<story><title>We have an employee whose last name is Null. He kills our employee lookup (2012)</title><url>http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4456438/how-can-i-pass-the-string-null-through-wsdl-soap-from-as3-to-coldfusion-web?rq=1</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>R_Edward</author><text>Growing up, my parents called me by my middle name, as I share a first name with my dad.  (I&amp;#x27;d rather be an Edward than a Ralph anyway.)  When giving my name to someone, I tell them I&amp;#x27;m Edward &amp;lt;Lastname&amp;gt;, as telling them I&amp;#x27;m R. Edward &amp;lt;Lastname&amp;gt; just sounds pretentious.  But if I&amp;#x27;m beginning a relationship with a doctor&amp;#x27;s office or lawyer, or filling in a tax form, it&amp;#x27;s Ralph E. Lastname, because that&amp;#x27;s what&amp;#x27;s on my birth certificate and SSA record.  It is quite annoying when the phone rings, and I don&amp;#x27;t recognize the calling number, so I answer with a guarded, &amp;quot;This is Ed...&amp;quot; and hear the caller ask, &amp;quot;May I speak to Ralph?&amp;quot; and have to explain to them that I really am Ralph, even though I said I was Ed.  But I have to say, my problems are &lt;i&gt;nothing&lt;/i&gt; compared to yours!&lt;p&gt;CSB: My mom signed me up for a book club when I was 6 or 7.  For the Firstname field, she wrote, &amp;quot;R Edward&amp;quot; for reasons known only to her.  For the next three years, every couple months, I&amp;#x27;d get a package addressed to Redward &amp;lt;Lastname&amp;gt;.  I could just imagine the shipping clerk in that company reading my shipping label and saying to himself, &amp;quot;Redward... what a goofy name.&amp;quot;</text></item><item><author>mjn</author><text>One thing that&amp;#x27;s annoying to me is that governments and employers increasingly believe many of these things, partly because they want to cross-reference names and match canonical forms.&lt;p&gt;My given names in English are Mark Jason, and that&amp;#x27;s on my birth certificate. In Greek, they&amp;#x27;re Μάρκος Ιάσονας, which are the equivalents, and that&amp;#x27;s on my municipal birth records there (registered as a foreign birth at the time of baptism). There seems to be a move towards wanting to use &amp;quot;accurate&amp;quot; transliterations, though, rather than the more traditional method of translating names to equivalents (Mark&amp;lt;-&amp;gt;Markos, George&amp;lt;-&amp;gt;Georgios, Paul&amp;lt;-&amp;gt;Pavlos, etc.). Sometimes people desire that: maybe someone named Михаил in Russian really doesn&amp;#x27;t want to be turned into Michael, but wants to go by Mikhail. That&amp;#x27;s fine, if they prefer. But in my case, I consider each of these translated forms to be my name in the respective languages, and do not consider the transliterated forms to be my name.&lt;p&gt;But in trying to sort out some paperwork, it appears that what I am &lt;i&gt;supposed&lt;/i&gt; to do is one of these two things: 1) change my name in English from &lt;i&gt;Mark Jason&lt;/i&gt; to &lt;i&gt;Markos Iasonas&lt;/i&gt;, the transliteration of my Greek name; or 2) change my name in Greek from Μάρκος Ιάσονας to Μαρκ Τζέισον, the transliteration of my English name. But I don&amp;#x27;t want to do either of those things. #2 in particular is ridiculous, because it doesn&amp;#x27;t decline properly, and is trying to approximate a &amp;#x27;j&amp;#x27; sound with &amp;#x27;tz&amp;#x27;.</text></item><item><author>glimcat</author><text>As long as we&amp;#x27;re playing the &amp;quot;Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names&amp;quot; game again, here&amp;#x27;s the relevant patio11 article:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.kalzumeus.com&amp;#x2F;2010&amp;#x2F;06&amp;#x2F;17&amp;#x2F;falsehoods-programmers-b...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you try to validate names, or if you don&amp;#x27;t safely escape names along with your other user-input strings, you&amp;#x27;re gonna have a bad time.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>kimlastname</author><text>My name is Kim &amp;lt;Lastname&amp;gt; and I&amp;#x27;m a male. Try convincing Americans (and other English speaking countries) about that...&lt;p&gt;One example: Many years ago I subscribed to TIME and filled out a form where I checked &amp;quot;Mr.&amp;quot; Apparently the person who typed in my name decided to &amp;quot;correct&amp;quot; this error and I became a &amp;quot;Mrs.&amp;quot;... and I wasn&amp;#x27;t even married :-)&lt;p&gt;The company I work at has offices in different cities, so most of the communication are done by email and instant messaging. I see a clear difference between the messages from people who know my gender, and those who probably think I&amp;#x27;m female. Even attempts at flirting...</text></comment>
