[smacktoward]

Names aren't necessarily unique. It's not hard to imagine a large enough organization having multiple John Smiths on staff, for instance.

As personnel management became more sophisticated and formalized, a unique identifier was needed that was guaranteed to refer to one and only one person. And since SSNs already existed and were guaranteed unique, most of them just used those rather than inventing a unique identifier of their own.

[joecool1029]

> And since SSNs already existed and were guaranteed unique,

Yeah.... about that: https://www.cio.com/article/3004596/a-tale-of-two-women-same...