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IOS 6 on iPhone 4.

I enabled Facebook integration and it correctly associated many contacts in the address book with Facebook friends. There were some errors (a contact got linked to a person I don't know which not only is not on my friend list, but with which I never even exchanged a single message), but I corrected them manually.

Now, sometimes a person will not use his/her real name on Facebook, or maybe will put a nickname as middle name. Or maybe I decided to label the contact in some different way than the person's real name. Anyway, the point is: sometimes, address book names and Facebook names differs. In all these cases, when the iPhone linked a contact with a Facebook friend, or when I manually linked them, it always displayed the names from Facebook instead of the ones I had been using in the address book. I corrected this, too.

But, here's the problem: when I make such a correction, looks like it works... but then, after a while (even 1-2 days), it reverts back to using the Facebook names instead of the ones I put in.

Is there any way to permanently tell the iPhone "I want this contact to be called such-and-such and please don't mess with it"?

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  • Exactly the problem I’m having!
    – doncherry
    Mar 26, 2013 at 2:55
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    Same problem here too! This is extremely frustrating, I deactivated the contact sync with Facebook
    – Matthieu Napoli
    Apr 16, 2013 at 12:48
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    Use This Name For Unified Card doesn’t work, unfortunately. After a while, the name is reverted back to the Facebook name. There are several apple support threads, and according to some users, Apple is aware of the problem – which does seem to be an outright bug. discussions.apple.com/thread/4395205
    – doncherry
    May 4, 2013 at 18:32
  • I developed a contacts application for iOS (apps.paulsteinhilber.de/phonetrait), which always shows the local names instead of the Facebook names. However I also have no solution, for the initial problem, which I am also facing. Maybe iOS7 will help.
    – pre
    Jun 2, 2013 at 14:15
  • The problem persisted all through iOS 7 and is still present on iOS 8. Interestingly, the displayed name is only incorrect on iOS—not on iCloud.com or on OS X when the same (synchronised) contacts are shown.
    – drfrogsplat
    Sep 18, 2014 at 6:01

2 Answers 2

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Just to give post-iOS 7 input, the contact situation is still problematic. If a Facebook friend changes their last name to something else (or uses a joke name), it will cause sync problems with your contacts.

You can “Link” contact cards together (edit one contact, go to the bottom, hit Link Contacts, and connect it to another card). This usually keeps the contact info connected even if the name on Facebook changes, but in my own, personal experience, contact sync errors happen when it tries to update from Facebook when you have a poor cell/wifi connection. But that may be unrelated.

A side note: I found a bug in iOS 7 though; when you link personal cards (i.e. your information from Facebook to your personal card that Siri uses), deleting duplicate or outdated fields will cause the Contacts or Phone app to crash. So if you link your own contact cards together and have to make an edit, you have to unlink them first.

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There is a setting in the facebook app you can disable to oeverride contact names.

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  • No, there isn't.
    – Massimo
    Oct 22, 2014 at 19:46
  • Can you add some details about where this setting can be changed exactly? Screenshots may also help.
    – nohillside ♦
    Oct 22, 2014 at 21:47

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