, exactly one canonical full name.
4. People have exactly N names, for any value of N.
5. People’s names fit within a certain defined amount of space.
6. People’s names do not change.
7. People’s names are written in ASCII.
8. People’s names are written in any single character set.
9. People’s names are all mapped in Unicode code points.
10. People’s names are case insensitive.
11. People’s names sometimes have prefixes or suffixes, but you can safely ignore those.
12. People’s names do not contain numbers.
13. People’s names have an order to them. Picking any ordering scheme will automatically result in consistent ordering among all 1. systems, as long as both use the same ordering scheme for the same name.
14. People’s first names and last names are, by necessity, different.
15. People have last names, family names, or anything else which is shared by folks recognized as their relatives.
16. People’s names are globally unique.
17. Alright alright but surely people’s names are diverse enough such that no million people share the same name.
18. My system will never have to deal with names from China. (Or Japan. Or Korea.)
19. I can safely assume that this dictionary of bad words contains no people’s names in it.
20. People’s names are assigned at birth.
21. OK, maybe not at birth, but at least pretty close to birth. Alright, alright, within a year or so of birth. Five years? You're kidding, right?
22. Two different systems containing data about the same person will use the same name for that person.
23. Two different data entry operators, given a person’s name, will by necessity enter bitwise equivalent strings on any single 1. system, if the system is well-designed.
24. People whose names break my system are weird outliers. They should have had solid, acceptable names, like 田中太郎.
25. People have names.

inspired by http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/, but cleaned up