I live in Japan and this happens to me all the time. My name is too long to fit in most forms so I have to drop the middle name (which isn’t really a thing here, they consider it as part of my first name), and then they get mad at me because it doesn’t match my ID exactly. I’ve had to redo forms because I didn’t write my name in all caps like the resident card. I’ve had medical ID cards from hospitals that chop my name halfway off and the staff wrote the rest with a marker. It’s a mess.

Some people just can't fathom it when the name doesn't exactly match, no critical thinking is allowed in those cases.

"Hmmm, your ID card says 'Christian Joseph Anderson' but our records show 'Anderson Joseph Chri', are you trying to pull a fast one on us???"

> Some people just can't fathom it when the name doesn't exactly match, no critical thinking is allowed in those cases.

In my experience computers are the bigger issue. A human can think outside the box in a way a `strcmp` can't.

You might be surprised. I spent a long time carefully and politely explaining to an immigration case officer that "Firstname NMN Lastname" meant, in fact, that there was No Middle Name and not that there was a middle name cryptically encoded as NMN.

>A human can think outside the box in a way a `strcmp` can't.

Computer says no

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0n_Ty_72Qds

---

A human can do many things, but never underestimate the power of the system (Hello Moloch) to remove said creative abilities from humans. Also never underestimate how creatively stupid humans can be.

There's one thing I at least haven't had any problems with. I have a middle name. I never use it. I always order my flight tickets without the middle name. However, my passport includes the middle name. I've never had a problem with that, in Japanese airports (or elsewhere, for that matter).

Same here, my passport includes my middle name but I always book my air tickets without my middle name. Have had no issues in about 15+ countries with this approach.

I've had complaints but no issues so far when not using my middle name whilst flying.

Middle names are less common where I live. The locals tend to add my middle name to my fist name and then complain that it's long and doesn't match their database at first glance.

It all blows up when some system somewhere doesn’t like that it doesn’t know your middle name and so adds NMN and then you have a failure to match.

Wife (Japanese) couldn't enter her name into a web form for a Japanese hotel (had to go directly to the hotel because of some booking.com problems at the time). It had to do with half-width vs full-width, but we couldn't figure it out even though she's Japanese and her PC is Japanese. In the end we had to do a long-distance phone call. But Japanese banks at least has a system which mostly solves at least those problems - everyone's name is written in Katakana.

Japanese hotel websites are probably the worst offenders. I refuse to use them anymore and only book through hotel aggregators. They are straight up horrible.

> But Japanese banks at least has a system which mostly solves at least those problems - everyone's name is written in Katakana.

That's workable, though I still remember seeing banks with comically short character limits for names.

You should see the password requirements. Shinsei Bank hardcaps your password at 10 characters.

Which probably means they are storing your password rather than a hash of the password.

I complained about this to my bank when I found out they stored passwords and their response was "don't worry about it - you aren't responsible for fraud".

> I complained about this to my bank when I found out they stored passwords and their response was "don't worry about it - you aren't responsible for fraud".

I'd much rather live in a world where banks are idiots with passwords and I'm not responsible for fraud, than a world where I'm expected to be not an idiot with my passwords, and I were responsible for fraud.

Every day, I count my lucky stars.

Reminds me of when one of my subordinates applied for an apartment and as part of the process the property management people reached out to me to verify his employment.

How? By forwarding me his unredacted application chock full of PII. When I pointed out that most people probably wouldn't appreciate their SSN and more being shot around in emails by the management company, I was simply told it was "standard practice" for them. Following insinuations that their "standard practices" might just be "fucked" were summarily ignored.

> "don't worry about it - you aren't responsible for fraud".

Have fun trying to dispute an atm card transaction. The agent actively dissuaded me from doing it and said it was not possible.

SMBC prestia requires your password to not contains more than two alphabet characters consecutively nor two numbers consecutively.

