Same Name Issue
The Problem
You may have multiple contacts with the same name. For example, two friends both called “Mike” whose family names you don’t know. The check-contact-name-duplicate command will flag these as issues, but how should you actually resolve them?
What Google Contacts Shows in the List View
The contact list (on both the phone app and web UI) only shows a few fields at a glance:
- Name — always visible
- Photo/avatar — if one is set
- Organization — displayed as a subtitle under the name
All other fields (phone number, email, labels, notes, etc.) are only visible after tapping into the contact’s detail view. This means that when you’re scanning your contact list or picking a contact to call, only the name, photo, and organization can help you tell two people apart.
No Separate Display Name
Google Contacts does not support a separate “display name” field. The display_name in the People API is a read-only computed field that is automatically generated from the structured name fields (given name, family name, etc.). You cannot set a display name independently of the actual name.
The “File As” Field
Google Contacts has a “File as” field (fileAses in the People API), but it is a sorting hint, not a display name. It controls where the contact appears in an alphabetically sorted list, but the contact list still shows the actual name. Setting different “File as” values (e.g., “Mike Gym”, “Mike Work”) would affect sort order but would not help you visually distinguish same-name contacts in the list view.
Options for Distinguishing Same-Name Contacts
1. Modify the Name
Add a distinguishing suffix or identifier to the name itself:
- “Mike R.” / “Mike S.”
- “Mike (work)” / “Mike (gym)”
- “Mike Tel Aviv” / “Mike Neighbor”
This is the most visible approach since the name is always shown, but it means the stored name no longer reflects the person’s real name.
2. Use the Organization Field
Set the organization/company field to something descriptive (e.g., “gym”, “yoga class”, “neighbor”). This shows as a subtitle under the name in the contact list, so you can distinguish contacts without changing the name itself. This is the cleanest approach if you want to keep the real name intact.
Note: the organization field in the API (organizations) has multiple sub-fields — company name, job title, and department — but only the company name is displayed in the contact list view. Title and department are only visible in the contact detail view. In the Google Contacts UI, this field is labeled “Company”. So when distinguishing same-name contacts, make sure to set the company name, not just the title.
3. Use the Name Suffix Field
The People API’s Name resource has an honorific_suffix field (intended for “Jr.”, “III”, “PhD”, etc.). You could set it to “1”, “2”, “3” or other short identifiers to distinguish same-name contacts. The suffix gets incorporated into the computed display name, so “Mike” with suffix “1” would display as “Mike 1”. This works, but it’s a hack — the field is meant for real honorific suffixes, not arbitrary identifiers. It’s functionally equivalent to just modifying the name directly.
4. Set Different Photos
If you have photos of both people, assigning different contact photos makes them instantly recognizable in the list view.
5. Leave Them as Duplicates
You can simply leave both contacts as “Mike” and accept the warning from check-contact-name-duplicate. Currently rscontacts has no mechanism to suppress or allowlist known duplicates, so this check will continue to flag them on every run.
Recommendation
Using the organization field is generally the best compromise: it keeps the real name intact while providing a visible subtitle in the contact list. If that’s not enough, modifying the name with a short qualifier is the most reliable fallback.