A young man has hit the headlines after popular social media platform, Facebook took down his name after mistaking it to be a fake account as his name spelt vulgar but sounds differently.
Screenshot of his passport to confirm his identity
A Vietnamese-Australian man named Phuc Dat Bich but pronounced 'Phoo Da Bi' has become famous on social media after posting a photograph of his passport to prove that his name is real after Facebook repeatedly blocked him.
This controversy attracted massive supports from behind that threw their weights behind him in the comment section of his Facebook post in advocacy for the acceptance of his name. The post dated back to January, but received hundreds of thousands of likes late last week.
Phuc Dat Bich, has said he is glad his fight to use his name on Facebook has made people happy.
Screenshot of his Facebook profile
His name when properly pronounced in Vietnamese, which is a tonal language, sounds like "Phoo Da Bi". Mr Phuc originally posted his complaint on 28 January, accompanied with his passport photo, saying:
"I find it highly irritating the fact that nobody seems to believe me when I say that my full legal name is how you see it. I've been accused of using a false and misleading name of which I find very offensive. Is it because I'm Asian? Is it?," the 23-year-old bank worker wrote.
Thousands of people left comments on his post, with some advising him to change his name. Others, however, left encouraging messages. On Sunday night, Mr Phuc wrote a new post saying he was "very grateful to those who have been supportive of certain names that populate in different cultures."
We live in a diverse and multicultural society and the fact that there are people out there who are supportive and encouraging really makes me happy. I am glad and honoured to be able to make people happy by simply making them laugh at something that appears outrageous and ridiculous," Mr Phuc wrote.
Facebook has not commented directly on Mr Bich's case, but its policy on usernames state that people "provide the name they use in real life" for safety reasons, and that it "should be your authentic identity; as your friends call you in real life and as our acceptable identification forms would show", such as passports.
Among other things it asks users to refrain from using "offensive or suggestive words of any kind" in their Facebook names.