From: evelynchimelisleeper@gmail.com   
      
   My additions:   
      
   All names and parts of names have more than one letter. (Counterexamples   
   would be Harry S Truman, and for the matter SF fan Steven H Silver.)   
      
   Names have no spaces in their parts. (Counterexamples would be  A. E.   
   Van Vogt, L. Sprague de Camp, and Patrick Nielsen Hayden.)   
      
   Names start with a capital letter, and then all the other letters are   
   lower-case. (Counterexamples would be almost anything with "Mc" or   
   "Mac". I cannot believe someone named "McKenzie" missed this!))   
      
   And the flip side of "I can safely assume that this dictionary of bad   
   words contains no people’s names in it," which would be "I can safely   
   assume that people’s names contain no words found in the dictionary of   
   bad words, and hence will be rejected by some email program, Facebook   
   filter, or whatever." Think Scunthorpe.   
      
   Actually, I ran into the latter problem when I tried to list a book for   
   sale on Amazon. I wanted to describe it as similar to the works of   
   Philip K. Dick.   
      
   Yep, you guessed it. Amazon kept rejecting my description until I   
   received an epiphany and changed it to "similar to the works of PKD."   
      
   On 1/20/26 12:15, Cryptoengineer wrote:   
      
   >   
   > Patrick McKenzie's article:   
   >   
   > People have exactly one canonical full name.   
   >   
   > People have exactly one full name which they go by.   
   >   
   > People have, at this point in time, exactly one canonical full name.   
   >   
   > People have, at this point in time, one full name which they go by.   
   >   
   > People have exactly N names, for any value of N.   
   >   
   > People’s names fit within a certain defined amount of space.   
   >   
   > People’s names do not change.   
   >   
   > People’s names change, but only at a certain enumerated set of events.   
   >   
   > People’s names are written in ASCII.   
   >   
   > People’s names are written in any single character set.   
   >   
   > People’s names are all mapped in Unicode code points.   
   >   
   > People’s names are case sensitive.   
   >   
   > People’s names are case insensitive.   
   >   
   > People’s names sometimes have prefixes or suffixes, but you can safely   
   > ignore those.   
   >   
   > People’s names do not contain numbers.   
   >   
   > People’s names are not written in ALL CAPS.   
   >   
   > People’s names are not written in all lower case letters.   
   >   
   > People’s names have an order to them.  Picking any ordering scheme will   
   > automatically result in consistent ordering among all systems, as long   
   > as both use the same ordering scheme for the same name.   
   >   
   > People’s first names and last names are, by necessity, different.   
   >   
   > People have last names, family names, or anything else which is shared   
   > by folks recognized as their relatives.   
   >   
   > People’s names are globally unique.   
   >   
   > People’s names are almost globally unique.   
   >   
   > Alright alright but surely people’s names are diverse enough such that   
   > no million people share the same name.   
   >   
   > My system will never have to deal with names from China.   
   >   
   > Or Japan.   
   >   
   > Or Korea.   
   >   
   > Or Ireland, the United Kingdom, the United States, Spain, Mexico,   
   > Brazil, Peru, Russia, Sweden, Botswana, South Africa, Trinidad, Haiti,   
   > France, or the Klingon Empire, all of which have “weird” naming schemes   
   > in common use.   
   >   
   > That Klingon Empire thing was a joke, right?   
   >   
   > Confound your cultural relativism!  People in my society, at least,   
   > agree on one commonly accepted standard for names.   
   >   
   > There exists an algorithm which transforms names and can be reversed   
   > losslessly.  (Yes, yes, you can do it if your algorithm returns the   
   > input.  You get a gold star.)   
   >   
   > I can safely assume that this dictionary of bad words contains no   
   > people’s names in it.   
   >   
   > People’s names are assigned at birth.   
   >   
   > 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 me, right?   
   >   
   > Two different systems containing data about the same person will use the   
   > same name for that person.   
   >   
   > Two different data entry operators, given a person’s name, will by   
   > necessity enter bitwise equivalent strings on any single system, if the   
   > system is well-designed.   
   >   
   > People whose names break my system are weird outliers.  They should have   
   > had solid, acceptable names, like 田中太郎.   
   >   
   > People have names.   
      
      
   --   
   Evelyn C. Leeper, http://leepers.us/evelyn   
   Patriotism is like the love that a parent has for a child;   
   nationalism is akin to believing that one’s child can do no wrong.   
   --Robin Givhan   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)