Tech & Biz

Woman's Bid to Get Her Name on Facebook: "... I'm Batman!"

by Jordan Yerman | March 8, 2009 at 09:22 am

189 views | 22 Recommendations | 2 comments

Caitlin Batman Shaw had a tough time getting Facebook to accept her maiden name. Shaw spent three weeks battling the site administrators to allow her somewhat unusual moniker to grace those blue-framed pages.

It begs the question, though: after five years and millions of Facebook users, surely they'd have streamlined this process by now?

Also, a quick check shows a list of users named Phuc Yu- I wonder if any had problems registering. There was a guy in my dorm complex in university with that name, and he got sick of the jokes very, very quickly.

The Post disinterred many people with innocent names that incite Facebook's bouncers: Tim Six, Becky Super, and Bess Pancake, for example.

And listen to this from one of Oregon's most understanding librarians: "You don't grow up with a last name like Kisser without developing a sense of humor and an appreciation for the absurd."

In a remarkable act of survival, Keith Kisser has grown up with that name and prospered. Facebook, he believes, is "clearly not in touch with the sometimes eccentric names that people have."

Another Batman, Miranda (not related to Caitlin), balked when Facebook asked her to fax a copy of her drivers license. Instead, she used her husband's former name, Stewart. (You see, he's a loving man who knows sexy when he sees it; he took on her Batman name when he married her.)

Not sure, though, why she didn't just try Bebo instead.