1) my mom won't have an e-mail address with the surname of her first husband (my dad, passed away)
2) my brother-in-law (brother of my wife) surely won't have it
3) my cousins all have different surnames
4) my wife may accept one, but I talk with her every day and when we don't meet or talk via phone we tend to communicate via post-its on the fridge or similar
Or even that you don't have a first name but a set of given names and that the relative that gave you the name that is conventionally often put in a later position would not be amused about another relatives name singled out to be a "first name".
Four generations of men in my family have the same name other than suffix. At times three of them lived at the same address. It has caused a number of issues over the years, including unintended cross access to bank accounts. Despite the problems it sometimes creates, they seem to be amused by the confusion.
Very true. I've experienced a bit of this first-hand.
Growing up, I, my father, and my paternal grandfather all shared the same first name and last name, and all lived within a couple of miles of each other (my father and I obviously lived in the same residence a big chunk of my childhood, and grandpa lived just a short hop away). Our mail (and gosh knows what else) got mixed up all the time.
To make it even worse, I'm one of those people who chooses to use my middle name, not my first name, as my primary name. So while "legal" correspondence often comes addressed one way, sometimes even that gets mixed up, and phone calls are always weird when I answer "Hi, this is Phil" and the person on the other end goes "Oh, sorry, I was calling for $FIRST_NAME". <click>
And to make this whole story even weirder, my maternal grandfather's middle name (which is what he went by) was the same as the first name shared by me, my dad, and my paternal grand-father. So yeah, we had four family members in a very small area, sharing confusingly similar names.
Now that I think of it, at least four people I know have some sort of divorce or estranged-parent thing going on with their last names, and I never would have been aware of it if not for the mismatch between the name I met them under and the name on one of their online profiles.
As others have said, there's a lot to be said for having a single name field and not trying to second-guess how people expect this to be presented. There's huge variation here, and some cultures don't even have a concept of a single last/family name.
Somewhat related and worth pointing out is that the whole world does not use family names, or the family name as a last name.
My wife was annoyed when she came to the US and every form has a “first” and “last” field, but she doesn’t have a last name. Her passport for example, only has a “name” field.
> Most people in the world have filled out forms on U.S. sites. They'll know what to do.
I'm just French (where we often use "FAMILY Given" in a formal setting, but "Given Family" is common otherwise) and I still need a moment to think every time I see "first name" "last name" fields instead of "family name" "given name", after decades of being online.
My parents just fill these forms in random order, basically.
The other problem is:
> For reasons of respect, you may need to address a person by either their first or last name (with a title).
This often doesn't translate well between cultures. American websites will often use the given name in any setting and this is weird. If they want to be friendly-informal they should address me with "Hello Given Family, this is your order".
1) my mom won't have an e-mail address with the surname of her first husband (my dad, passed away)
2) my brother-in-law (brother of my wife) surely won't have it
3) my cousins all have different surnames
4) my wife may accept one, but I talk with her every day and when we don't meet or talk via phone we tend to communicate via post-its on the fridge or similar
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