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Multinationals of Lemmy: How do you deal with names across borders? (lemmy.world)

submitted 6 days ago by WhereAreMySocks@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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Different countries do things differently. Some have different alphabets, or just additional characters. Some allow middle names as separate from first or family names, while some instead do not not allow middle names, but instead allow multiple first names and/or family names. In some countries its normal to get your mother's maiden name as a middle name or as a second part of your first name, while other contries again dictate that any and all first names should be commonly recognized as a first name and not easily mistaken as a family name.

Does all this lead to people having different "offical" names in different countries? How do your passports look if name structure or characters aren't the same in the different countries? Does it make a difference if you were born multinational, or if you obtained it later in life?

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[–] audaxdreik@pawb.social 10 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

Hah, it's funny you ask this because I've been dealing with it lately.

US citizen living abroad at the moment. I have a middle name which is just, you know, vanity or whatever like it is for most people? My father's father's name but it doesn't have particular meaning to me and I don't necessarily like it. Still it came to be on my passport and I can't recall if I did it purposefully, or if I was just filling out information, or if it was required because it was on other documentation like my birth certificate.

However it happened, it's on the passport so now it's on all my official documentation here in the EU. It gets picked up by every system and I can't drop it, I have to keep propagating it because it needs to match the official documentation. It gets put in with my first name so now I'm just getting used to being "First Middle" "Last". This is made more unusual by the fact that the country I'm in does not have middle names. All my friends are like, "Oooh, exotic!" and it's like, no ... just silly American things ...

Generally though this doesn't affect anything whatsoever, it's just an oddity. I have simply never thought so much about my own middle name in my life and now it haunts me.

[–] YaksDC@sh.itjust.works 6 points 6 days ago

Having the exact same issue. It's so odd for people to use my middle name everywhere.