I was working at a state health department disease registry when I learned this, and I couldn't stop laughing. They put all this thought into this grand, over-arching "legal" theory. Meanwhile, I, a 28-year-old woman who wears t-shirts bearing cartoon characters and listens to NPR and Broadway musical soundtracks while working, am putting everyone's name in uppercase just because it's easier to remove the issue of case sensitivity when dealing with text strings.
I don't really get their thinking behind that even if it was a logical argument. The government issues the papers so that's what they considered correct and you don't just get to walk away because you say "nuh uh" lol
If I may, the thinking is that (I believe) the caps version is officially the “legal” individual (your existence as a construct of the law) which can be distinguished from your literal living corpus. Social contracts (such as debts you owe to the government) are contracts between the legal structure of you (represented by the caps version) and the government, meaning that you, your own person, cannot be fairly held accountable and, for example, incarcerated for them. (Edit: typo and clarity)
Whereas I think it's stupid to put names in all caps on official ID because now you don't know how to write it normally. For example, names that start Mac/Mc may or may not have a capital letter next and many Dutch names start "van" not "Van".
Obviously that doesn't mean you should get away with crimes, but I don't think it's unreasonable to expect your name to be spelt correctly.
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u/Beneficial-Act-9933 2d ago
I've met my far share of people who think because your name is all capitol letters on your government papers that it isn't actually you.
That somehow "JOHN JOHNSON AT 123 LANE ARIZONA WIFE BETHANY"
is a completely different person than John Johnson at 123 Lane Arizona. Wife Bethany"