Names spelled with diacritics

[Anonymousmember667]

Apologies if this has been discussed or answered before but I have a question if anyone knows the answer, or who to ask or has any experience please?

So some names have diacritics, usually the name originates from another language other than english. Maybe the most common ones being Seán, Siobhán, Chloé, Zoë, René, Beyoncé etc etc.

Say for example, the name Chloé, Are there any issues registering this name with the diacritic on the “e” in England; on the Birth Certificate, with the NHS, in the school system, with banks, on her passport, driving licence etc etc.

Most people wouldnt know but Its simple to press the alt gr button + the letter to get most of these diacritics on a keyboard or hold the button on an apple keyboard, but do government systems and organisations systems generally support diacritic names?

Is there a right or expectation for organisations to spell your name correctly in England? Doesn't GDPR say this?

Is she destined for a lifetime of her name being spelt wrong or is she allowed to be a Chloé with an “é” !?

Thanks for any advise or experience anyone has 🙏

Which documentation please? On her birth certificate as I guess thats everyones first official document. What others?

It always so good to know that whatever the subject at least one person will know five or six trans women, or five people who have 3 or more gifted kids et al.

My daughter Ænåbẽłlë has to put up with this. I have to make thousands of GDPR rectification requests every year.

Apparently I have a nickname at the Information Commissioner’s Office, but I haven’t been able to discover what it is yet.

best answer so far!! 😂

Like it, going to put that name forward for any future gds😄

Why are you asking if this correct when that PP @BlueyNeedsToFuckOff included a link to the official Home Office guidance that says in very clear terms that diacritic marks are not allowed?

I would also point out that the Home Office explain that their policy is set in order to comply with ICAO regulations (International Civil Aviation Organisation). I suspect that the EU has the same policy so the millions of EU citizens who have diacritics in their names (and come from countries where they DO know how to read them) do not have them either. Have you ever seen an Irish person’s EU passport?

If I recall correctly from when I learned French they often omit accents when writing in capital letters, yet still manage to read what is written.

I always thought it was spelt Chloë.

I can't prove it of course but strangely there are 3 Zoes amongst my work colleagues' children - mine and 2 others. One born in 2008, one in 2010, one in 2014. The 4th is my daughter's head teacher. The 5th is a team member of a parallel team (she is the Zoey).

Why would I lie about something so trivial? To prove that I know that people do still use the accent?

Maybe it's significant but the 3 using the diaresis are the kids.

Å isn’t a mere accent, it’s a separate letter in the Swedish alphabet which has 29 letters, and also the Danish/norwegian which also have 29 but two of them are different from Swedish - they still have the Æ and Ø.

Because it seems strange to me that one government department (births, deaths and marriages) recognises names
with accents/ diacritics and another one ( home office) does not. Why are they inconsistent?

Gaeilge is the Irish name for the language. English would use Gaelic ( yes I know it is a group of languages.)
I might say a French person spoke French they would say Francais.

That’s a different question to “is this correct?” when you had the official document right in front of you.

And the inconsistency is also explained in the document- to comply with ICAO regulations. Just read the bloody document!

Umlauts matter, schwul versus schwül. :) I can tolerate one better than the other (I hate humid weather).

This is a great point too.

perhaps BMD has to accommodate records predating computerisation and international standardisation? Whereas passports have to conform to international standards. There may also be different standards for checking dodgy input into computer systems - if you’re guarding against injection of dodgy code then restricting input to a standard alphabet may be applied?

I have an Irish name with a fada, which changes the sound of the vowel. I use it when spelling my own name but it's often missed elsewhere. I doubt that most people would know or care that technically, the pronunciation is different without it.

It's not in any of my official stuff.
I'm not a bit bothered.

I suspect most organisations keep the names stored as capital letters (that’s how it’s shown on passports and bank cards for example) and capital letters stylistically drop the accent, so it wouldn’t be incorrect for them to be CHLOE.

But given you’re operating in England, whose language doesn’t use é I think you’d be as successful demanding that an institute spells Phoebe with a pi symbol instead of a P because you want to honour the Greek spelling.

Am I alone in having to google “ diacritics”?

Afaik they pragmatically use transliteration eg Ørsted becomes Oersted where systems don’t allow extended character sets.

Response of the month for me!🤣

Don’t you mean a phi?

I have an a/e name, such as Diane/Diana Julie/Julia and have a hard enough time getting the correct version of that.

You seem to be overly focused on ‘the rules’!

’Are they allowed to demand…?’
’Are they entitled to…?’
’Is it right that…?’

Posters have answered, given their own lived experience, and even linked you to government guidance…and yet you’re still coming back with the same questions that have been answered!!

The old expression, “like a dog with a bone” springs to mind!! I can only imagine how exhausting you must be to live with! 🤯

But that’s old English. It’s like saying Latin and Italian are the same language. They aren’t.

But we aren’t talking about being in Sweden 🫤
you wouldn’t expect authorities in the UK to use Korean characters would you