They made it mandatory in NL not long ago iirc, or at least the validation now is and the bank doesn't let me leave the field blank. It does seem to be okay with variants of the name

I, too, would prefer to just be able to give people a random number to send money to. Isn't that a GDPR requirement anyway: data minimisation? Can they legally require this beyond their 90% of the law (that is, custody of the thing I'm trying to move)?