What's in a name? Part 1: When your device thinks you're a typo

XA: 00:00

My main sort of memory is at the school register. So whenever my name would come up, especially if it's a substitute teacher, they'd either be like, I don't want to butcher this name, or they would just butcher the name and they'd kind of come up with all sorts of things. Some people, when they hear the name, just, it's like they can't even compute.

VK: 00:20

I do remember sort of being in my garden and playing with a friend when I was probably around five or six. And he said to me like, Vedrana is too long. I'm going to call you ‘Veg’. And I sort of went along with it. Remember being like a bit unsure at the time if I liked it or not. But it also kind of felt like, you know, being included. So I was like, okay, you know, I'm Veg. So really since that moment, I've always been Veg.

TS: 01:00

You're listening to Made For Us. I’m Tosin Sulaiman. Growing up with a quote-unquote different name can be tough. Maybe you never found your name on a personalized mug or a limited edition chocolate bar. And in the digital world, it's the same story. Your device underlines your name in red or suggests you change it to something more recognizable.

WZ: 01:25

I got so many emails and texts, people calling me ‘wagyu’. And wagyu is like a very high quality Japanese beef. And it's spelling like W-A-G-Y-U. And my name's spelling like W-A-N-Y-U. And it reminds me how technology quietly decides whose name belongs and whose doesn't.

AP: 01:49

If tech's supposed to connect us, then those little things matter. It's almost constant tiny little things that sort of say, you've shown us who you are, you've told us what your name is, and your name is a really powerful thing. And we're sort of coming back and saying to you, we don't care about that.

TS: 02:05

This is the first episode of What's in a Name, a series about the technology we use every day and who it was built for. Today, we meet the people behind I Am Not a Typo, a campaign pushing tech companies to make room for all of our names. And we ask, what does it mean when your device treats your identity as an error?

CW: 02:26

Our campaign has effectively identified a really diverse cohort of types of people who are impacted by this. There's not one single blind spot ethnically or racially or culturally or linguistically.

TS: 02:42

This is Cathal Wogan. He works for the communications consultancy, Blurred, and he's an organizer and collaborator with I Am Not a Typo.

CW: 02:50

It's an Irish name. I was born in Ireland. It means battle mighty in the Irish language. According to my phone, however, which is programmed to use an English brackets UK dictionary, my phone is desperate to convince me that my name is ‘Catholic’ or ‘cathedral.’ And that's what it constantly auto credits it to.

TS: 03:13

Can you take us back to the origins of the campaign and how it all began?

CW: 03:18

So I'm not typo began as a public campaign in around March, 2024. Well, I think the origins of it go back probably one, if not two years before that. So I'm not a typo has essentially become a campaign group of collaborators who are advocating for more inclusive technology. And in particular, our first big flagship campaign has been around auto correct and spell check. And the fact that the devices that we use every day are just categorically not reflective of the real taxonomy of names that are popular and present in our case, multicultural contemporary United Kingdom. And that is absolutely manifest in the most obvious way by our names. If people type in their names to their phone, they'll very quickly realize in many cases that their names are not as Anglo-Normative as others.

CW: 04:17

And they might be encouraged to correct them in the case of autocorrect. They might even have them corrected without prompt whatsoever, or actually quite aggressively underlined in red, depending on the type of device or platform you're using. There was initially just anecdotal conversations between some friends, some industry colleagues, and some contacts, particularly at my communications consultancy, Blurred.

CW: 04:40

There was one particularly interesting story of a colleague of mine who was trying to do birthday invitations for all of the kids in his daughter's class. And eventually he was like, my God, how can I turn off spell check? Because like, I know what the kids names are. And it just keeps telling me the kids names are wrong. And it was only after a while when he saw multiple occurrences of the sort of manifestation of this tech glitch for want of a better phrase. He was like, I'm starting to see patterns in the types of names that are highlighted. They were often Asian or African or Middle Eastern. Like if you look at any baby names database, we've done this on a wide scale over the last couple of years as we've been campaigning. We're 40 % of names that were listed in the Office for National Statistics. They collate all these baby names that are registered every year. And when we ran testing on various different platforms, it would always comes out that approximately of names with three or more occurrences every year, 41 or 42 % of them were typos. And I think in this case, it was like 20 kids in the class and something around to 40 to 50 % of the names were flagged as incorrect. And obviously you and I both know that a name was not incorrect. I can spell it incorrectly, but your name is not incorrect. And that sort of started this momentum where we would have a series of conversations and I thought, let's actually do something about this. Eventually, we came up with a name, I'm not a typo to sort of represent the people that we're advocating for. We thought our objective should just be, how could we get one or two or three of the big tech companies to actually engage with us and say, wow, thanks for raising this. We can actually do something about this. And thankfully we're making some progress.

