I still have problems with this because I have the same name as my dad. The worst was when my bank account was locked because his boss at the time had been taking taxes off their cheques but not paying the government. For some reason they called my bank and locked my account thinking I was him(at the time they thought he wasn't paying taxes, it was all worked out eventually) despite our birth dates being nearly 30 years apart.

It happened without any explanation. I had to go to the bank and ask why I couldn't use my debit card. They explained.the government had a hold on my account. I ended up having to prove I was not my dad with a bunch of pieces of ID. It took like half a day to get access to my account restored. I was 20 or something at the time. There was no way I could me mistaken for someone in his 40's.

>There was no way I could me mistaken for someone in his 40's.

But when designing automated systems, you can't add in a condition of "unless person doesn't look their age". If one can't use names as a unique identifier, then that leaves a number issued at birth by a central government. But as I understand, even SSNs aren't unique and get re-used.

As an aside though, cultures that use the same name for multiple people in the same family confuse me. To me, the purpose of a name is to identify, so what is the point of naming someone the same? Perhaps, historically, it was a way to establish credibility before the time of credit reports and phones.

> “As an aside though, cultures that use the same name for multiple people in the same family confuse me.”

i’d wager their desire for affiliation is stronger than their desire for differentiation. individualism isn’t as valued in many cultures.

SSNs are not (yet) reused. There's ~900 million potential SSNs, we've run through half, and are using ~5.5 million a year, which gives us at least another half a century before we have to start reusing.

There are all sorts of reasons.

In some Irish families (mostly older people now), people had a Gaelic derived name and a legal English name, because the authorities banished Gaelic names. When you do genealogy, it’s very difficult to track people in certain circumstances as spellings and references change.

That happens in areas of Brazil that had German immigrants. They had their German-style names, but at one point, Brazil forced them all to adopt Portuguese-style names.

I'm surprised it was so quick.

Normally when I discover things like that which require some interaction with bureaucracy at some level, I find out on a Friday afternoon at 4pm, have to wait until Monday, then things are resolved for days because people are 'backed up' on Monday...