Being asked to change my last name (in HR system) to work with IT systems

Question

I've recently started at a new job. Since starting, I've been unable to access an internal IT system I need.

Support have told me that it is likely because my email address has an apostrophe. My last name includes an apostrophe, and it seems they have the convention of making the email address exactly match the full name.

I assumed it would be possible to simply change the email address to remove the apostrophe.

However the support person has informed me that in order to change my email, I must first change my last name to remove the apostrophe there as well.

This will mean that in all company systems, my name will be wrong. I'm unhappy about this, but I'm not sure how much to push the issue.

A quick search of the company directory shows that there are other people with the same last name, who do not have the apostrophe in their email address.

Part of me wants to tell them that they must find a work-around, to avoid the need for me to change my name. However, I'd also like to avoid causing drama, when I'm only new in the company.

Is it unreasonable to expect that the IT systems should support my name, without modification? Is it reasonable for them to expect me to change my name in the system?

Update: 2nd April

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I realised this question is causing some confusion as written. They're not asking me to change my legal name, as in changing by deed poll. Of course that would be unacceptable. They're asking me to change my name in the official HR system, which they will then use to re-create my email address. So it will just mean that in all official company systems my name will be missing the apostrophe.

Answer 1

However the support person is now insisting that in order to change my email, I must first change my last name to remove the apostrophe there as well.

Ask them whether that will change your legal last name on your paystubs that go to your version of the IRS (taxes). If that is the case (and it will), tell them you will not be part in falsifying any legal records.

That they transfer last names exactly into email addresses means those IT people are clueless morons. It does not work for so many last names, not only yours. And it hasn't, for decades. It's not that your name is somehow new to this world. IT people had to deal with names that do not make up valid computer usage all their life. The US invented computers and used a very limited set of characters, that wouldn't even work for all languages spoken inside the US. And certainly not outside. We have dealt with it. Having a valid email address to any given name is not rocket science by any means. It might be a good practice test for IT people's first year exams. But it's certainly not a hard business problem for anyone having finished their education.

Obviously, you cannot tell a stupid idiot they are a stupid idiot. So just tell them you won't be part in changing your last name on legal documents and let them figure out the rest of it.

Answer 2

EDIT: Ok, the OP is assuring us that this issue started a couple of weeks ago and that that this isn't an April fool's joke.

In which case, I would still do this:

Stay your ground. Do not change your name. Send out an email requesting that they implement the same solution that they used for your coworkers with apostrophes in their name. Be a broken record about this.

But at the same time, be open to the possibility that your situation is different than theirs. Perhaps, your name is significantly longer than theirs. Or perhaps, there is a some hidden field that you're not aware of. Or perhaps, the others were able to change their active directory name without messing up their "display name" in other parts of the system. So be sure to phrase your email in such a way that allows them to come back to you and explain what's going on.

Part of me wants to tell them that they must find a work-around, because I'm not changing my name. However, another part of me really wants to avoid causing drama, when I'm only new in the company.

If you don't like drama, don't change your name.

If you agree to change your name to suit their system, without knowing why the others didn't need to change theirs, you will regret it. You will resent them for forcing you into that situation.

And once you do give them your permission, you won't be able to change it back because it will no longer be that IT person's problem, it will be yours now.

And yes, having the correct name can be important. Not having matching names can screw up employee directory autocomplete searches when people try to get ahold of you. It can screw up reference checks. It could delay bank deposits. It could screw with some of your benefits/taxes. It can delay visa applications. It can get you a secondary screening anytime you need to take a plane. But if nothing else, this issue will mean that you'll need to re-introduce yourself every time someone misuses the incorrect name.

And again, I'm not saying you should be categorical about this. I'm only saying that the burden is on them to explain to you why your situation is so different from the other employees (that have apostrophes in their name). The time to ask questions is now, not later. Don't agree to something you do not fully understand.

Answer 3

The IT person is ignoring another common problem that they must certainly have to deal with, which has nothing to do with the technical details of your name. Let's say that your name was Susan Smith. There might be three employees in a large (American) organization with that same name. For that they already have to deal with the complexity of not following "the convention of making the email address exactly match the full name", so they can simply treat your name in a similar fashion. Use a variation. The simplest might be to drop the apostrophe, but as you say there are other people in the company with your name even that may not be sufficient. Work with them to choose an email address that you like. Just because the standard is [email protected] doesn't mean they can always do that.

