101–110 of 212 posts
> In response to 9/11, Congress had passed the REAL ID Act, requiring a new type of identification to board domestic flights [...] (It’s been postponed twice since then. The new deadline is now 2027, wink wink.) For anyone reading this...this isn't true. It finally actually went into effect on May 7, 2025. EDIT: I HAVE witnessed someone at a TSA checkpoint at an airport get turned away because they didn't have a REAL…
There's an analogous problem for Russians, and presumably folks from other Slavic-language countries. Our last names are gendered; if Ivan Kuznetsov marries Elena, her last name becomes Kuznetsova. (And their children would have gendered last names, too - little Borya Kuznetsov and little Masha Kuznetsova.) So Russian families who move to America have a choice - either deal with people and systems who assume that mar…
As a related issue, some Slavic language countries require foreign documents to be transliterated into the Cyrillic alphabet, which doesn't contain exact equivalents for certain English alphabet letters. They usually end up using the closest phonetic equivalent but this often causes bureaucratic hassles.
I use up all the fields for alternative names on all the forms.
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As a related issue, some Slavic language countries require foreign documents to be transliterated into the Cyrillic alphabet, which doesn't contain exact equivalents for certain English alphabet letters. They usually end up using the closest phonetic equivalent but this often causes bureaucratic hassles.
Now I'm trying to figure out how one would write out Matthew in Cyrillic, which has two phonemes that are as much of a nightmare for Russian-speakers as "ы" and "р" are for English-speakers. "Мэтью", maybe?
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Yeah, it's a total patchwork of laws and processes. It's enough of a pain in the neck here to make you have to be pretty sure you want to bother with it. I can only imagine the "fun" you're having dealing with that, Mr. O'DropTables.
Europe is much worse about that than the US. Many countries don't let you change your name at all unless you have an extremely strong reason to do so. Others have strict requirements on what an acceptable name is, and foreign-sounding names are often not allowed. Denmark straight up gives you a whitelist of allowed names to choose from.
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> who assume that married couples, and parents/children all have the same last name and hit roadblocks when that expectation does not match reality Speaking as someone whose mom didn't change their name when marrying my dad, with a sister who didn't change her name when marrying my brother in law, with a wife who also didn't change her name when she married me, I think this problem is overblown. I have yet to encount…
I remember it being a problem in the US in the 2000s when airlines would group families together and if you have different last names, they wouldn't do it. I guess now they don't group or go by tickets instead of considering last names.
It makes more sense to group by ticket group: buy 4 tickets then this keep them grouped
There's an analogous problem for Russians, and presumably folks from other Slavic-language countries. Our last names are gendered; if Ivan Kuznetsov marries Elena, her last name becomes Kuznetsova. (And their children would have gendered last names, too - little Borya Kuznetsov and little Masha Kuznetsova.) So Russian families who move to America have a choice - either deal with people and systems who assume that mar…
As a related issue, some Slavic language countries require foreign documents to be transliterated into the Cyrillic alphabet, which doesn't contain exact equivalents for certain English alphabet letters. They usually end up using the closest phonetic equivalent but this often causes bureaucratic hassles.
(There's a separate issue here where a system for a specific pair of languages might get codified and become "frozen in time" even as either or both languages evolve. For example, the Russian Polivanov system for transliterating Japanese uses "си" for "シ" because the standard pronunciation of "щ" at the time was more like "шч", similar to Ukrainian, so it was clearly the wrong choice back then - and yet clearly the right choice now if not for backwards compatibility concerns.)
Just taking this opportunity to vent. When my wife and I married, she changed her name to [Her First Name] [Her Maiden Name] [My Last Name], like from First: Jane Middle: Ann Last: Smith to First: Jane Middle: Smith Last: Mylastname All was well and good until very recently when I was at the DMV with her and we were renewing her drivers license. We found out then that the person entering her name change form at the S…
In the local language of one of the countries, they say the family name first. For example, "Smith Mary". The passport & visa offices had gotten confused, and this poor guy ended up with a passport with their first and last names around the wrong way. And they got a visa to Australia with the names the right way around. The problem was only discovered a day or two before they travelled. And of course, you can't use a visa if the name on the visa doesn't match your passport. Even if the name on the visa is correct!
It was a huge headache. My friend managed to escalate the problem through DFAT (Australia's state department) and they managed to issue a new visa in time which matched their passport. Ie, they issued a visa which also had this guy's name wrong.
My favorite part of the whole thing is that their colleagues thought it was the funniest thing in the world. Apparently they kept making fun of the guy for it and started calling him the wrong name on purpose. Pacific islanders are the best. I think they were from Kiribati or Samoa.
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You'd think the UK would be alright with it given Irish names are and were reasonably common (at least in parts of the UK), which commonly have fadas in them (i.e. Béibhinn, Seán, Ciarán, etc)
I mean, English itself has diacritics in perfectly ordinary words that many Americans use every day (café, résumé, and yet somebody decided to put "useless" characters like @, ^ or # in ASCII instead.
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> who assume that married couples, and parents/children all have the same last name and hit roadblocks when that expectation does not match reality Speaking as someone whose mom didn't change their name when marrying my dad, with a sister who didn't change her name when marrying my brother in law, with a wife who also didn't change her name when she married me, I think this problem is overblown. I have yet to encount…
Looking at it from the other way, your mom probably didn't change her name because it's not a big deal where you live ? People getting the issues live in different systems and/or have different needs, and it also changes with our world getting more digital. One part that doesn't much depend on locality this days would be international travel and money. For international travel, small kids having a different name is s…
The kidnapping thing has nothing to do with names, if you only have one parent every country has their rules and you should check them out ahead of time.
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Chinese people rarely change their surnames after marriage; kids usually inherit the father's surname and that's it. This has never caused any issues; systems I've interacted with have been totally OK with the idea that the parents can have different surnames from each other.
Chinese living in the west also will sometimes adopt a western name.