Help!! Patronymic hell...

Hi there,

My wife and mother of our three children (Russian National) now wants to complete AN1 and apply for UK citizenship and then passport.

On her international Russian passport her name is shown with her patronymic in Cyrillic, but this is not transliterated.

On many of our UK documents including life in the UK test etc, the certificates show the Anglicised patronymic. Our marriage certificate shows both names. She is thus 'known by other names than those shown on the passport'.

If we complete 1.6 (other names used) on the form we are tacitly agreeing that there is a problem and that we have to get her name changed on her Russian passport, which we believe is not possible and is certainly not at all convenient either.

If we don't complete this section though, we are not complying with the requirements on the form and are indeed submitting documents which clearly show the darned patronymic...

In either case we could lose the application fee.

Has anyone come across this situation and does anyone have any advice as to what on earth we should do in this case. I am minded just to fill in 1.5 without the patronymic, submit the documents and hope for the best - but given the Vogon nature of officialdom, this is probably not the right way forward...

Thanks in advance!!

I don't think this is an issue about having other names. Rather it is about how the name is written down using different alphabets.

Probably you will be ok if you add a cover letter and explain the issue in detail. There have been other people with similar issues and they are aware of it.

Dealing with HMPO when she applies for a British passport is likely to be more troublesome, but at that point she will already be a British citizen. And, anyway, my understanding is that Russia does not allow dual citizenship, so, will she have to give her Russian passport up?

Yep, definitely cover letter explaining - and I'd say preferably one with some sort of legal authority (like an attorney) explaining the local laws and why the two names are the same thing, it's just a question of transliteration. It may not help with passport, but it should work for citizenship. It did for me, I've now been naturalized and just waiting for passport to come through.

My situation, different to yours but

At the time of my naturalization application, I was already a dual national, USA and Latvia - but actually am ethnically Russian. My original birth certificate is Soviet-issue, in Russian, including my patronymic. My USA passport reflects that exactly and has my full name - First Patronymic FamilyName transliterated from the Russian Cyrillic in an Anglicized way. That's the way I've used my name in the UK, too, but mostly WITHOUT my patronymic. My LATVIAN passport has ~First ~FamilyName, but transliterated and written out according to Latvian language law and with no patronymic, as they do not really 'exist' in Latvian language law.

As a result, I had to have a letter produced by an attorney in Latvia, explaining this aspect of Latvian language law to UKBA/HO/HMPO. It explained how the two names are the SAME NAME, and only spelled and transliterated differently because of Latvian language laws. The letter further explained that there is no way for me to change my name legally in Latvia to reflect the Anglicized spelling, because it would go against specific aspects of the language law and would included letters that aren't valid in Latvian.

It worked for citizenship, I was issued my naturalization certificate under the LATVIAN spelling as that's the passport I've lived in the UK under. I'm hoping that this letter does its magic with HMPO, but I can't comment on that yet to be honest. If it doesn't and I have more hoops to jump through, it at least definitely worked for citizenship and that's the more important of the two anyway!

Thank you so much for your replies. I called the Home Office this morning - even they could not advise definitively and instead gave me an email address for further enquiries.

What they did say, however, is that our case for naturalization appears to be very straightforward since my wife has been living here for ten years, has all the necessary documentation and we have three UK born children - the view of the person I spoke to was that it would be very much up to us as to which name we wanted on the naturalization certificate as she believed that either would be acceptable with a covering letter.

I've sent an email, and will post any result back here so that it may help anyone else in the same situation.

It looks to me though as if it will be the Passport Office who needs to advise and I will be making an enquiry to them today as well. It really is crazy when you come to think about it - the Russian passport is effectively showing two names!