My child has both Taiwan and my home country passport.
Dealing with mileage and stuff I only now noticed that the Taiwan passport lists only the Taiwanese family name as surname, the child has given name but two surnames (mother and father).
Is it common or was it a mistake?
It should be Waiguofamily Chen, Mary Mary. Instead it is Chen, Mary Mary Wuaiguofamily.
Can it be changed? Is it legal to only consider the Taiwanese name as family name? How about other mixed kids with dual nationality here, what are your experiences?
This came up just the other day. My kids have the pinyin of their Chinese name with an AKA bit with their full English name (including surname). I’m fine with that.
I think the final solution in the other thread was that unless you register the full English version of their name on your Household Registration when first registering their birth, then it’s difficult (possibly impossible?) to change it.
When we applied for our kids’ passports, we could pick the pinyin translation but we couldn’t change it to whatever we wanted. We couldn’t just arbitrarily add their English surname, for example. If the HHR had a preferred English translation directly on it, I’m sure that would have been different.
外文別名加簽：擬加簽之外文別名應符合一般使用姓名習慣，一般習用之外文別名應有姓氏，並應與外文姓名之姓氏一致(如 Peter Lin、John Chang、Linda Su等)，可免附證件；倘為特殊姓名者，應依規定檢附已有習用外文別名之相關證明文件(如國內外政府核發之外文身分證明文件、醫院核發出生證明或教育主管機關正式立案之公、私立學校製發之證明文件等)。
So by this info I am thinking they will allow only to add ‘also known as’ instead of adding the foreign surname as family name together with the Taiwanese family name at the name area.
My child’s Chinese name only has one 姓 which is the Taiwanese one. The name on the foreign passport however has both Taiwanese and foreigner surnames. I talked to my partner and the info I got is when registering my child they did not accept to put the foreign name as surname because it is not in the Chinese version of the name.
For exame 王大明，
Lalaland passport: Michael John Smith Wang
Taiwan passport: Wang, Michael John Smith
What I think is most correct: Smith Wang, Michael John
At the time my child was born I couldn’t speak Chinese well, so I didn’t deal with the registration here. So now the information is that there was several disagreements with the issuing institution and they would only accept the foreign name if it was in the Chinese name already, 4 characters for example. Otherwise it would only be considered as given name.
I am concerned what future implications those might have. I am already having trouble for mileage accumulation, but concerned about serious stuff like insurance beneficiary etc in the future.
That raises a very good point. It’s one thing to only accept a pinyin version of a Chinese name but screwing it around like that could cause all kinds of issues.
Basically it comes down to: for anything official in Taiwan and/or written in Chinese, use the Taiwanese ID documents. For anything official anywhere else, use the Lalaland passport. The names being different shouldn’t become an issue, as long as you are clear on where to use which set of ID documents.
That’s what I also think should work, until it doesn’t… especially in the future when need to prove paternity/maternity/affiliation etc and they ask for the other country’s papers as well.
