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 🙏

It’s taking on the name and anglicising it by dropping the fada. Keeping - what is presumably - an approximation of the Irish pronunciation doesn’t mean it’s not anglicised in spelling.

Importing names and adapting for English use doesn’t require the names to be changed to follow more usual letter combinations.

I can’t follow this at all. The fact that there are speakers of native British languages that use diacritics is completely irrelevant to the OP’s post, and everything else really.

A pp explained in detail why, internationally, diacritics are generally dropped in many records.

And the use of diacritics in Welsh etc has nothing to do with English speakers adapting names from elsewhere that they like the sound of.

Are there really people in the UK who pronounce the name Zoe to rhyme with toe because they haven’t spotted an umlaut but would pronounce it zo-ee with one? Surely it’s more likely they just don’t know how to pronounce the name at all.

No, the word anglicise means “make English”. That is not the same as “import as a loan word”.

In which case shouldn’t English people transliterate Seán as Shaun and Séan as Shane rather than calling their kid Sean?

Maybe go back and read the OP again. She’s asking whether UK government organisations can accommodate diacritics and also whether a person can insist that a diacritic be used. Since we are talking about government institutions, it is pretty relevant to look at the official languages of the country as you’d expect the system to accommodate their spellings and script.

We’ve established that UK passports do not allow it, but that is nothing to do with supremacy of English on the UK, it is related to the supremacy of English as the international language of aviation. Even then, other nations such as Ireland have chosen to disregard international rules and prioritise their own citizens’ language requirements.

@Campbellcarrotsoup I have a diacritic in my first name and it's not on my British (Welsh) birth certificate.

I don’t think it would be possible to be that prescriptive given that names can be pretty much spelled however the parents choose. It’s simple and easy to say “only the 26 letters of the English alphabet allowed, with no diacritics”.

I’m genuinely still unclear what the point is.

‘Sean’ gets taken up in England (and elsewhere) without the fada. So there’s an issue about keeping the pronunciation but not the fada? Why is that not anglicising the name?

Because the letters “ean” do not make the sound “on” in any English word.

@SilenceOfTheTimTams ,And the use of diacritics in Welsh etc has nothing to do with English speakers adapting names from elsewhere that they like the sound of.
There are many Welsh names that are used by English speakers. The only one that is popular that has a diacritic is Siân.

She said:

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

To which the answer is no.

What Ireland does is neither here nor there.

I was especially tickled by the GDPR part of the question.

@SilenceOfTheTimTams ‘Sean’ gets taken up in England (and elsewhere) without the fada. So there’s an issue about keeping the pronunciation but not the fada? Why is that not anglicising the name?
Anglicising the name would be saying it as 'Seen', or spelling it Shaun or Shawn.

You’re being deliberately obtuse. You were claiming a minute ago that the fact that the UK has more than one official language was not relevant to the question. Now you’re saying it’s not relevant to the answer.

Which is it?

The fact that Welsh is an official UK language would not be relevant if she had asked “can my child insist on the use of the Korean alphabet in official government communications?” because the UK has no official language that uses the Korean alphabet.

However it IS relevant because Welsh uses the same letters as English, but with added diacritics. So it would follow that the UK government might have thought about that in setting up its systems.

And Ireland has the same situation with English and Irish. So it is relevant by analogy.

I’d happily admit obtuseness if I can understand what you’re on about.

I repeated the OP’s question and answered it. How does the fact of and character of the Welsh or Irish languages affect that?

If the UK government (and loads of companies) doesn’t mandate diacritics so what?

@SilenceOfTheTimTams
Many organisations operate UK wide not specifically in England.
Though OP is interested in what happens in England, it doesn’t follow that all UK organisations will consider only the English language when they are setting up their systems.

Came here to say this.

My name has a circumflex and it’s on my birth certificate but no other official documents.

I use it at work in my signature but obviously not my email address. Most of my family use it and some of my friends. There’s times when I can’t really be bothered to add it in myself.

On the one hand it’s a right PITA but at the end of the day it is how you spell my name correctly.

Our of my best friends growing up was a Zöe. It's the reason I still know the code (ALT 148) to produce that letter on the computer. It isn't hard to make the effort if you want to.

@LadyMonicaBaddingham ,the spelling is usually Zoë.

our eldest is called Zoe and we were talking about people pronouncing names and she says everyone knows how to pronounce her name even without the accent over the e.

we have family and friends all over the world and it’s always been pronounced correctly. The accent in my opinion isn’t needed.

What Ireland does is neither here nor there.

What Ireland does regarding passports is interesting though. The Irish language accent, the fada, can be included in a person’s name in the the main body of the passport. (The text is also written in Irish as well as in English.)

The accent is omitted from the machine-readable 2 lines of text however.

A compromise it seems, though I’m not sure the practice extends to accents from other languages. Irish and English are Ireland’s official languages.

I’d say that spelling is definitely more common. I’ve never seen the é spelling.

@MrsTerryPratchett ,Chloé | The Perfume Shop

I agree, it is not only strange but shameful that the native British languages, all of which use accents, are disregarded by computer systems used in the UK.

Welsh uses a circumflex, Irish uses acute accents and Scottish Gaelic uses grave accents. Even English, until the start of the computer age, used diæreses to indicate that two vowels were to be pronounced separately, so words like cooperate and Noel were often spelt coöperate and Noël. It also used to use a grave accent, mainly on words ending in 'ed' to indicate that the 'e' should be sounded, e.g. dogged versus doggèd or blessed versus blessèd. You see it a lot in old print, especially hymnbooks.

But computers seems to have put an end to that, and although births can be registered with the correct diacritics (or even the wrong ones!), nobody else seems to think it matters. Perhaps it's not so important for English when most words are known anyway, but for the Celtic languages I'd say it's essential that they are correctly used.

To answer your question OP, I have no idea about the right to have one's name correctly accented, especially when the spelling is otherwise correct. But I'm not sure whether you'd get anywhere by demanding it, if the software isn't programmed to recognised accents. You could try a campaign or petition to have it debated in parliament - I for one would sign it.

@GloriaMonday
Chloé is the French spelling but they pronounce it more Clo-ay than ee.