Ms Keihanaikukauakahihuliheekahaunaele was an outlier. Her 36-letter Hawaiian surname couldn’t be entered into state data files or reproduced on her ID card or driving licence – it had to be truncated. Her frustration was shared by other people whose cultures provide them with names or other details which systems designed for other cultures can’t deal with: Ms Pontes da Costa Granja James y Savill, Karl-Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jacob Philipp Franz Joseph Sylvester Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg, Siddig El Tahir El Fadil El Siddig Abderrahman Mohammed Ahmed Abdel Karim El Mahd(better known as the actor Alexander Siddig) and His Imperial Highness Prince Şehzade Nazım Ziyaeddin Nazım Osmanoğlu(comedian Naz Osmanoglu) to name but a few. Ulrika Örtegren-Kärjenmäki, whose name is hardly gargantuan, was refused a flight because her name would not fit onto Ryanair’s boarding pass, leaving aside the issue of the confusion caused at security by the diaereses over the letters in her name.
Read more in my blog post here.
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