Archived conversation from 2006:

http://caterina.net/archive/001011.html

"Facebook won't allow me to have an account, they say my name is not legitimate." - Caterina Fake

"You think that's a problem? I can't get an account at Orkut because they say my name is a profanity. Someone needs to tell Orkut what their name means in Dutch." - Ianus Keller

"Why don't you just change your name to Caterina Butterfield?" - Nas Raja

"They tell me United Kingdom isn't a country. This is news to us." - Michael S.

"I knew a Korean guy who emigrated to the US and chose the name John Doe. Boy did he have problems." - Steve C

"Mark Zuckerberg is worth $300 million. If he says your name is illegitimate then it must be." - Jason Liebe

"I knew a refugee named Ng On. Nothing but problems." - Tony

"My friend Lotta married a guy last name Dick."

"My friend John Hancock would sign up for things in College and his name would get deleted every time."

"My friend in college Julius Caesar had to carry his passport everywhere to prove who he was."

Well I suppose this can go on and on. 5 years after this thread they went through the same shit with Google Plus.

It's crazy that corporations think they can tell what legitimate names are.

We use a 3rd party credit-card processor at work, and one of our customers got his card denied because his last name is Echo.

Turns out the processor filters out common unix commands to prevent injection attacks.

How unfortunate!

'Orkut' didn't mean anything in Dutch, until Google introduced it as a name.

'kut' is Dutch for cunt, but 'or' doesn't mean anything, so there is no reason to take offence.

For me the word has a vaguely Scandinavian sound, and the closest Dutch word is 'orka' (orca).