TS: 06:29

We'll definitely talk more about that progress going forward. if we could just go back to the initial idea. So once you had the idea and you sort of brought this group of collaborators together, can you talk about the steps that you took to actually turn this into reality?

CW: 06:45

We came up with a sort of campaign concept because a lot of the people that were involved or were enthusiastic about this were marketing people or communications people. We all worked in the sort of digital communications industry. Some people were designers. So there was all the sort of common campaigning bit of DNA in our, in our bones. So we thought we're not engineers. We're not going to come up with the actual solution. However, I do know who employs lots of engineers and that is these big tech companies. have product managers, have designers, they have developers. I'm sure that they'll be able to come up with the solution. So we will use our strength, which is public campaigning to bring this to the masses and bring a coherent narrative to the public. And then hopefully that will inspire some change. So really we wanted to make sure that I am not a typo could create news headlines so that someone big and senior and important and that could actually dedicate some time to this at these big tech companies would turn around and say, okay, that's caught my attention.

TS: 07:55

I remember when I first saw the billboard and telling lots of people about it afterwards. So I think you definitely succeeded in creating something that was memorable and that sparked conversations. Can you talk about some of the creative choices that you made that enabled you to create something that was quite hard to ignore?

CW: 08:13

So the very, very first thing we did was establish some data. The big feedback that we got initially when we were road testing the anecdote, even though the anecdote was very common, was like, okay, but how prevalent is this issue really? So we made sure to do the appropriate testing so we could get some degree of baseline. And so we weren't just telling an emotive story, but also a story that had some degree of data behind it to establish this issue is actually sizable. It affects many, many hundreds of thousands of people in the UK. We thought we’d use baby name data from the Office of National Statistics. There is something about that partly that's just practical because that is the best read that you can get of what the pulse of UK baby names are.

We then secondarily made some conscious decisions around how we message the campaign and what we were calling for. So we wanted to advocate for a solution or solutions to be created by these tech companies because we had exposed this issue for them. It was almost just like exposing a design flaw and we were going to create a feedback loop to them earnestly, not super aggressively. However, we did want to be incredibly direct and straightforward and say, hey, here's this issue. It's up to you to solve it. We believe it's an amount of important issue. Come work with us. So that was in effect our messaging.

CW: 09:39

We did also know that we wanted to make it feel real. There's often a case that something that's born online or born on social media can be quite easily written off as just social media noise. And I think decisions like we took out a very small number of billboards or billboard real estate in London, which we knew we had no money. We had to beg, borrow and steal to get that, created a beautiful billboard that highlighted some incorrect names alongside some quote unquote correct names. And that got people talking and even there's a picture of our launch billboard that was on, I think, Cambridge Heath Road in East London. And that has gone around the world a million times over and is attached still to a lot of the media coverage related to our campaign. So when you're starting from scratch, being able to qualify and quantify an issue is big. And then being able to use all that to really create a call to action for the tech companies involved.

CW: 10:37

All of that wrapped up is, in effect our theory of change. Make a big noise about it, catch people's attention, generate some headlines, make it unignorable, and then hopefully someone will respond to you.

TS: 10:48

So like you said, there were two pillars essentially to the campaign. There was the hard data and then the personal stories. Can we dig into the data a little bit more? You've mentioned some of the stats that you came up with in terms of the percentage of baby names that would be flagged as incorrect. Was there anything else that you unearthed that was especially surprising?

CW: 11:11

There was maybe two assumptions that we had when we looked at the names themselves that were flagged as incorrect. And one of them proved to be true. And one of them, we were surprised by the degree to which it was true. So the first one was we took a wild guess based on the anecdotes that we had heard in form relating to the campaign that a significant number of names that were flagged as typos, despite being incredibly common in the UK and occurring sometimes hundreds of times per year in children were that those names would often be of African or Asian origin, like often South Asian, Indian. They would sometimes be East Asian. They would sometimes be Middle Eastern. They would often be derived from Arabic. Many were Eastern European. And that was absolutely true. Like we were blown away.

CW: 12:02

And that has actually evolved over time, you know, these platforms do actually very slightly adapt and names that are incredibly popular or in particular have a famous person attached to them will actually end up being added to these dictionaries. The other assumption that we had was we had a feeling that there would be a oversight with regard names that are like geographically closer to home. Irish, Scottish, Welsh names, names that are technically part of the UK or names that are technically part of languages of the UK. I think we were surprised by the degree to which that ended up being true. Like really common Scottish names. think Wales is a really great example. The actual population of Wales is not a giant part of the population of the UK. However, Welsh culture is incredibly strong. The Welsh language is incredibly highly spoken. And I think those languages in some ways have every right to feel a little disrespected in how they're treated.

