Many Māori and Pacific Peoples use alternative names to their birth names, often adopting an English name to be known by outside of the family. This is also a common practice with many non English speaking cultures in Asia.
FaceBook.com in their quest to recognise the multilingual world we live in, today announced a new field in the Account Settings. You can change your name and add an “Also known as” name which will appear in brackets next to your name. The one profile can be used for family and friends as both names are searchable. I assume this will also be reflected in Google searches.
The great thing is that FaceBook is multilingual and utilises Unicode. Hence macrons can be used in your name or alternative name.
The issues I anticipate are with vanity urls within FaceBook such as the facebook.com/ktaiuru compared to facebook.com/ktāiuru. I would like to hear any feedback on this.
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