<story><title>We have an employee whose last name is Null. He kills our employee lookup (2012)</title><url>http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4456438/how-can-i-pass-the-string-null-through-wsdl-soap-from-as3-to-coldfusion-web?rq=1</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>R_Edward</author><text>Growing up, my parents called me by my middle name, as I share a first name with my dad.  (I&amp;#x27;d rather be an Edward than a Ralph anyway.)  When giving my name to someone, I tell them I&amp;#x27;m Edward &amp;lt;Lastname&amp;gt;, as telling them I&amp;#x27;m R. Edward &amp;lt;Lastname&amp;gt; just sounds pretentious.  But if I&amp;#x27;m beginning a relationship with a doctor&amp;#x27;s office or lawyer, or filling in a tax form, it&amp;#x27;s Ralph E. Lastname, because that&amp;#x27;s what&amp;#x27;s on my birth certificate and SSA record.  It is quite annoying when the phone rings, and I don&amp;#x27;t recognize the calling number, so I answer with a guarded, &amp;quot;This is Ed...&amp;quot; and hear the caller ask, &amp;quot;May I speak to Ralph?&amp;quot; and have to explain to them that I really am Ralph, even though I said I was Ed.  But I have to say, my problems are &lt;i&gt;nothing&lt;/i&gt; compared to yours!&lt;p&gt;CSB: My mom signed me up for a book club when I was 6 or 7.  For the Firstname field, she wrote, &amp;quot;R Edward&amp;quot; for reasons known only to her.  For the next three years, every couple months, I&amp;#x27;d get a package addressed to Redward &amp;lt;Lastname&amp;gt;.  I could just imagine the shipping clerk in that company reading my shipping label and saying to himself, &amp;quot;Redward... what a goofy name.&amp;quot;</text></item><item><author>mjn</author><text>One thing that&amp;#x27;s annoying to me is that governments and employers increasingly believe many of these things, partly because they want to cross-reference names and match canonical forms.&lt;p&gt;My given names in English are Mark Jason, and that&amp;#x27;s on my birth certificate. In Greek, they&amp;#x27;re Μάρκος Ιάσονας, which are the equivalents, and that&amp;#x27;s on my municipal birth records there (registered as a foreign birth at the time of baptism). There seems to be a move towards wanting to use &amp;quot;accurate&amp;quot; transliterations, though, rather than the more traditional method of translating names to equivalents (Mark&amp;lt;-&amp;gt;Markos, George&amp;lt;-&amp;gt;Georgios, Paul&amp;lt;-&amp;gt;Pavlos, etc.). Sometimes people desire that: maybe someone named Михаил in Russian really doesn&amp;#x27;t want to be turned into Michael, but wants to go by Mikhail. That&amp;#x27;s fine, if they prefer. But in my case, I consider each of these translated forms to be my name in the respective languages, and do not consider the transliterated forms to be my name.&lt;p&gt;But in trying to sort out some paperwork, it appears that what I am &lt;i&gt;supposed&lt;/i&gt; to do is one of these two things: 1) change my name in English from &lt;i&gt;Mark Jason&lt;/i&gt; to &lt;i&gt;Markos Iasonas&lt;/i&gt;, the transliteration of my Greek name; or 2) change my name in Greek from Μάρκος Ιάσονας to Μαρκ Τζέισον, the transliteration of my English name. But I don&amp;#x27;t want to do either of those things. #2 in particular is ridiculous, because it doesn&amp;#x27;t decline properly, and is trying to approximate a &amp;#x27;j&amp;#x27; sound with &amp;#x27;tz&amp;#x27;.</text></item><item><author>glimcat</author><text>As long as we&amp;#x27;re playing the &amp;quot;Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names&amp;quot; game again, here&amp;#x27;s the relevant patio11 article:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.kalzumeus.com&amp;#x2F;2010&amp;#x2F;06&amp;#x2F;17&amp;#x2F;falsehoods-programmers-b...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you try to validate names, or if you don&amp;#x27;t safely escape names along with your other user-input strings, you&amp;#x27;re gonna have a bad time.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jacalata</author><text>Try just answering the phone with &amp;quot;hello?&amp;quot; for unknown numbers.</text></comment>