First British Passport - Trouble issuing due to misaligned names

Hello,

I recently became a British citizen and had two nationalities prior to this: Italian and American.

I was legally in the UK with my Italian passport given I was here as an EU citizen. This means my application for citizenship was made and accepted using my Italian passport. I now have a problem where HM Passport Office will not issue my first British passport because the name in my Italian passport does not exactly match the name in my US passport (they have asked to see both passports as part of the application process).

To keep the explanation simple, I'll use the example of the American president JFK to explain my situation.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy's full name was made up of his mother's maiden name (Fitzgerald) and his father's surname (Kennedy). The heritable part of JFK's name was Kennedy, meaning all his children inherited just the name Kennedy. This is similar to tradition in Italy where your full name is your given name and the combination of your mother's maiden name and your father's surname, and this is the case with my name in my Italian passport, where my given name appears in one line (i.e. John), and then my surname appears as the combination of my parents' names (i.e. Fitzgerald Kennedy). Having said that, my last name for all intents and purposes is just "Kennedy", but according to Italian tradition the middle name (mother's maiden name) and the family name are put together in one line as the surname.

The problem is that in the US, where I was born, middle names appear in passports as part of the "Given Names", and because I consider my true last name to be just "Kennedy" rather than "Fitzgerald Kennedy", only Kennedy appears in the surname line and John Fitzgerald appears in the Given Name line.

This causes a mismatch between the name in my US passport, where the surname is just Kennedy, and the name in the Italian passport where the surname is Fitzgerald Kennedy. The annoying thing is that both passports show the full name as John Fitzgerald Kennedy, with the same birth date and location, but HMPO will not issue the British passport until the US passport name is aligned to match that of the name in the Italian passport. I do not want to change the name on my US passport as I don't believe I need to - it correctly states my last name as the heritable part of my name (i.e. Kennedy) - and acknowledges my middle name as my mother's maiden name.

The other alternative they have suggested is getting a letter from the US Embassy in London stating that they cannot change my US passport's name, but finding the right person at the US Embassy to do this, and whether or not they would even be able to do this is I do not know.

So - has anyone out there encountered this issue? Any suggestions/solutions?

Thanks in advance.

Dan

Also see this sticky.

For HM Passport Office to issue you a British passport, the names in all your identification documents must match.

You could try getting a letter from the Italian Embassy stating that they refuse to change your name (they are more likely to refuse).

You could make "Fitzgerald Kennedy" (or its equivalent for you) your legal last name and have the appropriate changes made to your US passport before reapplying.

Alternatively, you could apply to have a CoE-RoA affixed in either your American or Italian passport. That is much more expensive and only valid for the lifetime of that passport, but does not involve changing your name.