AP: 13:10

My name's Angharad Planells. It's a Welsh name. I'm originally from Newport in South Wales. It kind of roughly is translated into beloved, which is very kind. My mum and dad are very nice to me. And when I was younger, even though I was living in the Wales, it wasn't a name that was widely used. You usually had your Rhiannons and things like that, which are more popular. So then when I moved across to England for university, I just found that it was even worse. Like no one had heard of it before. And initially it felt like a really lovely icebreaker, but then it sort of started getting a bit of an old, old joke. And you sort of start thinking, God, is this, is this the rest of my life? I'm going to be explaining my name.

AP: 13:52

I had to sort of adapt a little bit. So I've got a taxi name, which is Chloe. I tried ordering taxis and sometimes they wouldn't turn up because they thought it was a prank call. It got to a point when I joined an agency in my early twenties and I've worked in PR and communications for most of my career. I remember having a moment where I was like, should I just change my name? Because it stopped feeling like an icebreaker and started feeling like a barrier. And of course the red squiggly line when you're trying to write your name is a little bit of a gut punch because there was times when you'd add it to the dictionary and then I'd move jobs or I'd change computers, I'd have to do it again. So I think for me, particularly when I was moving to a new job, it's like, do I fit here? And then for the tech to sort of say to you, yeah, remember you're weird. It's like, not now, not now computers. Thank you.

XA: 14:45

My name is Xaymaca Awoyungbo. I'm a journalist. I'm a film director, originally from Jamaica, Nigeria. My parents, met in London. And my mum's of Jamaican heritage and my dad's of Nigerian heritage. They wanted to give me a name that basically showed both sides of my identity. Because obviously I've got my dad's surname. So my first name Xaymaca is the original name for Jamaica. So before it was colonised, this was the name that the indigenous people gave to the island and it means land of wood and water. You're never gonna meet someone else with this name. So to me, it's like a superpower. I feel like I'm gonna be more memorable than maybe if my name was just Joe. I think auto correct used to put my name as Haymaker. Or it would put like Cayman, so like the Cayman Islands, that sort of thing. Now it's worked out. Like whenever I put my name, it always is correct. So I think just because I typed it in so many times. But yeah, something that I've always had to like see that red line underneath or just like continue changing it when it autocorrects. It’s inherently just saying your name is wrong. And there's only like a certain number of names that will be deemed correct.

CW: 16:04

Some of the numbers as well quite baffling to us. was a name that we discovered and we often use as an example in our early campaign materials, name Esmae, E-S-M-A-E with this particular spelling. It would occur hundreds of times every year in baby girls born in the UK. We measured five years and found that well over 2000 occurrences of the name Esme happened in those particular five years. In the same period, not to pick on this name for any particular reason, but the name Nigel occurred 26 times. And Nigel was not a typo, whereas Esmae was, despite occurring 100 times more frequently. There's names that occur hundreds of times every year now that are still typos. I've just seen from last year, I've done the fresh tests today. I feel like I should say it's in a notes app type platform, but... The name Zakariya is a name that was the 127th most popular boys name in the UK last year, or England and Wales. And that occurred 434 times. So that is a lot of kids. If you saw 434 kids in one place, you'd be like, holy smokes, that is a lot of kids. That name is a typo. There were far more Zakariyas born in the UK last year than there were in Nigel's. Again, not to pick on Nigel, but those kinds of examples are just constantly amusing to us.

TS: 17:27

And how do you spell Zakariya? I imagine there's different variations.

CW: 17:31

So that Zakariya that occurred 434 times is Z-A-K-A-R-I-Y-A. I don't know exactly the origin story behind that name, but I certainly do know that it's a very common name now in the UK among the little boys and all of those kids, unless someone does something about it, are going to be reminded every year, every time they use their phone or every time they use a laptop or every time they use a tablet, that they're a little bit different. Some of them might laugh it off and some of them it might be a big joke to. But some of them will be reminded of their difference from the kid next to them in the school playground or the kid next to them at university. I think that's what we kind of want to break down. It's a really small, in many ways, frustration, but it like speaks to so much, think.

TS: 18:18

And so let's move on to the stories. I believe you received thousands of stories from people who wrote in just sharing their experiences. Did you notice a common thread?

CW: 18:29

It's been incredible. think that the most common thread is that they have so often leant towards the humor in how auto correct has butchered their names over time or how they have in many ways embraced their like fake Starbucks name that gets written on their cup.