Invalid: abc123 Valid: ab12cd34a4f9

Obviously, no uppercase or ANY special characters like “.” Allowed…

Everything is bloated with security theater, where the most critical things are vulnerable. For example, I saw a form for 2-Chōme requiring a phone number with three input slots. Entered my phone, it’s already been used. That’s fine, I just shifted one number from one slot to the other.

80-1234-5678 (already registered)

80-123-45678 (workaround to use the same phone number on a different account).

It worked.

For over 10 years now, my online banking password has been my ATM PIN, which is only 4 numbers. I believe MUFJ and SMBC have similar systems. I was actually impressed by JPPost's system, which required a 6 digit PIN.

Many years ago I used to have an 8-digit ATM pin, but sometimes later this was enforced to be limited to 4 digits. Go figure.

>"No, you need to enter your name in kanji. Of course, everyone has a kanji name, right?"

Do they actually block hiragana and katakana? If they do that's probably grounds to sue.

>refusing half-width roman characters

With maybe the exception of arabic numerals, Japanese is nearly always written in full/monospace width. This is not unlike how English is nearly always written in half/proportional width.

When in Rome, do as the Romans do.

> Do they actually block hiragana and katakana? If they do that's probably grounds to sue.

I don't have evidence at the ready, but I remember interacting with websites which complained about receiving katakana for both the name and カナ field for your name.

> With maybe the exception of arabic numerals, Japanese is nearly always written in full/monospace width. This is not unlike how English is nearly always written in half/proportional width

Yes, I'm fine with them using it. But they could put in a _little_ bit of work for me and convert my half-width characters to full-width, as the good websites here do.

The kana field is for indicating how the name is read (remember, kanji can be read in many ways), and consequently how the name should be indexed and sorted inside databases and other data stores.

If the field wanted only either hiragana or katakana (remember, it wants a simple reading guide) and complained, I'm not necessarily surprised.

I'm specifically talking about the kanji field, not the kana field. If your name doesn't have kanji (which mine doesn't), you can really only enter katakana. And I've encountered forms which refuse katakana for that field, and which also refuses half-width or full-width roman characters.

What do you do at that point?

I would just enter hiragana and move on with my day, and if that doesn't work I would just pick arbitrary kanji using standard readings to roughly spell out my name (this practice is known as 当て字, ateji).

It's not my problem they have to deal with malformed data if that's all they will accept.

> Do they actually block hiragana and katakana? If they do that's probably grounds to sue.

many websites in Japan has two name field: one is kanji, another is katakana.

https://shinkabukiza.pia.jp/membmng/RegisterNormalAction.do

Take this for example, the field in first row is full-width kanji, second one is full-width katakana.

The お名前 (onamae) field is for your name as written in Japanese normally, and it should take any of kanji, hiragana, or katakana as appropriate so long as it is 全角 (full width) and the programmer didn't screw up.

The フリガナ (furigana) field is to indicate how the name given above is read, because kanji can have many readings including completely arbitrary ones. This also serves to indicate how computers should index and sort the names when storing and processing them, so it's still applicable even if the name is all hiragana or katakana and immediately obvious.

Furigana is also used to indicate how to read kanji in ordinary text, oftentimes when dealing with rare kanji or special readings, when the text must be comprehensible by everyone (eg: emergency bulletins), or when the text is written for people learning Japanese (eg: school textbooks).

Furigana is usually written using hiragana, so the reason 全角カタカナ (full width katakana) is specified instead of just full width is to inform the form's filer that he shouldn't write hiragana like he otherwise probably would.

Does a lot of that come from the fact that names can use kanji outside of the common 2000+ Jōyō kanji?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C5%8Dy%C5%8D_kanji

Is it common to come across names using kanji outside that range?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jinmeiy%C5%8D_kanji

That's one part but another is names that use kyuujitai (pre-simplified kanji forms) or names that use unusual readings because if you're named after your father's (father's father's....) name then the pronunciation of your name might not have evolved the same way the reading of the kanji has in actual words. Also regional uses that get replaced by standardised uses in words but not names. Or someone just made it up generations ago and it caught on. Or your ancestor didn't know how to write and just picked a kanji they thought was right.

