Names spelled with diacritics

Appreciate you are referring to UK passports but given the OP gave two very Irish examples in Seán and Siobhán (I would assume OP must have an Irish connection to consider these names but maybe not), I can safely say that Irish passports absolutely allow you to use the fada (á) as it is an integral part of the name. If the OP has no Irish/French (Chloè) connection, I personally think the use of ‘diacritics’ is nothing more than a meaningless affectation

What about Welsh speakers @ELS20 ?

Is Wales not part of the UK anymore?

Unless you need the diacritic to make the name make sense in your native language, it just makes no sense to use a name like that in the UK where those diacritics don’t exist in our language. As you say it just opens up multiple possible administrative issues for the child. My husband is of mixed European descent and we speak two languages, one of which uses accents (diacritics) and we would never use them in our child’s name as we are British and live in the UK.

I'm guessing Chlo -eh instead of Chlo - ee

Would it be Sh?n or See?n

Therefore, theyre is spelled incorrectly. There's no such word as 'theyre'.
Using a contraction as a comparative example doesn't really work.

As Whatpattern says, the word and the letter itself can have a different meaning without the accent, in Irish, at least.
For example é is a word in Irish, meaning 'it'. Without the accent it's simply the letter e, agus sin é.

Do you pronounce it with an upward inflection? 🙃

I received some tickets through the post today, even though the electronic form I filled in excepted my name (Siân) when I looked at my ticket my name is written as "Si?n" 😔

If the baby is not born/registered already, then I would simply avoid the issue by not using a name with accents on it.

I’d consider a word spelt without an accent as being spelt incorrectly I have to say.

Without the accent the word is pronounced differently and often has a different meaning, or more usually no meaning. At least that’s the case in Irish.

That’s really interesting, thanks.

It's short for 'butty' which means a fellow-workman, friend, pal.

According to Wright's English Dialect Dictionary it was widespread in England.

The word travelled to the USA and turned into 'buddy' and 'bud'. American English changes t to d in some words - listen to the way Americans say 'duty' and 'beauty'.

The spelling is correct, spelling is the way letters are arranged - it’s an omission of a mark you’re referring to. For example, they’re / theyre are both spelled the same but the apostrophe is missing in the second one.

In Scotland, you can now ask for diacritics to be used on birth certificates. No idea about the rest of the UK.

I’m assuming the Welsh use of butt has a meaning other than bum 😅
Does it?

Me too but I never heard it actually said until I worked in Merthyr!

Actually, more correctly, the Data Protection Commission have been brought to the High Court about it.
https://www.casemine.com/commentary/uk/de-spainn-v-an-coimisi%C3%BAn-um-chosaint-sonra%C3%AD:-refining-data-correction-protocols-under-gdpr/view

From the judgement:
The Commission's interpretation, which deemed the inability to process diacritics as a technical constraint sufficient to deny the correction request, was found lacking. The Court asserted that reasonable measures should be taken to ensure data accuracy, implying that technological advancements should mitigate previously cited constraints.

Of course, this all relates to a different country, but I’m guessing the equivalent agency in the UK is the one you need to address your concerns to, OP.

At the moment no. The company say the computers can’t do so, an old system apparently. They are considering making changes they say. They have been taken to the High Court about it.

Yes, indeed. I said ‘national’, not ‘nationalised’.

From Aer Lingus’s website:

Founded in 1936, Aer Lingus is Ireland’s national airline, proudly connecting Ireland to the world for nearly a century. As part of the International Airlines Group (IAG), Aer Lingus operates over 100 routes between Europe and North America, and beyond, from its main hub at Dublin Airport. The airline is synonymous with warm Irish hospitality, embodying the rich cultural heritage that makes every journey unique.

Aer Lingus is obviously and rightly proud of being the principal Irish carrier. But it doesn’t take diacritics for booking, apparently.

Computers are probably a large part of the problem now.
I’ll bet there’s lots of input sanitising code which uses regular expressions allowing only [a-z][A-Z] in name fields. Finding and consistently changing all instances to an agreed character set isn’t trivial. And then there would be ongoing issues with names originally entered in the basic alphabet not matching to subsequent use of the extended set.

Aer Lingus is a private company now and the Irish government has no longer any say in its running.

I’m all in favour of support for native British languages. But there are lots of ways to do that. I’m not sure diacritics in passports or on driving licences is a worthwhile one though.

If Aer Lingus - Ireland’s national airline - doesn’t accept diacritics for booking, that might suggest that even in countries where diacritics in names are much more common there isn’t any strong issue with dropping them in records and documents.

Regarding international standards and conventions — the machine readable code on a passport doesn’t allow accents, but many countries include accents as part of the regular text. I just checked my son’s Irish passport and the fada is included in his name (except in the machine readable part). A quick google indicates that many countries do the same.

If lots of countries do it then it can’t be that technically complex. Cost could be an issue. Supporting the UK’s minority languages would be sufficient reason to change imho but obviously opinions will differ.

It certainly looked like the point. Otherwise slavery and suffrage wouldn’t have been the only subjects mentioned.

I doubt there is a “compelling” reason not to change systems so that Chloé can have a passport with an é in it. I imagine it’s all about cost, complexity and international standards and conventions. The government would probably think there are better uses for resource and money.

And I suppose one might ask whether there’s a compelling reason, or even a sufficient one, for change.

Thank you. I did think it was clear that I meant accepting the status quo just because ‘that’s how it is’ isn’t the answer to anything!