Phuc Dat Bich Is Beyond Tired of Getting Kicked Off Facebook

[jawngee]

I don't think his name is real.

I live in Vietnam and when I showed this to my wife, who in turned showed it to her cousins, everyone was fairly incredulous claiming that there is no way this was a real Vietnamese name.

Bich is not a last name used here, it's actually a female first name. Dat is also not really used as a middle name either.

Bạch is a last name, so the only thing I can think is that there was a mixup in immigration, similar to how european last names changed during migration to the US.

[dalke]

According to the registry of people living in Sweden, there is a "Phuong Lam Bich" living in the country. Is that not a Vietnamese name, or do you think it's another mixup?

There's also a "Tiffany Luong Thi Bich."

[aceperry]

Vietnamese names can be a little strange. In college, I had a professor whose first name was usually given to women. All of my Vietnamese friends thought the prof was a woman when they first heard the name.

[TazeTSchnitzel]

Perhaps the last name and first name were confused: Vietnamese names are sometimes written with the given name last, right?

[cgtyoder]

One would think FB would have in its data store a "This account has been flagged in the past and it has been reviewed and approved no need to review again" checkbox by now

[SimeVidas]

Reminds me of customer service:

1. gets through

2. spends a few minutes explaining the issue

3. “I’ll connect you to <other department>”

4. spends a few minutes explaining the issue

5. “Wait 24h. Call again if issue persists.”

6. go to step 1

Y U NO WRITE DOWN MY ISSUE FOR FUTURE USE?

[amyjess]

Sadly, they don't.

I'm transgender, and I've heard of several people in my community who are repeatedly targeted by hate groups who report their profiles for using a fake name, and each time they have to scan their legal name change papers and send them to Facebook.

[rdtsc]

It is ironic isn't it. They pride themselves in fancy, fast, optimized graph storage and querying. Best minds at works, yadda, yadda. But they don't seem to manage to implement a flag like that.

[vidarh]

Reminds me of the Vietnamese noodle bar in London named "Phật Phúc" which translates to Happy Buddha (Vietnamese puts adjectives after the noun so it's the "Phật" that translates to Buddha). I presume they thought about the likely English mispronunciation when they picked it...

(There's apparently also a Phật Phúc in Ho Chi Mihn City - a Chinese takeaway)

[e12e]

I wonder if the Norwegians having the fairly common first name(s) "Odd Even"/"Odd-Even" have any issues. "Odd" is of course also a great first name on its own, especially if English is your second language: "Hello, my name is Odd". "Odd, how?". "No, it really is just Odd" (etc).

(Odd means point/edge/tip, as in "spear tip/point", and is pronounced fairly close to "odd", "Even" is pronounced with long e-s, like "end" -- and is a variation on Øyvind which is probably from Norse Øy - luck and Vindr (warrior)).

I'm not sure what would be the best common last name to match it with. I suppose the foreign "Moore" would be good. "Even Moore".

[kristofferR]

Another problematic Norwegian name is Gun.

A friend of my mother named Gun supposedly had to add an extra N to be allowed on Facebook.

[tempestn]

Now I'm curious whether the differences in name (and more generally, language) sounds are essentially just based on the fluke of whatever sounds happened to start being adopted in various regions millennia ago, and then slowly evolved... or if there is actually a genetic difference between people of different races that causes some sounds to be slightly more pleasant-sounding and/or more easily pronounced than others, which had some influence on the sounds that were more likely to develop into language (and to be picked for names).

[thristian]

Given the wild variations in phonetics just in countries colonised by England (compare: Texas, New Zealand, Wales), it hardly seems necessary to stretch as far as "genetic differences" for explanation.

[TazeTSchnitzel]

It might be regional. I recall reading some hypothesis that certain sounds were more popular in regions with more humid climates. I can't remember if there was any backing to the suggestion, though.

[clay_to_n]

The article points out that the name is pronounced "Foo Da Bic"

[percept]

Faked:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10626761

[madengr]

Back in grad school there was a guy named Fuk Yun.

[aceperry]

He should rename his profile to, "the Notorious PDB."