> Britain's data watchdog says the force "incorrectly linked and merged the records" of the individuals that share the same name and date of birth on multiple occasions during 2020, 2021 and 2022.
I wonder if a country could successfully require name/birthdate to be unique?
It looks like the UK averages around 1800 births/day. The most common last name, "Smith", belongs to about 1 in 88 people there. That would mean about 20 Smiths born per day.
That's small enough that they could all be given different first names without anyone having to pick some weird name.
There could still be collisions due to immigration though.
It's relatively common problem here in Russia when some people share the same full name and birthdate even in same region. Tax/debt collectors sometimes issue requests to wrong people because of that.
I wonder if a country could successfully require name/birthdate to be unique?
It looks like the UK averages around 1800 births/day. The most common last name, "Smith", belongs to about 1 in 88 people there. That would mean about 20 Smiths born per day.
That's small enough that they could all be given different first names without anyone having to pick some weird name.
There could still be collisions due to immigration though.