Friday, March 05, 2010

Address books and maiden names

there's no link
This is really just a gripe. I send out announcements, invitations and whatnot to married people using online applications. I don't think I'm unique in this. And yet, they always assume married people have the same last name. Right? Say I have two friends, James Johnson and Mary Smith*. I can enter them as 'Mary & James Johnson.' But, that'll sometimes anger Mary. And frankly, they could be living in sin. I don't think the protocol is really worked out in same sex marriages. But, the little announcement machine takes a first name and a last name. I could enter 'Mary Smith a' as the first name and 'nd James Johnson' as the last name, but I don't feel like I should be having to try to trick the machine.

This seems like a pretty common design flaw, so I'm griping about it.

* -- I just took the most common male, female and sur- names from this site.