How We Tidy Your Name
How we turn your name into one consistent recipe for your prime — and how accents work in different algorithm versions.
When you type your name to get your prime, we don’t use it exactly as you typed it. We tidy it first. That way, the computer always sees the same “recipe” for you — so you always get the same prime.
What we do
We take your name and:
- Lowercase it — “ALICE” and “alice” are the same person to us.
- Keep only letters and numbers — spaces are fine; punctuation and emojis are gently ignored. So “O’Brien” and “OBrien” become the same recipe (we keep your exact name for the certificate and registry; the simplification is only for finding your prime).
- Accents — In algorithm v1, we normalize accents: “José” and “Jose” become the same underlying recipe, so you get one prime per spelling. From algorithm v2 onward, we preserve accents, so “José” and “Jose” produce different primes. Your certificate and the registry show which algorithm was used.
The technical word for much of this is normalization: we use standard Unicode forms (NFKC; in v1 we also use NFD and strip combining marks so accents collapse). In v2 we keep the accents in the recipe.
Why it matters
Same name → same recipe → same prime, every time. If we didn’t tidy your name, “Marie” and “MARIE” and “marie” could (in theory) produce different primes. We want your prime to be yours in a stable way: one name, one prime.
So when we say “we tidy your name,” we mean: we turn your name into one consistent recipe that the rest of the process can use. Your certificate and the registry still show the name you gave us; the tidying is only for the math that finds your prime.