I find it absurd that Google+ doesn't recognize certain names. The latest outrage was when they rejected
Elaine Yellow Horse. It was only after BuzzFeed contacted Google that they decided that, gee whiz, that
is a real name! Who would have thought it.
So I thought I might let Google know a few things about Anthroponymy. Given Google has a whole division who work out if you've given a real name or not, you would hope they would be well-versed on what can constitute a name. It appears not, even in their own country they don't recognize the name of the original native people who inhabited the land.
Here are a few things that Google+ administrators might like to brush up on when it comes to names of people around the world:
- You don't have to have two names. You can be named with just one name - a mononym. This is quite common all over the world.
- There are those who prefer to be named after their children - this is called teknonymy. As an example, I knew a Lebanese man whose first son was named George. We knew him as Abu George, literally "father of George".
- People can have names that are... unusual. Let's give you a few:
Jellyfish McSaveloy
Heavenly Hiraani Tiger Lily Hutchence
Apple Blythe Alison Martin
Baby Hospital
Yahoo Serious
Goveg.com
- There are a number of people whose names may be mistaken for rudeness:
Argelico Fucks
Dick Assman
Lucious Pusey (changed to Lucious Seymour)
Rusty Kuntz
So let's see - Google will be banning all the Fucks, Assman, Pusey and Kuntz of the world, even though these are their legal names.
Google, pick up your act. It's getting really old. Frankly, the fact that Elaine Yellow Horse appealed your policy
three times and it was only once the media got involved that you did the right thing shows that your staff are either incompetent, or racist. I hope for incompetence. Either is bad, but racism is much worse than incompetence.