Wait, what? I'm trying to figure out why that would exist but the only thing I can think of is that people were buying a ticket for their instruments rather then checking them and the airline wanted to try and stop the practice.

I was shocked as well, and couldn't come up with an explanation either. My name is Marcello and the problem was the `cello` substring (an Italian name, but being Italian an official language in Switzerland they should have though about that). They removed it luckily!

Now I'm wondering if there's a language where "mar" translates to "my"...

That is the instrument that I had in mind when I was thinking of the ones that musicians buy tickets for, but I couldn't think of a name that had a collision with it.

I had heard that some airlines may have tried to discourage the practice but this is the first I heard about such measures.

Seems common for some travelers to book tickets ie. Tuba, Lastname. https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/united-mileage-plus-pre-merg...