Fernando Enriquez de Salamanca y Celada

Disclaimer in advance: this is a tongue-in-cheek post and I’m very grateful to TSA for their work in keeping me safe whenever I decide to climb into a pressurized aluminum tube and hurtle 600 miles per hour through the air.

My full name is Daniel Aaron Bell Klein on my birth certificate, yet I’ve been Aaron Klein my entire life. The Bell is after my maternal grandfather, an Air Force pilot and one of my heroes, who had no male heirs. My dad’s name is Daniel, another hero, and while he did have male heirs (obviously), the Daniel was affixed to the beginning. My parents decided to call me by my middle name because after all, no “Little Danny” should be taller than “Big Danny.”

With all due thanks to them, I have six legal aliases at the Department of Motor Vehicles as a result.

I get mail to “D KLEIN”, “DAARON KLEIN”, “D A KLEIN”, “AARON B KLEIN” and “YO KLEIN DUDE ON THE SIERRA BOARD” (although the latter are usually students upset they didn’t get the class they wanted at Sierra College).

Like an idiot, I chose “D AARON KLEIN” for my driver’s license and passport. With all due respect to my wonderful father, do you know how stupid that was? Try explaining to someone that you have a space in your first name, and do not have a middle initial. The world is not set up for first initial names. “My first name is D space AARON,” I say. “I’m sorry,” comes the reply, “the computer won’t let me put a space in. It just assumes your name is a spelling error.”

Now, the Transportation Security Administration of the US Department of Homeland Security has officially begun discriminating against those of us afflicted with CNS (“confusing name syndrome”) with their new Secure Flight program. Now they actually want your name on your ID to match the name on your ticket.

This is especially bad for those who have tickets purchased for them. I’ve had clients or corporate travel departments book me as “ARRON KLEIN”, “ARRON CLINE”, “AARON KLINE” and every other combination known to man.

In addition, many airline systems won’t take apostrophes or hyphens, which leaves a whole new category of people out in the cold (and left on the tarmac). My friend Derek D’Amour should go see his business partner in Florida, because he’ll never fly again. Anyone who is Irish should learn to enjoy train travel. Anthony Maki-Gill will not be let on an airplane (although it was questionable whether he would be in the first place).

Even those with long names are in trouble. Apparently a “Christopher” had his first name translated into French and it came out “Christophe”, and God help Fernando Enriquez de Salamanca y Celada.

Here’s from the New York Times article:

Mr. Lichtenstein is one of many people in the corporate world now working hard to ensure that come next year, when a new Transportation Security Administration program called Secure Flight is fully in effect, travelers won’t get delayed at airports because of variations in the way their names appear on boarding passes and their IDs.

Actually, as he pointed out, the program is pretty much in effect now. Most airlines and online booking sites already require that travelers fully comply with provisions of Secure Flight. Reservations must reflect the exact name as the ID to be used (John J. Smith, for instance, can’t appear on a boarding pass when the ID says John James Smith.)

…Apostrophes are another issue. “My Irish birth certificate shows that I was born Patrick O’Hare and my passport shows an identical name,” Patrick O’Hare wrote. “However, when trying to purchase an airline ticket online, the apostrophe is always rejected,” he added. A security screener — at O’Hare airport, no less — “pointed this out to me and suggested that I could be denied boarding, but he offered no solution. So what should we Irish, afflicted with apostrophes in our names, do to avoid this problem?” he asked.

I’m doomed.

Who do you know that won’t ever be allowed to set foot in an airplane? Perhaps those of us with confusing name syndrome should band together and form some kind of union. We could go on strike and refuse to fly until…well, we’ll think something.

Illustration Credit: NYT