Guide: How to register a 'real' English name for your Taiwanese child

[meishijia]

@Myn’s experience, posted in the household registration thread may also be of use to those here.

@Myn

Firstly, big thanks to meishijia for assisting me with this process both in forum posts and DMs

I’d just like to touch on one point

@meishijia

Your hospital may not offer English birth certificates

I was in this situation where the hospital (NTUH) refused to provide me with an English birth certificate for my child without showing household registration first.

As a side note, we already have household registration for our child in Chinese but our aim is to get the English translated copy showing her English name

The English translation of household registration of course requires proof of the child’s English name, which would normally be a birth certificate. So you can see the loop we were in

It turns out that it’s the hospital’s policy which is at fault because - of course - how else can you prove the child was born if the hospital that delivered her refuses to provide proof? Speaking to NTUH got us nowhere with this as their policy was absolute and an exemption could not be made

So we spoke to our household registration office which is in Banqiao , New Taipei City. They were hugely sympathetic and were well aware of NTUH’s refusal to change policy, having spoken to them multiple times in the past to try get them to change their policy.

As a work around however they were happy to provide an English translated copy of the household registration, as long as I wrote and signed a promise that I would return later with the proof from NTUH of her English name

I applied on Monday and picked it up Wednesday morning. I can now use this as proof for NTUH to provide an English birth certificate with my child’s English name. In turn this enables me to apply for her passport (both TW and UK) which will include her English name next to her Chinese name, as opposed to just an “also known as” name