Different naming conventions - dual nationality and passports

[InvisibleDragon]

I'm looking for some advice on how to record my baby's name on the birth certificate (currently 36weeks pregnant - no baby here yet).

My husband is from Egypt and we want our baby to have both Egyptian and UK nationality when he is born. In Egypt there is a patronymic naming system, so a baby has their own first name, then the name of their father, grandfather etc are recorded and finally the family name.

As an example, if my husband was called Mohammad and his father and grandfather were called Karim and Yusuf, his official name would be:
Mohammad Karim Yusuf Surname. Our baby would then be BabyName Mohammad Karim Yusuf Surname.

What is the best way to record this on a UK birth certificate and passport, so that when we apply for Egyptian nationality and passport the names match up?

I can think of 3 options:

1. Just put BabyName Surname on both UK and Egyptian documents and forget about the other names.


2. Put BabyName Surname on UK documents and add the extra family names on the Egyptian documents


3. Record the extra family names as middle names on the UK documents and record them as usual on the Egyptian documents.

Has anyone been in this position before? What did you do?

I might be really overthinking this, but I'm feeling anxious about the names needing to "match" on all the documentation. Any advice would be appreciated!

We are in Japan, which doesn't have middle names at all.

We put the middle name on the UK passport, no middle name on the Japanese one, and the spelling was different for the first name.

Think: Louisa Jane Suzuki on the UK one, and Suzuki Ruiza on the Japanese one.

The UK passport office was fine with this, and the Japanese authorities only want to see the Japanese passport anyway.

However, I don't know whether the Egyptian authorities are OK with non matching passports. Perhaps the best way would be to ask this question on a forum or FB group that is specifically for bicultural Egyptian families? There will be plenty of other people who have faced similar dilemmas.

I did not take my husband's name but we gave the kids my husband's surname (as that is usual with bicultural kids in Japan regardless of whether the foreign parent is male or femaleit just makes life easier for them to have a Japanese surname here)but in exchange, I expected to have be the one who had the main "say" picking the first and middle names, although we discussed it together and I didn't pick any names that my husband disliked.

Is it really really important in Egypt to do all these paternal-family names? Is your husband really traditional? Looking at the sort of idea you suggest here, I personally don't like the heavy emphasis on the paternal line. It seems very patriarchal and completely writing the mother's preferences out of the picture. I am assuming that your son is most likely going to have his father's surname if he is growing up in Egypt--maybe Mum should have more say over the other names and be able to express some preferences of her own, rather than insisting that every single name has to be all about his family. If your husband was happy to marry a non-Egyptian, he should be able to understand the idea that some things may be done differently to a traditional Egyptian family.

We just use all 4 names on both.

first name, middle, middle, last name

In the uk it’s read as x2 middle names, here people assume his first name is three names? So I only write the first name on most forms unless official.

IME names have to match. Where I'm from everyone has two surnames (dad's+ mum's), so our baby has both and it's double barreled

I have two passports - a Spanish one with FirstName Surname1 Surname2, and another (also EU) with only Surname1.

It hasn't been a problem at all, but when I turned 18 I was advised by country 2's embassy when I renewed passport, to add Surname2 so I would have the same name in all documents.

However, country 2 doesn't do multiple surnames unless you hyphen, so I'll be FirstName Surname1-Surname2 on that passport, even though day to day I only use Surname1.

I write my full name as it appears in my Spanish passport on official forms. I only use Surname1 otherwise.

I'd personally keep the same name in both nationalities, unless all the family names don't particularly appeal to you and you'd rather not include them as middle names on the UK documents.

Meant to add, the 'name change' for passport 2 - aka adding a hyphen - it's taking bloody ages. Which is why I'd advise to have the same name from the start, because it might prove extremely annoying bureaucracy-wise to change it later on.

Thank you for the replies!

I think for me it's important that the names match. Egyptian bureaucracy is a massive pain and the UK home office can be very "computer says no" if there is any hint of discrepancy. I'd rather avoid any big stresses or paperwork headaches in the future.

@greenteafiend My husband really isn't very traditional - we've already agreed that because the baby gets his family name (I didn't change mine) I get to pick his given name.

I think he's more worried about making sure the name works and is easy to use in both countries (his own name is usually mispronounced in the UK, so he's sensitive about this). That meant he doesn't want the baby to have a "middle" name because that's not how names work in Egypt, but he's happy to leave all the patronymic family names off the birth certificate etc. Thinking it through, we're expecting a boy, so the patronymics "work" in the UK this time, but would be quite odd if we have a girl in future.

I think the answer is to just use FirstName LastName and forget about all the patronymics. They do get used in daily life though - it's much more common in Egypt to refer to people as "FirstName Father'sName" than "FirstName Family name" - but it doesn't mean they all need to be recorded on official documents!