I would like to know if it is possible to change my chinese surname on my passportI recently obtained my NWOHR passport to eventually apply for citizenship and convert it to a NWHR passport. When I was applying for the NWOHR at the TECO in LA, we ran into an issue where they couldn’t use my last name for my chinese surname. A little back story, I am applying for TW citizenship through my mother as my father was from Hong Kong. Unfortunately he passed away in 2010. So I have a chinese name. For the sake of this example, I am going to be using made up last names to keep my identity private. So my father’s last name is Lee and my mother’s maiden name is Kim. So my chinese name would be Lee Smith (I have one of those chinese names with just 2 characters).
So when I went to apply for the NWOHR passport, this was the issue. I brought all the official documents that belonged to my dad to the TECO office but the issue was we did not have any official documents that had my dad’s last name in chinese. Since we didn’t have any of those documents, only provided US passport and drivers license, they said they could not confirm what the chinese character for “Lee” is. We also are not sure where his official documents are that show his chinese name in chinese characters. So they said that I had to take on my mother’s chinese surname of “Kim” So then my chinese name became Kim Lee Smith instead of just Lee Smith. I wasn’t really thinking at the time and wasn’t sure if this would affect anything in the future but now that I am looking back on this issue, I am wondering if it is possible to change my surname that is on my NWOHR passport or be able to change it when I get HHR. Ideally, I would like to get it changed while I am establishing citizenship but I am unsure how that would go. Does anyone know if it is possible to change my chinese surname? For the record, the NWOHR passport does show my correct full legal name in English. Its just the chinese name has an extra chinese character for my mother’s surname. Thank you for your assistance!
Just get your citizenship all done with the current name and then change it after all said and done. You get to change your name up to three times IIRC.
So it is possible to change the Surname? Would I have to present any documentation or just pick the Surname I want? Do you know where exactly I would do that at? HHR location? Court house?
Yes. There may be more than one way for your situation but the way I know is that you can do it once you are all set with your citizenship.
https://law.moj.gov.tw/ENG/LawClass/LawAll.aspx?pcode=D0030011
Here is the entire law.
I don’t know at the moment. As a foreigner, we have to do things at the NIA.
But I do know a great name for you and anyone else considering changing their name.
Taiwanese and foreigners who are married to Taiwanese change their Chinese name at the HHR.