u/Ssieler

I'm trying to find a database of surnames for use in writing/testing code that converts an author name (e.g, "Stan Sieler") into a sortable/alphabetizable name (e.g, "Sieler, Stan").

Many surnames are compound ("de Camp", "Cartwright-Chickering" (bonus for people who recognize that one!), some with and some without hypens, and some with more than two words.

The U.S. Census database isn't useful to me ... they compress all last names, removing spaces.

(I'm ignoring people like "Arthur Conan Doyle", whose last name at birth was "Doyle", but later adopted the practice of using "Conan Doyle" as his surname ... confusing librarians around the world :)

Any pointers appreciated, thanks!

I just finished my first round-trip on SAS (from SFO -> CPH -> SFO).

I was utterly astounded at how bad the IT is.

Skipping over difficulties in creating an account (#1), I'll continue...

The web site forgot my nationality four times, my TSA Known Traveller Number twice, and my chosen meal once.

The app forgot my nationality three times, and my TSA Known Traveller number three times (although, oddly, it did remember my passport number).

Although the app didn't seem to forget my meal (hard to tell), the attendants on both flights said I hadn't ordered one. (In one case, a friend had watched every single step of me ordering the meal, to confirm I'd done it correctly.)

(They also said my friend hadn't ordered one ... I'd *seen* her outgoing meal confirmed on her web browser a week before!)

The onboard Wi-Fi was, to put it very kindly, a joke. Ten minutes after takeoff, it started (barely) responding with a note saying I had to go to a website to get service (and gave me the URL, offering to put it into my clipboard). Whilst the clipboard feature was nice, *WHY* didn't it just open the browser with that URL? That's trivial to do on both iOS and Android (programmer here, I *know*).

Once the URL entered, it took five minutes to get response. Eventually, it said it had established a connection (from a technical viewpoint, that had happened five minutes earlier!) It then said I could have "text messaging", and offered to sell me general browsing access. Say what? I was in Business Class, and they couldn't afford to give me full Wi-FI?

Curious, I clicked on the button to get info about the paid version ... five minutes of no response later, I gave up.

"Support" (via the website) was worse than a joke, it was probably not complying with the ADA (in the US), since it provided no means of communicating via text time delayed (e.g., email / messaging). It insisted that only a telephone call or a chat was possible, and that both closed at 5 PM Danish time. (I'm in California.)

Overall, they failed to miss a single chance to fail at IT.

Not everything is negative :)

Here are some positives:

At check-in, and on the plane, the SAS personnel were great. Friendly, skilled. They deserve to work for an airline with a good IT system.

Although not SAS, the staff at CPH worked very well trying to cope with significant problems in passport control (hardware/software failures, resulting in having to use photocopiers and manual processes).

(BTW, 55+ years a programmer, so, yeah, I know about software :)

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1. It's a long saga of several months of effort trying to setup a Eurobonus account / SAS site login. The TL;DR is: it utterly failed with multiple bug reports being generated (and ignored). I finally gave up and used a new email address, getting an account setup that way. (And, no, support didn't help, either via X/Twiiter or chat.)