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Hi, my name is A48uags_j
Feb 4, 2008 | Lucas
Okay, so I lied. My name isn't actually "A48uags_j", but lately I've been thinking about a bizarre question regarding this topic. Why is it that no society in the world (in the past and present) has accepted a norm of using not only letters but also numbers and symbols in a person's name? Why is a name like "Loser" registrable, yet "Lucas89" not registrable in Canada?
With over 6.5 billion people living on the planet today, surely someone must have made a name with a number or even an underscore? I'm guessing the biggest concern people have is how having such a name might impact a child's development and affect his or her life later on, but the argument doesn't hold because parents have named their kids with some really odd names.
Some examples of awkward names parents gave their kids include "Lemonjello" ("leh-MON-juh-low"), "Shitheat" ("shi-theed"), and "Female" ("fuh-MALL-ee"). I'll spare name the rest of the list, you can Google them to your amusement, but the point I'm trying to make is that in my opinion, those names are worse than having a name with a simple, harmless underscore.
Let's briefly look at email addresses. They very often contain underscores and numbers in them quite simply to satisfy the demand of unique combinations of usernames. By introducing another character set into the conventional human naming system, we would be allowing for an expansion of possible combinations, therefore allowing for more unique names.
I don't think that including underscores and numbers in a name should be so unthinkable (although personally I would choose a more "normal" name for my kids). Maybe in a few generations it will slowly become a more accepted standard.