On Google+ and names.

[supermouse]

Since last night I've been educated on what names Google+ allows. And how many people are being shut out.

You are required to display one 'first' name, one 'last' name. Both must be one word.

You may not have three names on display, so all native Spanish speakers are out and so are lots of Chinese people. No punctuation, so goodbye go a lot of people of Irish descent and a slew of people from African countries. No diminutives (parts of names like Von, Van, De), so goodbye to lots of Dutch and French, Arab and Scots descended people. No single names, so goodbye to all those mononymed Indonesians and Australians. Last names must be longer than two letters, so all the Ngs and Os and Eks are now gone (yes, those are all real surnames). No hyphens, so goodbye lots of British and Norwegian people. I'm missing a lot of countries out, feel absolutely free to enlighten me.

If your legal, tax name doesn't fit the policies, then Google tells you, edit it until it does. Or we'll suspend you.

The number of people in the world who actually do have one first name and one last name as their 'name they are known by' is actually a tiny minority. Google+, by its naming policy, has made it very exclusive indeed.

Comments

[tesserae]

It also leave out over half the women I know here in Los Angeles, CA, USA - all the women who, entirely legally, added their married name to the names they'd been going by before marriage, and are now known by all three (unhyphenated) names. Why Google wanted to build a social networking service usable by only a small fraction of the population I'll never know.

[supermouse]

All the 'Junior's and 'III's are now out as well.

[aedifica]

Their posted policy doesn't rule out two-word first names, and I currently have an account on there with a two-word first name. (It's not my real name, but it looks like a real name so they haven't come after me. Thus do I stick it to the man... Though it's certainly inconvenient, since I have to track people down and tell them who I am. You know, exactly the same way I'd have to tell all my online friends who I was, if I used my wallet name.)

I really, really hope management there gets their heads out of their asses about this, and soon. :(

[tuzemi]

I really, really hope management there gets their heads out of their asses about this, and soon. :(

If nothing else, it has served the socially useful purpose of illustrating that Google management is no longer on the side of the users (if it ever was).

[epershand]

What is your source of information here? I've got friends who meet almost all these patterns and they haven't had any problems.

[supermouse]

Basically, a lot of googling (yes, I know, I know), and people giving me links to blogs of pissed off people, among them Kirrily 'Skud' Roberts and Violet Blue. There are many others but I cannot remember names.

Basically, all these things are fine until they're suddenly not - after all, three days ago I could have said the same thing.

[pne]

You may not have three names on display, so all native Spanish speakers are out and so are lots of Chinese people.

Also Vietnamese.

Koreans may fall under this as well, depending on how they choose to spell their name in Latin letters - if they opt to hyphenate instead, they'll fall under that provision. Whether it's "Kim Jong Il" (too many names!) or "Kim Jong-Il" (evil hyphen!), they lose either way. (Some write their names together, à la "Kim Jongil", but I think that's less common than "separate" or "hyphenated".)

Hyphens will also remove a fair number of German people, either due to family names (Leutheuser-Schnarrenberger, Koch-Mehrin, ...) or to given names (Hans-Jürgen, ...). And "no spaces in your first name" will catch a few who go by two words that are always together and are, in effect, a single (albeit compound) given name (Eva Maria, possibly also Peter Harry Carstensen).

If your legal, tax name doesn't fit the policies, then Google tells you, edit it until it does.

Do they care about your legal name? I thought they wanted the name on your ID, which may not be your current legal name in common-law countries where your legal name can be essentially whatever you choose it to be.