Answer 4

Analysis

It’s helpful to think what your goals are in this situation. I’d suggest that your goals should be to:

1. not agree to go along with what is obviously a completely unacceptable idea of having any text string other than your legal name, correctly spelled, be used for the name field in your company’s HR systems; and

2. do so in a way that’s friendly and respectful and could not be faulted in any way as unprofessional behavior, and yet leaves no room for ambiguity about your lack of consent.

Fortunately, you say that you have been asked to agree to the change of name. That means you can simply say no. There’s nothing unreasonable about saying no to a request (as opposed to saying no to a demand or a directive from a superior). You shouldn’t even provide the reasons why you are saying no - just decline the suggestion. And you can do all of that in a way that’s professional, respectful, and polite; see below.

Solution

I’d suggest responding to the request with an email along the following lines:

Hi [IT person],

Thanks for working with me on this issue. I appreciate your suggestion to change the spelling of my name in [company name]’s HR systems to something that the timesheet reporting subsystem can handle. That’s a creative idea, but I’m going to decline this solution for a host of reasons. It’s not acceptable to me, and I’d hazard a guess that it wouldn’t be consistent with company policy or what management wants either, to have the name field in the HR database be populated with something that’s not my legal name.

Please advise how we should move forward on this issue, and/or who else we should involve in the discussion to help figure out a solution. I’m happy to use any process you indicate to fill the timesheets, whether it’s on a paper form or electronically.

Yours,

[your name (correctly spelled with the apostrophe)]

Final thoughts

Your framing of the issue in terms of “are they being reasonable? Am I being reasonable? Are they disrespecting my heritage? Etc” seems unhelpful to me. You don’t want to make this about an issue of disrespecting someone’s heritage — that’s a highly subjective notion that people could have wildly differing ideas about and levels of sensitivity to. Instead, frame this as “this is my name; therefore this is what should go in the name field in the HR employee database”. That grounds your refusal in universal, culture-independent logic that I’m guessing no one will dare challenge or argue with.

Similarly, you don’t want to get into a pissing match about who’s being “reasonable” or “unreasonable”. Do not use those words in any discussions. You are being asked a a question about whether you agree to something. This implies you have the autonomy to say no. Well then, use that autonomy. “No” is a complete sentence. If they want to come back and later say that they’re demanding that you agree, then that’s a discussion for another day, presumably involving your direct superior and not some IT hack.

Finally, I would say it’s a common misconception that standing up for what you think is right in a workplace, in a way that antagonizes people and/or makes you seem unreasonable, is a bad thing. There are circumstances when it may be a bad thing. But by and large, I’ve found that people — even the same people who were momentarily antagonized by your failure to agree with them — end up respecting you more, not less, if you are able to stand up and argue against foolish ideas, and do so in a friendly and respectful way, while grounding your arguments in logic and facts as necessary.

Answer 5

Sadly, IT systems that can't handle apostrophes are real. Since the character is used for both contractions and for quoting, it's easy for real-world software to mis-handle it. Worse, if accepted as data input and not handled correctly, it can be used for data-injection attacks on backend systems, so a lot of security departments agitate to block it at the front end. Yes this is all very frustrating but it's very much the current state of affairs. A year ago the local gov't hired some outfit to cobble together a database to organize covid shots for employees in our sector of work, and guess what, it choked on apostrophes, which until that time had worked fine in our systems. Do they suck? Why yes they do, but if we wanted our staff to get their appointment notices, we had to assign them all apostrophe-free aliases. So we did.

And that's the obvious answer: for the company to assign you an email address (and login name etc) that comes as close as possible to your proper name, that works in their systems. This is bog-standard for names too long, too hyphenated, too accented or too apostrophe'd to work. It's very common for Juan Esperanza D'Souza-Rodriguez to end up with the email address [email protected].

The idea that someone should change their real-world name is absurd, and as others have hinted, may be a joke, or the brainfart of a very misguided low-level IT operative. Not to be taken seriously.

