I have a slightly unusual surname. It's no biggie, just something I have to go over a few times with every customer service representative I've ever spoken to over the phone. No, not Edson, Edsert, or Edsner. E-D-S-E-R. Still, spare a thought for those with the last name "Null", as apparently it still breaks web forms, databases, and commerce systems the world over.
Null was first used by British computer scientist, Tony Hoare, 60 years ago as a term meaning "no value" and it's still very much in use in many databases today. The Wall Street Journal has been speaking to clothing designer Nontra Null, who took her husband's last name after marriage, and apparently it's caused her no end of strife—not least when it delayed her visa to travel to India back in 2014.
"I had to mentally come to terms with not being able to go," Null reports, after being told by the Indian consulate that her name could not be processed by the computer system. Eventually she received her travel documents mere days before her flight.
Null has since found workarounds to prevent further calamity, including using her maiden name, Yantaprasert, or occasionally hyphenating it with Null. Despite this, she says she still receives packages and letters at work for people who aren't in the system, as "null" automatically redirects to her.
Slightly lesser on the scale of irritation is Joseph Tartaro, who got a license plate with the word "NULL" on it a decade ago. Tartaro, a 36-year-old security auditor, chose to keep the plate in the jovial hope that any police officer who chose to give him a ticket might not be able to process it.
Instead, Tartaro says his mailbox has been flooded with hundreds of traffic tickets for other incidents, as they were registered as "null" on a database and were duly redirected to his license plate details instead.
Tartaro says that, in December, he received a call from his insurance company informing him he'd had two car accidents in two cities within a 48 hour period. "My wife gets super pissed off about it and she hates that I still have the license plate", says Tartaro. Yep, I bet. Have you thought about, y'know, changing it for something else?
Daan Leijen, a researcher at Microsoft also speaking to the WSJ, said "It's a difficult problem to solve because it's so widespread", although also revealed that MS avoids the use of null values in its software.
Many other systems do not, it seems, so say a small prayer this evening if you've got a last name that doesn't cause databases to go hogwild at its mere mention. I, for one, won't get frustrated at my misspelt name turning up on half my mail ever again. Probably.
