Barclays doesn't accept spaces in surnames; which banks do?

This was brought up in Money Mail some time ago. Derek.

-----------------

- *Completion*Retention*Speed* Access your favorite newsgroups from home or on the road

-----------------

Amusing, my surname has a hyphen, but since the 1990's Barclays insisted I use a space as their system does not accept a hyphen.

I logged on to Barclays earlier this year with a space in my name but can't check now as after 15 years trying to get them to 'correct' my name I closed the account.

-- Mark BR

A few days would be pushing it for a catastrophic security issue. You should budget on six months to never for, what will be a low priority, software change, like this. There are risks involved with software changes that mean that people prefer to batch updates, to minimise the number of different versions, and there are costs, which mean only medium and high priority changes get done.

My own pet peeve is people, like British Gas, who tell you to enter your debit card number exactly as on the card, then reject it (empirically because you entered it complete with spaces). That has violated BCP for years and I'm sure hits a lot more people than spaces in surnames, but seems to have zero priority on their fix list.

It will be a user interface issue, rather than a deep infrastructure one, but the basic problem is that these people try to de-skill their programming staff to minimise costs, so they use relatively inexperienced people, who are not aware of all the real world gotchas and good usability practice. (For web interfaces, usability problems are often the fault of graphic design oriented marketing types, rather than programmers, although these issues are more programming ones. Even in this case, the decision to fix will be a marketing one, not a programming one.)

What's the difference between the first part of your surname and what would be a middle name for everyone else?

His surname is "Cholmondeley Featherstonehaugh". His daugher married an Earl and is now Mrs Cholmondeley Featherstonehaugh-Beauchamp"

This could be fun, especially when talking to a call centre in India ;-)

Tim.

At 10:40:37 on 29/10/2008, Bartc delighted uk.finance by announcing:

What's normally the difference between a surname and a middle name?

A middle name comes between the first name and the last name, as in: Homer Jay Simpson.

Forms usually distinguish between the three.

At 12:59:38 on 29/10/2008, Bartc delighted uk.finance by announcing:

Indeed. You haven't actually answered the question though.

Again, correct but not relevant to the question.

Well, a surname is typically derived from a family name, while the other names are given.

I suppose it's conceivable that surnames from different cultures could be multiple yet unhyphenated, and may not even be at the end. They could also be in different character sets.

It seems reasonable to me for Barclays in this country to insist that names fit a standard pattern. Allowing spaces in surnames (or even in first and middle names), would cause all sorts of ambiguities; does Homer Jay Simpson share the same surname as someone else called Homer Jay Simpson?

In Iceland they don't have surnames at all. They have names like "thrain son-of-thror" . If you give your son the same name as yourself can you get a sort of continuity. e.g. "magnus son-of-magnus" = "magnus magnusson".

Robert

Same in the Highlands of Scotland. Where a certain Lord Donald Macdonald of Macdonald, head of the Clan Macdonald opened a high class restaurant in his castle on his own island and got sued by Macdonalds (the burger chain) for infringing their trade mark.

You couldn't make it up.

Derek

In Spain, Latin America and Italy the whole concept of a 'middle name' doesn't really exist, and it is common to have a surname made up of two words separated by a space, where the first word is usually some version of "de" or di", which literally means "of": "De la silva", "de la rosa", "de falco" etc

Indeed.

That sounds very unreasonable to me, especially in the light of your previous statement.

Possibly. But you can't tell when it's written out as a single string. You can, however, tell the difference when each person fills in the form correctly:

Given Names: Homer Family Name: Jay Simpson

Given Names: Homer Jay Family Name: Simpson

This only works, though, if the system can cope with spaces in surnames. If it can't then the system has no way to disinguish between the names. It is, therefore, important that the system can so cope.

is worth a read, in this context. I find it rather surprising that a major financial institution such as Barclays isn't aware of the issues relating to processing personal names. Mark

I don't agree. The name on a bank account should match whatever is on the birth certificate, passport, driving licence and official documents. If my passport shows my surname as, say, "De la rosa", my bank statement and cards cannot show "delarosa"! Otherwise, think of it, it could be argued that the passport holder and the account holder are not the same person! It would not be straightforward to translate characters which do not exist in the English alphabet, like chinese ideograms or Russian characters, but this is certainly not the case with a banal space!

There are two main errors:

1) not accepting a space in surnames 2) not enforcing consistency among the different data sources. Spaces in surnames are accepted in the customer record they hold for me, in the log-in through pinsentry, but not in the log in without pinsentry. Instead, any constraint applied to the field, be it the prevention of spaces or any other character, should have been the same across all 3. This is database and IT 101 !

Yeah, you're right. Barclays is at fault. (And I have a cousin with such a name..)

I still think this might generate problems, but these seem minor compared with those in the link posted by Mark Goodge.

I've seen a bank statement of a Chinese friend. The ideograms convert easily into the roman alphabet. But they assume the last name is the surname.

I don't and I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for a fix though. I tried to register and buy some shares through Barclays Stockbrokers web site but it rejected my Debit Card from another bank. When I rang to find out why, I was told "because the expiry date is too far in advance". Well what am I supposed to do about that? "Yeah, it's a known problem. Haven't you got a card from another bank? Can't you use that?" I didn't buy my shares! Well done Barclays, one new customer lost.

BobC

I applied for a bank account at Natwest, because they have a card reader similar to Barclay's pinsentry. I still think that a token with a number that changes every 30 seconds would be best, but it seems no bank offers them in the UK. Lloyds tested a keyring a few years ago and decided to abandon the idea. Anyway, before I applied to Natwest I explained the problem I had with Barclays, and they assured me that the space in the surname won't be an issue with them. Let's hope so!

why did you?