When did no surnames become a thing?

[jewelcase]

There are bigger problems in the world, sure. But it was my younger DD’s school play the other night. The Y8s do a play every year, and this was hers.

In the programme, they listed the cast. But they only put first names. The school newsletter is the same. No surnames.

When did this start, and why is it a thing? I guess for some kind of safeguarding reason, but what’s the risk? It just seems to infantilise the kids, and you can’t tell one kid from another with the same name.

Is my kids’ school the only one? I suspect not.

AIBU to want surnames back?

Just more imagined risks yeah. And ill informed assumptions about data protection. But everybody just loves a bit of simple risk mitigation that allows them to ignore much bigger problems.

Generally speaking, I meant. Not the particular example of names in programmes which, as I said in a previous post, is trivial.

What are you talking about? The experiences of millions of children to what, see their name on a programme? Why would they care? Why is that an experience worth the suffering of others? You said upthread that you weren't talking about just the names on the programme. So genuinely: what kind of experience are you talking about? Can you give one single other example?

Because if it is about the programme, there is a numerical answer. It's zero. There are no amount of children the abuse it which is worth the experience of seeing a full name on a programme.

Isn't the most basic point here that having surnames of all the kids in a programme doesn't actually matter one tiny weeny jot? Your kid was in the production, you know this, your kid knows it. They know that 'Ellie'played Mary.

The safeguarding of one child in one school, one time, is more than enough to justify this.

So.what restrictions are you on about?

Clearly you protect the tiny number on a case by case basis rather than restricting everyone - in many of these cases a one size approach won't work anyway.

For safeguarding reasons. Be thankful you don’t have to adopt that approach.

In my DD’s primary there was a mum who was basically forced to be very open about her circumstances when other parents disregarded her plea to not put her child’s face online. Her violent (now ex) husband tried to take their DD on a plane to his home country when she was 3 after brutally attacking his wife and was stopped at the airport. He went to prison for a ridiculously short length of time and she fled with their DD and he absolutely can’t know where they are. This is why she only ever had her DD’s first name out there.

If someone said to me “We do first names only because otherwise we’d attract violent exes who want to kidnap their kids” I sure wouldn’t prattle on about my child being restricted. I’m happy to make that sacrifice if it protects a child.

For anything online, our school does photos with no names or first names only (and no photo) so achievements can be mentioned but it doesn't identify children.

For the play it was first name and surname initial. I don't feel like I am missing out by not having the whole surname. I either know the child already so the surname doesn't add new information or I don't know them and therefore I don't need their surname and /or photo. It feels sensible to me.

I agree with pp I guess the shift was due to the prevalence of the internet Vs 20 years ago.

This is essentially your question. Written in a different way so you can see what you are saying:

I have ten million children, one of them is at risk of being sexually abused and beaten. Do I..

A) Publish all their full names and risk the 1 child being found, taken and assaulted.
B) Publish all childrens names as first names only and minimise the risk of the child being found.

DISCUSS

(You can surely see that option A is the correct choice..???)

In what way is not publishing kids’ last names detrimental to the general community?

If a child is adopted or in foster care, it's sometimes dangerous for birth families to know where they live/go to school. Or if a child has one parent or relative who is a risk to them.
If a school changes policy all of a sudden about things like printing surnames, chances are it's to protect one or two specific children.

I have only just realised that they do this when reading this post.
I never gave it a second thought.

or C, publish all of the children's names and on it the one, same result, no harm done.

You might be at a school where there are children who are under some sort of protection eg from DV or in care of foster carer due to abuse and need to be secure from family members or least likely but totally possible have moved schools due to legal/criminal issues.

its likely most of these kids won’t ever appear in programs but if they do having this safeguard in place does help protect them.

I work with kids and to protect them my employer doesn’t give me their surnames, nor their ages or birthdays. I know first name only. It’s not a bad thing and keeps them safe because they’re so vulnerable and you’ve no idea how trusting kids can be if you know just a little bit about them.

However I have worked with them long enough that I do know their surnames because kids talk about themselves. They want to share stuff and it’s tricky to get them to understand this. I do think my employer has the right idea about minimal info. I don’t need to know surnames and birthdays and ages to do my job.

Can you explain why you think the children are being restricted?

Im baffled by your ignorance of the very serious safeguarding issues.

im not sure who you think is being harmed or is at detriment from excluding surnames

@VerySkilledFirefighter The reason that many actors & performers don't use their real names is because another person of that name has already been registered with Equity, and that means that nobody else can use it professionally. So they have to choose another one.

What detriment do you see here?

But how will everybody know that little Tarquin squawked his way through the donkey role in the nativity if it’s not published in full?!

This is interesting. My daughter's school includes full names on production programmes, weekly parent bulletin etc. I don't think they would on social media though, but anything that only gets sent to school parents or given to people who are physically present such as a programme gets the full name. I can see previous posters' points about how that could be photographed and shared on, but none of the schools my kids go to or I work with seem worried about that. I don't know if it's different if school know there are safeguarding risks though. Maybe some kids do just get a name and initial? I haven't really noticed that though.

To be honest though, I think there is usually a name change if the safeguarding issues were that serious, eg adopted children might take their adoptive parents surname, so couldn't be googled.

Families like to keep play programmes, but as they are a printed document that doesn't exist in electronic form outside of the school office, they can't reach mass production.

We Xeroxed three hundred for the latest production, that was it, very limited print run, no electronic version, one lad who is in foster care isn't named, that's it, easy.

...I guess more broadly my slight annoyance is that whilst safeguarding issues deserve respect I sometimes feel that we are over cautious to the detriment of our kids who remain infantilised, and perhaps this is one tiny and trivial example....

Safeguarding 'deserves respect'. Thank f*ck you're not in charge of keeping the victims of DV, SA, familial trauma, etc. safe and building a new life, or the people who would be a target because someone in their family works against the evils in this world.

Just because you haven't come across any of these issues in your life, and be very thankful for that, doesn't mean that everyone isn't in the same position.
We're in the second group, with a unique surname and a high number of scroates who would be very pleased to find out our location and childrens details.

How often is it happening that a child in a school play is on the witness protection programme while for some reason still using their original/identifying name?

I can think of another example - my friend adopted a little girl who was taken from her birth family, and the v large, dangerous and historically violent birth family continue to try and find her. We are talking uncles aunties cousins etc not just mum and dad. My friend changed her first name to protect her (she was 2 at this point so not ideal). There’s every chance the family could find her new full name and if they find out which school she goes to because someone published a picture of a programme on Facebook, that means all children in the school are put in danger with some lunatic uncle turning up

You and your child's grandparents now that they played Joseph/ Christmas rabbit/ third shepherd from the left. No one else needs to know this and they certainly don't care about it. FWIW when I was at school, a million years ago, the girl who was chosen to be Mary was chosen because her mum was a teacher at the school and the child had along blue dress ( very handy for being the Virgin Mary in the 70s). It had nothing to do with talent or achievement . When I became a teacher I met several famies where children had been adopted from horrendous situations. We had a foster parent at one school who would be called to police stations an hour from her home,at 3 in the morning , to collect half naked, filthy, neglected children whose parents cared more about booze and drugs and sex than they did about looking after them. The last thing those children needed was for family members to be able to trace them.