No, sorry. No.

Your legal name is important. If you ever get incarcerated, your legal name will be on the docket. If you have a license or passport, your legal name will be on it. Your taxes have your legal name, as well as any other government certificates you may ever have.

I virtually never write my entire name in forms. I bet I could use a pseudonym or fake name and nobody would care as long as the identity number is there. The only exception is passports where my legal name is important.

For any recreational/social purpose, what's the point of requiring legal name? How many "John Smith"s are there in the world?

But yeah, assigning GUIDs to everyone born in the world, like as "a93sz0sz" would allow uniqueness for thousands of years.

Guess what, my "street name" is used in "street" scenarios, my "immediate and extended family name" is used by my immediate and extended family (not my legal name btw, nor has it ever been).

What makes the legal name special in any regard? They are all used in their niche.

If you don't think that Facebook should require your official name, I get that. But trying to deny that people generally have one seems odd.

Skkkkrrrrriiiiittttcccchhh

No, most of us are pretty happy with it because it works. OK, so you feel restricted by it, but you don't get to make the call on what people 'need' to do. These philosophical excursions are entertaining, but the fact is that your legal name is important because it enables the relationship between you and the complex society you inhabit. Money's an abstraction, but one which justifies itself daily by allowing people to buy and sell conveniently. Your legal name serves a similar function.

While I agree with this statement, it also occurs to me that society may be becoming sufficiently complex to warrant a level of flexibility in naming that we don't have. A legal name may be important for interfacing with some things, but it does not follow that all things must interface with your legal name. Facebook and Google seem to think it should, but mostly because they're advertising companies, not because it's a requirement of the services they provide, or a requirement for all the kinds of human relationships they're offering to mediate.

This mechanical imposition of a single identity where it has not previously been mandatory is what gets people calling it "severely retarded", etc.

Reply here with a link to a scan of your State-issued Driver's License and national passport proving that your legal name is, in fact, "anigbrowl" in the next 24 hours or your account will be deleted and you personally (i.e., your legal identity) will be perma-banned from this service.

(Not really, I don't admin HN at all. But you won't do it either.)

Similarly, I was recently informed that it was my Twitter birthday. It was not the same as my legal birthday. This does not, however, deprive my legal birthday its significance.

anigbrowl then came in with his "Skkkkrrrrriiiiittttcccchhh No, most of us are pretty happy with it because it works" remarks, which I felt was rather flippant. My response was meant to show anigbrowl the logical conclusion of his position. It's not an unrealistic possibility either, I believe it's been at times the official policy of Facebook, Google Plus, Blizzard, and S. Korea.

My point is that, no, a single identity doesn't work and really it never did. We all use many different context-dependent identities as we interact in life.

The logical conclusion of anigbrowl's position is not "You will be permabanned from this service if you can't produce a driver license reading 'anigbrowl'." This is an argument against a much more ridiculous stance than the one he took.

My response is as germane to this thread as your comment was.

The record scratch sound effect is a bad enough affectation when used in movies and television. Your point is more than strong enough to stand alone without it.