Chart Names

This has been added to the compound posting "Measurement", September 2021.

For most of human history the vast majority of people have lived in relatively small communities. They knew virtually all of the people that they interacted with. In recent times that has definitely changed. Not only is there more people but the size of cities has grown exponentially. With more moving around knowing the people that we are interacting with is getting to be more the exception than the rule.

First names, such as James, William, Mary, Charles, and so on, are useful only as long as we are dealing with people that we know. A first name doesn't tell you much about a person, other than whether they are male or female and maybe their ethnicity. First names are from the days when people knew most of those that they would interact with.

What if we could make first names more useful? We could do that if names could tell us more about a person, specifically what they looked like.

Suppose that you are working behind a counter and there are thirty people in the room in front of you. You see the person that you are looking for but don't know their name. How would you get their attention? You could shout out "sir" or "ma'am", until they looked your way, but that would disturb everyone in the room.

You see someone fleeing and suspect that they have committed a crime. How would you very quickly describe what they look like? 

You send a driver to give someone a ride from an event, but the driver and rider don't know each other. How would you quickly give the driver an idea of who to look for, considering that there might be a hundred people there and a photograph of a person often isn't a good guide to recognition?

You are writing a story and describing what a person looks like. Describing how a person looks is often a laborious process, don't you wish there was an easier way?

So much nowadays has been categorized, to make identification or computer programming easier. The categorization is usually done with numbers, every shade of every color has been assigned a number for example. Why couldn't we categorize what people look like, not by number but by name?

We could make up a chart with drawings or photographs of three hundred different people. Half would be male and half female. They would all look different from one another. One or another of the people on the chart would have every different combination of race, general height, general body structure, general ethnicity, skin tone and, hair color. Everyone in the world would fairly closely resemble one of the people on the chart.

Next we would give everyone on the chart a first name. The name of the person on the chart that you most closely resembled would be your "Chart Name". You wouldn't need to give the name to anyone because it would be obvious by just looking on the chart. But you would look up if anyone called the name. Hard copy charts could be posted on walls in offices and charts could easily be standard features on phones.

The reason this hasn't already been done is that classifying people by their physical features hints at racism. This is not any scientific classification of how people look, it is just for the purpose of recognition. We could also do the classification by numbers but I think it would be better to have a name to call to get someone's attention. The purpose of this is recognition at a distance, and so we probably wouldn't include eye color.

The examples of people on the chart would be in their prime. A general age could also be specified, including if it was a child. Possibly a separate chart of children could be made. It would not include anything uncomplimentary or readily subject to change, or whether the person was disabled in any way. 

It would not include any reference to excess weight or baldness or wrinkles. The description would be of the person whole and in their prime. It would have no reference to hairstyle and a person's Chart Name would change if they changed their hair color.

This will not only be helpful in crime fighting, making possible a quick description of a person and bringing up an image resembling the person, but will also cut down on fraud since a person's facial photograph often doesn't look a lot like them, especially if it was taken some time ago.