WZ: 18:49

Last year, this post like pop up on my LinkedIn profile. And I was like, Oh my goodness, I am not a typo. That is my story in five words. I just feel like, Oh my God, I'm not alone. My name is Wanyu Zhang. I was born in Beijing and then have spent nearly half my life in both China and the US. So my name Wanyu is actually Wan, this W-A-N part, it's meaning blooming aster. So aster is kind of like a purple daisy-like flower. And Yu is means jade in Chinese. So to me, it's always been more than just a label or a name. It carries my family's hope and my culture heritage. I hope my story reminds people that your name, your culture, and your voice are never mistakes to be correct. They’re part of what makes you unique. And then when we take time to learn each other's name, we're really learning how to see each other. When technology reflects the real world, everyone wins because when tech learn to recognize our names, it's learning to recognize our humanity.

VK: 20:09

I'm from London, but my parents are Croatian, so I grew up with quite mixed Croatian-English heritage. My name is Vedrana, which comes from the adjective Vedra, which means bright or cheerful or happy. And my sister is called Daria, which comes from Dar, which means a gift. So two really beautiful names, but difficult to pronounce and difficult to explain when growing up in London. In a social context, I would always say, hi, I'm Veg. And my friends would introduce me as Veg.

I went for dinner with a friend yesterday and I said, oh, if you get there before me, the reservation's under Anna. And he said, like, why is it under Anna? And I said, oh, I've always been Anna on every single reservation, coffee order. It's just a lot easier than having to go back and forth. Because my name is very similar to the Microsoft font, Verdana, it's only the D and R that are the other way around, that tends to come up as auto correct. I think that there are so many of us out there, particularly in London, that share this problem and the fact that technology hasn't evolved to address that, I feel like it's really behind the times there, particularly in the kind of melting pot of the society that we live in.

TS: 21:45

So after looking through the data and the stories, what was the message that you wanted to deliver to Big Tech? So the designers, the developers that you mentioned, the decision makers.

CW: 21:58

The message that we really wanted to deliver was, this is a problem. We've almost done some tech support for you. We've gone and identified this issue. We've qualified it with data and also what a developer might call like a user story. We've shown to you that these people have all experienced this data in effect, like again, to use the developer speak, replicated the issue. And then presenting it to them in such a way, not through a fancy Powerpoint or anything like that, but through the stories that we tell, particularly through social media and through editorial media. The campaign was featured in the Guardian in last summer, I believe. So the summer of 2024 and being able to get these stories out there in front of these tech companies has been a big reason why they've responded to us. If a tree falls in the woods, does it make a noise? If a campaign launches on the internet, you know, finish up that phrase for me. Does it warrant a response if it's not creating any noise effectively? And I think the really simple way that we put forward that issue was what ultimately has led to a positive and engaged response.

TS: 23:17

It's also interesting, there was an article in Fast Company which mentioned that actually the CEOs of some of these tech companies have Indian names, which would actually be typos. So it's kind of interesting that this was missed.

CW: 23:32

Absolutely. It is so interesting. Like if you're Satya Nadella, surely you don't want your name to be underlined in red. I'm not sure if it is anymore. Maybe he's pulled a few strings and made sure that his name is recognized. But I think that's a great case in point. It's also a great example, even though it's just a sort of kind of a flippant anecdote that like, if our products are designed by people with quite like blinkered sets of expectations about the people that these products are ultimately being designed for, without even any nefarious intent, it's just so easy to mis-build the product or to miss a segment of the population that the product is for.

And I think if you had more people at the table when these products are being built or certainly even in responding to feedback about these products who have some kind of stake in the game or some kind of awareness about these diversity or inclusion issues, you probably get certainly a more effective feedback loop. But in the long run, you probably have better iterations of the products. And maybe even when you put something out into the world first time, maybe it can even be a better representation of what you might have.

AP: 24:48

I think we see that in a lot of things when they're first brought to life. Nobody gets anything perfect when they first roll it out, but there's sometimes fundamental basics where you've completely missed a huge market here. I just think maybe it's down to the people who are in the room when this is being created and either they'd had experiences similar to mine where they're just like, I'm just used to it. My name's my name. Some people get it, some people don't. I'm not going to make a fuss. It's not that important. Or there just wasn't someone in that room named anything that would have a type of line underneath it. And that's okay, but you've gotta think wider than just the room.

TS: 25:26

That's it for this episode. Thank you to Cathal Wogan and also to Xaymaca Awoyungbo, Vedrana Koren, Angharad Planells and Wanyu Zhang. Coming up in the next episode.

CW: 25:39

We definitely got attention from most of the tech companies. We've had conversations with multiple people at every single one of the big ones that you know and love and possibly dislike.

TS: 25:50

The I am not a typo campaign made some noise. But was it enough?