Woman’s Facebook account deactivated because of her name

Isis Thomas has been stopped from using her Facebook account because of her name.

The Bristol woman went to check the social media site this week and got a bit of a shock when she couldn't access her profile. Twenty-seven-year-old Isis, who is named after the Egyptian goddess of motherhood, was then told her name didn't comply with Facebook's guidelines. Initially, she thought it might have to do with the fact that she had originally signed up as Isis Worchester, but her name is Isis Thomas. Speaking to The Sun, Isis explained what happened to her when she tried to log into her Facebook account on Monday.

“I just tried to log in and when I did, the password went through and this box came up asking me something about changing my name. “I was on Facebook as Isis Worcester, because when I first signed up years ago I didn’t use my real name, which is Isis Thomas, because of where I worked at the time. “I thought it was about the surname, so I just changed it to Isis Thomas. But that didn’t work and I realised they had a problem with me being called Isis".

Isis then received a message saying that her name did not meet the company's policy requirements. She was asked to send in proof of identity which she did but she has not had a reply as of yet. Isis said that people used to comment on her name and how unusual and pretty it was but in recent times that has changed thanks to the acronym used by Islamic State fighters, ISIS. Elaborating on the distress this has caused her, Isis said:

“I used to work in a doctors’ surgery and had my name on a badge. People would comment on it a lot, try to make jokes or tell me it was unfortunate. Some would think it was some kind of company name. “It frustrates me that people still use ‘Isis’, especially when I see newspaper reports and they’ve written it ‘Isis’ instead of at least using capitals, like ISIS, because it’s an acronym".