Moments of Permanence - We should be clear on certain things: Names, identity, and why certain people need to shut up hard

From: sqbr Date: June 16th, 2009 01:04 am (UTC) (Link)

We had the same problem with people's details getting mixed up. I don't know if you encountered this, but it is traditional for ALL Vietnamese girls to have the first name "Thi". I'm assuming the Vietnamese bureaucracy has some way of dealing with this, but all we had was a bunch of dodgy hacks.

But it's like the fact that putting in disabled access is a genuine inconvenience: the question is, do you start from the assumption that it's your organisation's job to accommodate and cater to the huge variety of people who make up the population, or do you start from the assumption that everyone is "normal" and then treat anyone who differs from that as an inconvenient exception? (I have this rant about the unstated and restrictive assumptions associated with records, but it's a particular combination of controversial-with-my-nominal-employer and niche interest that makes me cautious about posting it :))

Personally, if I got to change the names of one group who made my job more difficult, it would be twins with similar names :D And then the Smiths. (Disclaimer: obviously I wouldn't actually do this, see topic of post)

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