Allowed Characters in Passports

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Re: Allowed Characters in Passports

Postby TeneReef » 2011-01-22, 9:37

It would be really weird if Indian alphabets were allowed in Indian Passports.
The document is digraphic (in Roman/Dev'naag'ri ) but the entries are always in Roman Script. :)
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Re: Allowed Characters in Passports

Postby Saim » 2011-01-22, 10:21

TeneReef wrote:It would be really weird if Indian alphabets were allowed in Indian Passports.
The document is digraphic (in Roman/Dev'naag'ri ) but the entries are always in Roman Script. :)

Why would that be weird? I would expect that a passport could be written in each of the official languages (in their own scripts), with accompanying Hindi/Devanagari and English/Roman translations/transliterations. If it's not like that, it's a shame really.

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Re: Allowed Characters in Passports

Postby TeneReef » 2011-01-23, 11:23

For passports only the official languages of the Indian Union are accepted: Hindi and English.
Not local official languages. :)
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Re: Allowed Characters in Passports

Postby Lietmotiv » 2011-01-26, 21:33

Moldavian Passports are written in two languages ,Moldavian and English,although our ids are written in 3 languages, Moldavian,Russian and English.

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Re: Allowed Characters in Passports

Postby md0 » 2011-02-05, 14:55

I have never saw a Turkish Cypriot's ID but I believe their name will be printed in the Turkish alphabet with their Ş, Ç, Ö etc and the transliteration field will simply be sans-diacritics. I'll confirm that soon.


Not so soon, but I have finally found the answer. In the back side of the application form for passports, it says this: Pasaport sahibinin adı ve soyadı Türkçe yazıdır.
And they don't have to transliterate in roman characters.
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Re: Allowed Characters in Passports

Postby TeneReef » 2011-02-07, 10:22

I have a Slovenian friend born here in Croatia, and in her Slovenian passport her last name has been kept original: Milić and not Milič. ;)
So, I think in Slovenian documents the original spelling of one's name is kept, even when not Slovenian. ;)
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Re: Allowed Characters in Passports

Postby Lada » 2011-02-08, 19:35

AndreiB wrote:Moldavian Passports are written in two languages ,Moldavian and English,although our ids are written in 3 languages, Moldavian,Russian and English.

That's interesting. Is Moldavian ID valid in Russia? Russian passport is in Russian only and it is valid in Ukraine, Belorussia, Kazakhstan, may be in Moldavia too?

Passports for trips abroad are written in Russian and English.
Transliteration of the name is made according to English orthography - Иван Иванов / Ivan Ivanov.

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Re: Allowed Characters in Passports

Postby Linguaphile » 2022-08-08, 4:40

md0 wrote:I read that article on ethic Poles in Lithuania on NY Times but they seem to have some kind of a paywall so I will quote instead (thanks God my browser kept the page in the cache, I can't access the page anymore).
MAISIAGALA, Lithuania (AP) — Poland and Lithuania are bonded by history, culture and Catholic faith but deeply divided over the letter w.

Used a lot in Polish, the letter doesn't exist in Lithuanian. That and other spelling differences are irritating Lithuania's Polish minority, who demand the right to spell their names in Polish in passports and other documents.
....
"They should have amended that stupid law a long time ago and let us live in peace. This has gone on for too long," said 60-year-old Stanislawa Monkewicz, a retired teacher. Her name is Stanislava Monkevic in Lithuanian.

This is a thread from 10 years ago, which I noticed today only because a spammer posted links for Nike or Adidas or something which I'm sure will be deleted at some point, but those posts brought this thread to my attention, so.....

I only recently learned about this issue, from reading the book Minu Poola by Anna Tiido, so it's interesting to find this thread here now so soon after reading about it elsewhere. But I also googled it, and found some recent updates. It's interesting timing (both for me having recently read about this issue, and finding this thread today) - the change went into effect just a couple of months ago.
Dobrowolska, Tomaszewski and Pietkiewicz: Poles in Lithuania gear up for name change
As new rules came into force in Lithuania in early May, allowing for ID documents to feature the original spelling of names and surnames, the first Poles in Lithuania, including politicians, are applying to change their passports.

The country's Justice Minister Evelina Dobrovolska has already lodged her application, and, once it's approved, she will be called Ewelina Dobrowolska.
She will be joined by Tomasevski whose name will be spelled Waldemar Tomaszewski after the change. MP Beata Petkevic also plans to change her surname to be spelled Pietkiewicz. "I plan to do this, it is important to me. Our community has been seeking this for years, so I will definitely take advantage of it," the MP told BNS.

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Re: Allowed Characters in Passports

Postby Karavinka » 2022-08-09, 16:41

It's an old post but since it's necro'd already and I don't remember seeing this 10 years ago, well.