Even in English this happens, look at all the variations of Robert (Rob, Bob, Robb, Robbie, Bobbie, ...) or similar names.

>Even in English this happens, look at all the variations of Robert (Rob, Bob, Robb, Robbie, Bobbie, ...) or similar names.

That doesn't quite grasp the magnitude. We're talking on the level of writing "Charlie" and reading it as "Alexander". Why? Because yes, that's why.

Providing readings using furigana is the mechanical answer to a very human problem.

How do everyday Japanese deal with the problem? Do they have the furigana on their business cards? (or the katakana reading)

I'm thinking.. I've only ever seen someone's name, will I make serious faux pas if I mispronounce it with the regular reading when I meet them?

(this is less pronounced in English because most of the time you can tell how to pronounce it by reading it. My last name suffers from the fact there is multiple possible pronunciations, so whenever I meet someone who has never heard my name they always stumble and look at me for help)

In person, if they think you'll have to write their name: "My name is XYZ, that uses the kanji for A and B"

As for business cards, yes, if they have some non-obvious reading they will have kana or romaji there somewhere. (Usage of romaji on business cards is wider than you might expect, since it's seen as kind of the equivalent of a modern sans-serif logo for a business in some circles)

e.g.

Card with furigana: https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F...

Card with kana elsewhere: https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F...

Card with romaji: https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F...

Thank you so much!

On the first example -- what is the significance of the character which is a circle within a circle? I'm assuming it's some sort of graphic or punctuation, rather than a kanji...?

It's just a graphical divider/bullet that the designer of this specific business card chose to use.

The heading of that corner is just the pronounication of "m-take design" written out in katakana. The first line under the heading talks about the type of products the person works on (direct mail, leaflets, pamphlets). The second line talks about their specialities, as in the industries they focus on (cosmetics, health food), and then the last mentions they'll also do logo design, homepage design etc. I guess they wanted to emphasize the second line.

You'll sometimes see kanji-sized single circles used in Japan to indicate omitted characters (and you might see them on business card _templates_ as a sort of lorem ipsum, but unlikely on actual business cards), but this double circle doesn't have any specific meaning as far as I know.

Thanks for your explanation. It reminds that the "onamae" name for Japanese people could contain hiragana or katakana. I almost forget it.

I have an even deeper respect for people working on collations and character sets. Good LORD.

> With maybe the exception of arabic numerals, Japanese is nearly always written in full/monospace width. This is not unlike how English is nearly always written in half/proportional width.

The half-width/full-width distinction is a hold-over from the DOS era when all fonts where monospaced. It doesn't have a place nowadays and should have never be included in Unicode, just change the font or use a better text rendering algorithm.

What makes you think they're not still using DOS?

xD

Nah, it's probably some Japan-only ancient mainframe OS with Shit-JIS over EBCDIC.

full-widths has its places in vertical texts!

I would have used the only Kanji I know: :). I guess I might end up with a fair few name siblings huh.

I wonder if a kanji name is a legally recognized name. Like, I don't know kanji, could I just pick random characters that end up being nonsense? or will I get in trouble

interesting anecdote

you can't really have a 'nonsense' name - there's a list of around 3000 characters you're allowed to use in names, but in theory, you can put together whatever you want. you'll just get side-eyed for having a weird name, that's all.

that being said, i think most of these websites that ask for a kanji name will require you to show ID with that name when you show up in person, so you might run into trouble if you just pick random characters.

There are only 3000 legal kanji characters. But people have started naming their children in hiragana and katakana. Still no romaji allowed. Yet.

You can register a legal alias (通称名) that you can use on forms. I know people who have done this with just single a single kanji to avoid a lot of the headache associated with having a foreign name or (god forbid) a middle name. I've considered a few times registering my legal alias as 一一 to have a two stroke full name.

Rather, only kanji name is legally recognized so random sequence is technically possible. But that'll just throw exceptions everywhere.