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Hi team, I would greatly appreciate your advice on how to handle the spelling of my name in my British citizenship application.

My Polish surname includes the non-English character "Kwaśniewska" - that is the spelling in my Polish passport and EU id card. However, due to IT considerations for all official British systems, I have been using "Kwasniewska" in all my official documentation.

My question is: When applying for British citizenship, which spelling shall I use in the form?

(I understand I have to explain the discrepancy, if any, in the cover letter).

An extra consideration is that I would like to apply for British passport later this year and according to their guidance, they will not print any diacritical characters in it. Does this mean I should apply under "Kwasniewska" as opposed to "Kwaśniewska"? I do not wish to change the spelling on my Polish documents.

Clarification on this would be much appreciated.

Just use "Kwasniewska" in your application, and also for the passport when the time comes. HMPO would change the spelling anyway, to the nearest letter.

I dropped my diacritic for my EU settled application and it was not a problem at all. I would assume it will not be for the citizenship purposes either.

I didn't use diacritical marks whatsoever in my BC application, and I didn't need to explain anything further as this is how I always used my surname in the UK so continue with the spelling how they know you in the UK

Great, thank you! I shall proceed with the application without the diacritical mark Cheers, all!

Same as me I have an apostrophe, which is an accent, at the end of my name but usually IT systems allows it, some not. Hopefully they are tolerant for those things

There is actually an internationally accepted approach on the treatment of special letters in travel documents, such as accents, circumflex, umlaut, etc. which is applied by HMPO - googled this once but can't find the link now. Basically, say you have the umlaut letter "ü" in your name HMPO would use the nearest logical letter, in this case "u". It's not something you need to request.