I'll need to hear the Lithuanian side of the story. The bigger neighbors have a tendency to think they were nice to the "little guys" all the while f***ing around as they please. Given Lithuanian's precarious geography I'd understand if it's a way to de-Polonize (and de-Russify, a different story) and stand on their own. I'm for it; "Poles also live there" is a dangerous thing to admit, remember Sudentenland and Crimea? Sure, Poland may be a fine country now, but who knows in the future?

Disclaimer: I know very little about Lithuanian history. I'm more likely to sympathize with Lithuanian claims over Polish claims, and Polish claims over Russian claims because f*** "great powers".



As for South Korea, they allow only Hangul and Roman, no diacritics of any kind. The following gets a bit longer as Hanja's official status is complicated.

Similar story, the Chinese nationals could only have Pinyin-based names in the foreigner registration cards in Korea. For example, a name like 李善花 will always be Li Shanhua, never Lee Seonhwa unless they naturalize and legally change their name to Lee Seonhwa. Spelled in Korean, this person will always be 리샨화 (transcription of Chinese) and not 이선화 based on Korean Hanja phonetics.

Only in 2019, those who can demonstrate themselves as 1. historical Chinese minority in Korea (they must be permanent residents before Korea's establishment with diplomatic ties with PRC in 1992, or direct descendants thereof) OR 2. direct descendants of those who had Empire of Korea citizenship until 1910 are now allowed to use the Hanja-based Korean in the bracket: Li Shanhua (이선화).

This still does not concern the Han Chinese, as this was more of an exception granted to ethnic Koreans in China than a general rule. All Chinese proper names are transcribed based on Mandarin pronunciation, never based on their Hanja equivalent, and Hanja only remains supplementary for domestics, if available.

Similar practice with Japanese names. 国木田花子 Kunikida Hanako will always be 구니키다 하나코(Kunikida Hanako), never 국기전화자(Gukgijeon Hwaja) based on Hanja. Kanji doesn't exist on foreigner legal docs. Upon naturalization they can choose to become:

구니키다 하나코(Kunikida Hanako), keep pronunciation but discard Kanji completely. OR
국기전화자(國木田花子, Gukgijeon Hwaja), allowed to list de-Simplified Hanja (note 国 vs 國) but discard phonetics.

They cannot be 국기전화자(國木田花子, Kunikida Hanako).

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Re: Allowed Characters in Passports

Postby Linguaphile » 2022-08-12, 13:34

Karavinka wrote:I'll need to hear the Lithuanian side of the story. The bigger neighbors have a tendency to think they were nice to the "little guys" all the while f***ing around as they please. Given Lithuanian's precarious geography I'd understand if it's a way to de-Polonize (and de-Russify, a different story) and stand on their own. I'm for it; "Poles also live there" is a dangerous thing to admit, remember Sudentenland and Crimea? Sure, Poland may be a fine country now, but who knows in the future?

Disclaimer: I know very little about Lithuanian history.

The history is quite a bit more complicated than that. For example, Poland and Lithuania were part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth together from the 16th century to the 18th, but official languages then were Polish, Ruthenian, and Latin - not Lithuanian. The current Lithuanian capital (Vilnius) actually belonged to Poland (as Wilno) between World War I and World War II. And so on. So there have been a lot of historical connections between Poland and Lithuania throughout history, some friendly, some not. But as I understand it the issue was never about denying that Poles live there or anything like that; that was acknowledged, but Lithuanian law required names to be written phonetically using the Lithuanian alphabet.
Anyway, the only reason I posted was to provide the update that the law about spelling of names has been changed, so that it now allows the Polish spellings. I only recently even learned about the issue, so I'm sure I don't have the nuances.

Karavinka

Re: Allowed Characters in Passports

Postby Karavinka » 2022-08-14, 20:41

Well, it's their choice but I wouldn't feel comfortable letting a sizable minority who share identity with a bigger neighboring nation to strengthen their affiliation with their supposed mother country. And any kind of "complex" historical ties could turn into a reason to subjugate and/or Anschluss in the minds of those who look up to the moustache man who used to live in Berlin.

I'm not accusing Poland for anything, by the way. Wannabe moustache men can pop up anywhere, anytime. I see no less than 5 of them in 2022 but I won't list any as I don't want to spark a political debate why some nation's claims over others are "complex."

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Re: Allowed Characters in Passports

Postby md0 » 2022-08-19, 15:24

For what it's worth, I've noticed on friends' residence cards, that Germany preserves Latin diacritics e.g. in Slavic names. It seems like public authorities have access to keyboard layouts that can type them too.

I don't think it's actually related to the fact that Sorbian is a recognised minority language, but I guess that also means they need to have a technical way to type Sorbian names - at least in Brandenburg and Saxony.
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