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O'Connors + Al-Husseins = Computer chaos
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Sat, Feb 23, 2008
The Straits Times
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NEW YORK - IT CAN stop you from voting, destroy your dental appointments, make it difficult to rent a car or book a flight, even interfere with your college exams.
More than 50 years into the Information Age, computers in the US are still getting confused by the apostrophe.
It is a problem familiar to O'Connors, D'Angelos, N'Dours and D'Artagnans across America.
When Mr Niall O'Dowd tried to book a flight to Atlanta earlier this year, the computer system refused to recognise his name.
| The editor of the Irish Voice newspaper could book the flight only by changing the way his name was written.
'I dropped the apostrophe and ran my name as ODowd,' he said.
It is not just the bad luck of the Irish.
French, Italian and African names with apostrophes can befuddle computer systems too.
So can Arabic names with hyphens, and Dutch surnames with 'van' and a space in them.
Mr Michael Rais, director of software development at Permission Data, an online marketing company in New York, said the problem is sloppy programming.
During the Michigan caucus in 2004, thousands of O'Connors, Al-Husseins, Van Kemps and others who went to the polls did not have their votes counted.
All of this confusion has prompted some people to surrender to technology.
Iraqi immigrant Lina Alathari was once known as Lina Al-Athari, but dropped the hyphen in America.
'There is no pronunciation difference, so I'm fine with it,' she said.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
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