I can't save a contact without a name

[cristianrat]

But I can save it from the UI
and indeed, we have many users who never filled in their names, just their emails
We still want to manage them as contacts, so I think name should be optional

[mikeckennedy]

Hi @cristianrat That's a fair request. It's better for your spam avoidance if you can refer to individuals by name, but I know how you get into these situations. I have a few "friends of the show" over at Talk Python named "Friend" for this reason. I'm open to changing it but need to see what the ideal value for the API is ('' or null).

[obrizan]

@mikeckennedy One more reason to omit names — respect subscribers' privacy. Yes, there is a concern of deliverability, but in my case I just don't need subscriber's name due to privacy reasons and simplified UI (just one input instead of two).

Btw, Listmonk API accepts both missing and empty name params, it automatically sets "Subscriber" name to such records:

~ curl https://site/api/subscribers -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
    --data '{"email":"subscriber@example.com","status":"enabled","lists":[1]}'

{
  "data": {
    "id": 36,
    "created_at": "2025-07-31T10:22:52.341811Z",
    "updated_at": "2025-07-31T10:22:52.341811Z",
    "uuid": "a46f5dd1-61e5-4ddc-b05b-ae322696560c",
    "email": "subscriber@example.com",
    "name": "Subscriber",
    "attribs": {},
    "status": "enabled",
    "lists": []
  }
}

~ curl https://site/api/subscribers -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
    --data '{"email":"subscriber@example.com","name":"","status":"enabled","lists":[1]}'

{
  "data": {
    "id": 37,
    "created_at": "2025-07-31T10:23:50.233222Z",
    "updated_at": "2025-07-31T10:23:50.233222Z",
    "uuid": "42b9a259-e6d0-4f2e-ac60-57d777fd6fde",
    "email": "subscriber@example.com",
    "name": "Subscriber",
    "attribs": {},
    "status": "enabled",
    "lists": []
  }
}

On the other hand ListMonk's docs says name is required [docs]. Empty string is still a valid string.