My husband and I are both Canadians and we gave birth in Taiwan. Since I’m also Taiwanese, we decided to give our son my last name in Chinese. However, I didn’t want our son to not have his dad’s last name in there somewhere (dad’s last name is also a Chinese-origin last name), so I put it on the English birth certificate.
So now this is what we have (using random example names):
English birth certificate: Christopher Tyler Su Chen (FirstEnglishName MiddleEnglishName DadsLastName MomsLastName)
Taiwanese household registration: Chen Bo Lin (MomsLastName ChineseName)
Now that we are looking to get a Canadian passport and citizenship certificate for our son, I’m wondering if I can treat his English last name as a double barrel last name and apply as:
OPTION 1
Surname: Su Chen
Given names: Christopher Tyler
Would it cause any problems if his English last name and Taiwanese last names don’t match exactly? Am I just making life harder for my son? I could apply with the standard and safe:
OPTION 2
Surname: Chen
Given names: Christopher Tyler Su
… but I would really like him to use “Su” as his last name in Canada and give him the option to drop my last name informally.
Any advice would be really appreciated. Thank you!
Izzy, I fell your pain. My wife and I passed by the same struggle but finally reached our goal.
First of all, if you want your son to use “Su” as his last name, you should give him “Su” as the last name, instead of the second last, and “Christopher Tyler Chen Su” would be the full name. You could then go with either option 1 or 2, as the result would be as you wanted from the beginning…
For my experience (I’m Brazilian and my wife is Taiwanese), our son have my last name in Portuguese and my wife’s last name in Chinese. We had that in the birth certificate (one name in the English one and another in the Chinese) and in the household registration transcript. That means that in the English version of the HRT he will have my last name as well.
To register him in the Brazilian office, they only required the English birth certificate and I guess the Canadian will ask for the same. If you register his English name in the household registration transcript, his passport will contain the same English name as his Canadian passport.
Finally, I don’t see trouble for him in the future since he will only use his Chinese name in Taiwan.
P.S.: Since the birth certificate is issued by the hospital and not a government agency, it may be possible to make the change, I’m not sure. If you really want, it worth a try
P.P.S.: My son not only have different last names in Portuguese and Chinese but different names as well.
P.P.P.S: I also have a different Chinese name and last name than my English/Portuguese one. I even took my wife’s Chinese last name after marriage.
