Why I dislike people with short last names…

October 20th, 2006

I don’t actually dislike people with short names! How could I? A short last name doesn’t tell me anything about a persons character, habits or personallity. It can’t tell me if he or she is trustworthy or not.

This is all clear. And you would guess that the same is true for longer last names, right?

Wrong.

I have gotten into a habit of only saying “Veldhuijzen” as a last name instead of “Veldhuijzen van Zanten” if a salesman or helpdesk person asks me for my name. It tends to keep prices low and service better. Ofcourse if I want to get into a fancy restaurant I slowly pronounce my complete last name and might even throw in some of the 4 first names I have. And when I get a speeding ticket I actually get to spell my complete name which means that I have to spell all 52 characters, not counting spaces, making the officer regret ever having pulled me over.

But it seems that some developers and start-up companies dislike people with long names too. I noticed a new service by 30 boxes that lets you build a commenters profile. I tried it out but it is still in beta. As you can see in the image I tried to sign-up for an account and got an error.

Some developer figured that 20 characters should be sufficient for any last name in the world. Are they afraid that their database will fill up to fast if they allow more than 20 characters for a last name? Or do they just dislike those fancy long last names? It clearly wasn’t just an error because they went through all the trouble of adding a Javascript error message.

I know that in the US most names aren’t longer than 8 characters but I indian, spanish and chinese names are often a lot longer. Why exclude all these people? What is the added value of limiting the last name field? I can imagine you don’t want people to post too many characters in there but how about limiting it to 255 characters?

That way even Adolph Blaine Charles David Earl Frederick Gerald Hubert Irvin John Kenneth Lloyd Martin Nero Oliver Paul Quincy Randolph Sherman Thomas Uncas Victor William Xerxes Yancy Zeus Wolfeschlegelsteinhausenbergerdorff wouldn’t have a problem signing up for your service…

Filed under Business, Developing, Innovation, Personal, Programming |

2 Responses to “Why I dislike people with short last names…”

Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten on October 20, 2006 2:24 pm (14:24)
Oops, 255 won’t be enough. I just found this link: http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1534419

It shows that his full name is actually Adolph Blaine Charles David Earl Frederick Gerald Hubert Irvim John Kenneth Loyd Martin Nero Oliver Paul Quincy Randolph Sherman Thomas Uncas Victor Willian Xerxes Yancy Zeus

(Last name)
Wolfeschlegelsteinhausenbergerdorffvoralternwarengewissenhaftschaferswesenchafewarenwholgepflegeundsorgfaltigkeitbeschut
zenvonangereifenduchihrraubgiriigfeindewelchevorralternzwolftausendjahresvorandieerscheinenbanderersteerdeemmeshedrraums
chiffgebrauchlichtalsseinursprungvonkraftgestartseinlangefahrthinzwischensternartigraumaufdersuchenachdiesternwelshegeha
btbewohnbarplanetenkreisedrehensichundwohinderneurassevanverstandigmenshlichkeittkonntevortpflanzenundsicherfreunanleben
slamdlichfreudeundruhemitnichteinfurchtvorangreifenvonandererintlligentgeschopfsvonhinzwischensternartigraum

Senior
Arjen on October 20, 2006 3:09 pm (15:09)
That’s way it is still in beta.

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The Internet Entrepreneur
You are visiting the blog of Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten. I am a Serial Internet Entrepreneur and I write about my projects, my theories about innovation and entrepreneurship and sometimes about my life in general.

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