Inspired by Scattermoon’s tweet and Your Last Name Contains Invalid Characters, I just thought I’d make a quick “public service” announcement that British and Irish names can, and do include the following examples (all from current living people who are Irish or British born):
- Apostrophe: Chris O’Dowd
- Double-barrelled: Jane Heathcote-Drummond-Willoughby (technically Nancy Jane Marie Heathcote-Drummond-Willoughby, 28th Baroness Willoughby de Eresby): and it is technically valid for her to have the email address jame.heathcote-drummond-willoughby@eresby.uk
- Long: Red Wacky League Antlez Broke the Stereo Neon Tide Bring Back Honesty Coalition Feedback Hand of Aces Keep Going Captain Let’s Pretend Lost State of Dance Paper Taxis Lunar Road Up! Down! Strange! All and I Neon Sheep Eve Hornby Faye Bradley AJ Wilde Michael Rice Dion Watts Matthew Appleyard John Ashurst Lauren Swales Zoe Angus Jaspreet Singh Emma Matthews Nicola Brown Leanne Pickering Victoria Davies Rachel Burnside Gil Parker Freya Watson Alisha Watts James Pearson Jacob Sotheran-Darley Beth Lowery Jasmine Hewitt Chloe Gibson Molly Farquhar Lewis Murphy Abbie Coulson Nick Davies Harvey Parker Kyran Williamson Michael Anderson Bethany Murray Sophie Hamilton Amy Wilkins Emma Simpson Liam Wales Jacob Bartram Alex Hooks Rebecca Miller Caitlin Miller Sean McCloskey Dominic Parker Abbey Sharpe Elena Larkin Rebecca Simpson Nick Dixon Abbie Farrelly Liam Grieves Casey Smith Liam Downing Ben Wignall Elizabeth Hann Danielle Walker Lauren Glen James Johnson Ben Ervine Kate Burton James Hudson Daniel Mayes Matthew Kitching Josh Bennett Evolution Dreams BBC News article
- “Profanity words”: Brian Cox, Martin Hancock
And don’t forget there is Westward Ho! (and, yes, the exclamation mark is part of the place name) and “Arsenal” and “Scunthorpe”.
That’s just names in “standard English” with British/Irish roots: and ignoring Irish names (such the Irish for Belfast which “Béal Feirste” or “Bó?ar na ?Fáll” or Llandygai which is in Welsh “Llandygái”). If you can’t handle the above, forget about internationalisation!
People – please read https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/user-centred-design/resources/patterns/names and http://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-personal-names before handling names.