It turns out that “Name” is complicated business. For all the official purposes, we use the legal name. When someone begins at Wellesley, this name is recorded in Banner, our ERP and is used to generate a username and email aliases. This then propagates through integration to several other systems, some internal and some external. In other words, the fist instantiation of this official name becomes pervasive.

There are many reasons why the legal name is not enough. Many use their middle name instead of their first name and would prefer that this is properly noted and used in some fashion. There are several others who would prefer to use a nickname. For example, several of us from Southeast Asian countries prefer this approach as a way to spare the rest of the world from the agonies of learning to pronounce our complicated names. There are many cases where our given names, when not correctly pronounced, may mean something totally inappropriate either in English or in our own languages! I strongly recommend that you read this article titled “Personal names around the world“.

Also, until recently, systems such as Banner didn’t provide a way to store names containing special characters, though the definition of new character sets have been defined and supported in computer systems for a significant period. Any basic structural changes to the database in these systems have such wide ranging consequences that it had to be done carefully and even after careful testing, this upgrade resulted in some really unforeseen outcomes.

Name changes resulting from a marriage, divorce or handling requests from the transgender members of the community adds a whole different set of complications to name handling. For example, when a name change occurs, should we change the username? If so, what are the consequences? What happens to all of the digital content owned under the old username? Some systems we currently have are simply inadequate to anticipate and react to these transitions, whereas some of the more modern ones are a bit more reliable in making these easier.

The list goes on, but I will stop with one more challenge. There has been at least one request where the person wanted one name to appear in communications involving all College matters, but a different one for communication with outsiders. Talking about communication, associated with names should be a corresponding pronoun and the databases do not recognize the need for this.

At Wellesley, we provide a way for our community members to request a “Preferred Name” and store it in the databases. The exact use of this has remained limited and a mystery until recently because of lack of clear policies. Earlier this year we completed a project by which we created additional email aliases for everyone who have a preferred name and we have launched a project to show both the legal and preferred names in web applications we have written.

This is an extremely important and sensitive subject and a clear case where technology lags way behind the realities of the world we live in. Not enough effort goes into fixing these issues because they are not profitable and they are not as newsworthy as “mobile app” for this or that!