Immigrationboards.com

In the AN form there are various fields requesting the name of places.

To give in example, my dad was born in a town which changed name somewhen in the 80s, but he has got the old name in all its documents.
Also, he was born during a war, in a prisoners' camp in an occupied province, a province then known under one name to the British government and under a different name in all its documents which nowadays has become an altogether different independent country!

I am going to use the modern name of the country and the old name of the town, but I was wondering if someone knows if there is any official guideline on what to write there when the name of the places/countries has changed.

Difficult to provide clear answer since you dont provide details; but a safe way I used was to put the new name and in brackets put ' previously known as XXXXX. That will tie the names together neatly.

Coming from India, where we change names of cities just for the fun if it; I can understand the problem . eg mumbai ( previously known as Bombay) etc...

aprilclub wrote:Coming from India, where we change names of cities just for the fun if it; I can understand the problem . eg mumbai ( previously known as Bombay) etc...

As I know from a friend, it is even more tricky for some Germans: after the second world war, several cities have not just changed their name, but also the country they belong to. One example is Маяко́вское, formerly known as Nemmersdorf. From what I heard, the HO caseworker at that time was not amused by the Cyrillic city name of someone allegedly born in Germany.

aprilclub wrote:Difficult to provide clear answer since you dont provide details; but a safe way I used was to put the new name and in brackets put ' previously known as XXXXX.

It is not, but let's say it is akin to being born nearby Jerusalem in 1918, and having paperworks only from Turkey stating he was born in some village in the Mutesarrifiyyet of Kudüs, and no paperwork whatsoever from Israel, Palestine or the UK.

Anyway, thanks, I'll use the "previously known as" bit

Again, in my case, my father was born in Dhaka. I listed it as Dhaka, Undivided India, currently in Bangladesh). That was sufficient.

It another matter what good such an info is to UKBA; given that none of this can be proven one way or another ( Dhaka saw 2 civil wars - 1947 and 1971 and countless floods in between, so no chance of anyb records surviving).