Now, if your company is super rigid about this and proposes to change your name in their records to remove the apostrophe, so that you are consistently ONeil or OMalley or DSouza throughout the company, you might need to go along with it. I'm known to my (large bureaucratic and highly-regulated) employer as a short form of my legal name (think Mel instead of Melvin) and my bank is happy to deposit my pay, the govt happy to take my taxes, etc. IANAL but I'm very much under the impression that doing business in good faith under a variant or minor mis-spelling of your real name is absolutely no issue, unless you try to use it fraudulently, like to escape tax or double-dip on benefits. So if they propose this, it's probably the way to go.

Answer 6

Part of me wants to tell them that they must find a work-around, because I'm not changing my name. However, another part of me really wants to avoid causing drama, when I'm only new in the company.

If anyone would be causing drama, it would be the company for asking an employee to change their legal name due to the fact that it is "incompatible" with one of their systems.

Politely let your support know that you will not be changing your legal name to accommodate their system and make sure that you copy your boss as well. If you continue to receive pushback, I would start looking for a new company to work for.

Answer 7

The time sheet system should cope with a valid email address. So you cannot use it. You do not tell us how you log in. Is it Single Sign On?

In any case IT support should not be making business decisions...

IT support can tell you why this is a problem, they should also be able to tell you that they have escalated the problem and what the number of that problem ticket is. They CANNOT tell you to change your name. This is a chain of command issue. Their remarks should be taken as an informed comment and a root cause explanation.

You need to escalate this to the person that approves your time sheets for a workaround to be found. You may need to submit reports using an alternative method until a permanent resolution is found. Perhaps you can log on with an employee number. There will be someone authorised to enter time on your behalf. There may already be someone else that is affected in the same way.

In the meantime, the problem will be escalated, perhaps you may need to use a substitute or preceding (escape) character. You do not tell us much about the system, but if it is in-house they can fix it. They just need to be motivated.

Boarding passes must be fun too, I feel for you.

Answer 8

Also, a quick search of the company directory shows that there are lots of other people with the same last name, who do not have the apostrophe in their email address.

Clearly someone has been able to work around this issue in the past, so I see no reason why it would be impossible to do for me.

This is the obvious starting point to me. I would send the above to the support person and wait for their response.

Also, I would consider reaching out to one of those people with the same name as yourself, and ask them if they had any issues and how they got around it. The support person may never have seen this before, like you suspected, but someone sharing your name is likely to have.

Answer 9

You shouldn't have this discussion with support, they can't decide on a thing like this. There are several reasons why neither you nor the company want your name changed, some of them legal. Neither support nor you know enough about it to avoid mistakes.

Involve your boss or even HR as soon as possible, and let them handle it. And don't agree to change your name everywhere no matter who asks.

Answer 10

If all relevant legal documentation remains correctly spelled and they're only asking to change your names is it relates to email, etc. then I personally wouldn't have an issue with this.

As Brandin has stated in several comments changing it from Michael O'Neill to Michael Oneill isn't something I'd have issues with.

Answer 11

As a temporary fix, figure out how to get an email alias that the time sheet system can work with. The alias can send to your real, correctly-spelled email address.

[email protected] => [email protected]

If the company is using something like Microsoft Exchange / Office 365 for email, this should be a snap.

Answer 12

Obligatory XKCD cartoon: Little Bobby Tables.

The problem here is that people store a lot of things in SQL databases. In SQL, values can be quoted by putting apostrophes around them, such as Email='[email protected]'. If the Name itself has apostrophes, everything breaks. Hackers can break in and modify the database by using a carefully crafted email address.

There are fixes. But the right way is harder. It's much easier to ban all apostrophes (and any other special characters that break SQL).

Even if you can get your IT department to fix the problem, you may find out that your email address is rejected by many online systems when you try to use it.

It may be easier in the long run to let them give you an email address with only common characters in, that don't break databases.

Answer 13

Is it unreasonable to expect that the IT systems should support my name, without modification?

No, it isn't many people have to do this. It doesn't really matter.

Is it reasonable for them to expect me to change my name in the system, and by doing so, to disrepect my heritage and culture?

There is no disrespect intended. They probably just have systems that don't support using diacritic marks or apostrophes in names.

I actually think it's more likely that it's not an apostrophe at all, but an inverted comma. Many languages use an inverted comma as a glottal stop diacritic, but I'm unaware if any use an apostrophe.