People with this strange last name are more likely to break computers and get turned down online.
There are words that you can't use in the fields of programming and development. One of them is the word "Null." It shows that there is no value, that a database, variable, or system is completely empty. But what if this idea is also the name of your family?
It sounds like science fiction, but it's a daily reality for many in English-speaking countries. This is the case for Christopher Null, a technology journalist who has had to deal with forms rejecting his name, banks blocking his email, and systems crashing simply because he enters his last name. The reason? The software interprets his last name as an error, as if he had left the field blank.
He's not alone. Cybersecurity expert Joseph Tartaru decided to customize his car's license plate with the word "NULL" and began receiving traffic tickets from all over the United States. When systems don't recognize the license plate, "NULL" is set by default. All these tickets end up in his mailbox.
The origin of this mess dates back to 1965, when British computer scientist Tony Hoare introduced the value of "null" into the ALGOL W language. Decades later, it was dubbed the "billion-dollar bug" due to the flaws and security vulnerabilities it has caused ever since.
In an increasingly digital world, where automated systems manage everything from our purchases to our identities, having a surname like "Null" is like a human bug. The difference is, there's no patch to fix it.