One of our employees has a name like “Stephen Starr”. Since our company email addresses are based on initials, this means that his email address should be [email protected].
Another of our employees say that this would make it very hard to deal with Germans, as they would be offended by the email address.
Can any real Germans shed some light on this? Is it still that big of a deal in your country?
It's not Ok, but not for the reasons you mention.
Business emails need easy recognition, ss is not an email I can easily match with a person or department.
If your company has such email naming policy, I, as a business party, will think of you as unprofessional.
And by the way, in general employees like to be addressed by their name, not their initials.
German administration does take such issues seriously enough to not allow certain letter combinations as parts of car license numbers (which are made of two one-to-three letter codes and a number): SA, SS, HJ, and KZ are federally banned and will neither be assigned nor can they be requested. Additional restrictions (NS, SD & others) are local to federal states. It has been that way for a long time.
While many Germans would not make a fuss about that kind of email address, they would most likely either be amused, or consider the owner or assigner of that address insensitive/ignorant, or would suspect it to be a plausibly deniable endorsement of some unsavory extreme right wing group (which have gained traction in Germany in recent years, but so has public and media scrutiny of such!).
This might or might not be an issue if a German company chose such an abbreviation for business correspondence. Personally I would consider this a non-issue, but there is probably enough residual business risk that it could be a good idea to avoid 'SS', 'SA', or 'NS' preemptively.
If a foreign company does it, I can't honestly see how anyone in Germany would take offense at a coincidence that was clearly not intended and is marginally significant to begin with.
Another of our employees say that this would make it very hard to deal with germans, as they would be offended by the email address.
Maybe it wouldn't be a good idea to use such an email address, if you run a security service (for obvious reasons). But that doesn't seem to be the case here.
If it's hard to deal with someone because they feel offended by an email address, I would advice you not to deal with such an unprofessional company at all. You will run into much bigger trouble with them.
Actually someone addressed my usage of SS2000 as abbreviation for Sommersemester 2000 (summer semester) once.1 It's childish and stupid for my taste. Maybe someone will ask you: Would you please start a campaign to change the spelling of the word address? Someone might feel offended by the ss in it. someday.
So my advice is: just don't entertain such a bs. Overdone out of misunderstood pc might make us all mute someday.
1 Just to make it clear: that's an exception, not the rule. In my experience most people have enough common sense not to put up a fuss about nothing. I once witnessed a coworker accidentally calling a customer, whos name was Mrs. Führer, Mrs. Braun instead. She just laughed about it and there was no drama at all.
Since "Germans" includes "German Jews", you can bet that there are at least some people who will take serious offense. Imagine some Karl-Klaus Krüger using [email protected] in correspondence with a US company...
Many Germans will think nothing if it. The ones that recognise it will not be offended, but they will have serious doubts about your character. And many will tell you that you should consider changing the address.
So you are not offending, but you might run into people who will not be willing to talk to you, and you will get continuous comments about that email address. And all that trouble is easily avoided.
The abbreviation is only a problem in a context, that suggests it is used like the ns acronym. When it is clear, that they are initials, there should be no problem.
Some users may notice it and shortly think about it and then think that they are silly themselves. Nobody will think you're choosing it deliberately to resemble ns abbreviations, as long as you're not making disrespectful puns yourself.
When it makes your employee uncomfortable or when there is too much internal discussion, just use another address, because it is not worth investing too much time into this minor problem.
What is your guideline, if there are two people with the initials "SS"? I am sure you'll have some rule to include the next letter of firstname or lastname, which coincidentally in this case, both leads to [email protected] (respectively [email protected])
I really think you can go that way without breaking your usual convention, and you should, as here in Germany, we do in fact react sensitive to those specific "abbreviations". People may not say something, but at least, it will be regarded as inconsiderate.
That kind of address would be perfectly acceptable. For the slim chance that it evokes the connotation with someone, that person would probably blame himself instead of you or your company.
Since that address is under an international domain, that connotation would require some suggestive context anyway ( or the 'suitable' mindset with the recipient - in that case, you most certainly wouldn't run into difficulties ... ).
If your legal department or corporate bigshots were really sensitive, the best-known two-letter abbreviations from the NS period (excerpt from here) would be:
hj
kz
ns
sa
sd
ss
It might be more relevant to ban modern abbreviations and codes that are popular with right-wing extremists and outright nazis, see here for examples. Relevant two-letter codes might be
bh
ci
hh
wp
Note that considering theses codes means quite a stretch.
Just in case someone is really paranoid over the issue, there are also a number of online dictionaries purporting to compile abbreviations commonly used in Nazi Germany (eg. this one). They contain mostly terms that have been in common use in the German language of that time, irrespective of the Nazi dictatorship.
It is unlikely to be a serious issue, but there may be a few individuals who object to it, some of whom won't tell you their thoughts.
Other reasons to question your naming policy have already been listed and don't need repeating.
On practical reasons I would suggest to avoid it, it is too dangerous.
It is bad in work mail addresses. The current de facto custom is that your mail address has a direct relation to your name. It is so around the middle 2000s.
If it is not a work address, or your name happens to be, for example, Stephan Schubert, no one will think any bad. Sometimes we have also an abbreviated alias, for example [email protected] as main address, and an [email protected] alias for that. That is okay, but again it is better to avoid to use in work.
The typical attitude, and also the best practice for the long-term survival, if you take the possible largest distance from the whole topic. Such abbreviations are avoided in practice mostly on this reason (i.e. the people does not want others to thinking about it in the relation of him), and not on a real fear from possible consequences.
