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In all our immigration applications for the last 10 years, I have always simplified our names, removing all special characters, like accents and cedilles, from our names, and replacing them with the equivalent letter in the English alphabet (é by e, ç by c, etc).

I'm just wondering if that's going to be an issue when applying for our first British passports? I have just read that the name on the naturalisation certificate has to match the foreign passport. So... what if the passport has a special character but the naturalisation certificate doesn't? Is that considered a match? This has never ever been a problem when issuing our EEA documentation, and our naturalisation application was approved having filled the forms it with no special characters.

Any first-hand experience welcome.

No personal experience, but I see a lot of queries from German applicants regarding the treatment of Umlauts, such as ö, ü, etc. Even if the certificate shows those letters HMPO will simplify them into the simple equivalent, like oe or ue, without raising an issue. There is a policy guidance on this but can't find the link just now.

Here it is - page 7 : https://assets.publishing.service.gov.u ... sports.pdf

alterhase58 wrote: ↑

Mon Jun 06, 2022 12:20 pm

No personal experience, but I see a lot of queries from German applicants regarding the treatment of Umlauts, such as ö, ü, etc. Even if the certificate shows those letters HMPO will simplify them into the simple equivalent, like oe or ue, without raising an issue.

Thanks! Yes, this is what I have always assumed, hence why I simplified the spellings from the start on all our applications to remove any issue.

There is a policy guidance on this but can't find the link just now.

Thanks. I'll try to find it, but if at all you come across it, do share!

kamoe wrote: ↑

Mon Jun 06, 2022 12:26 pm

alterhase58 wrote: ↑

Mon Jun 06, 2022 12:20 pm

No personal experience, but I see a lot of queries from German applicants regarding the treatment of Umlauts, such as ö, ü, etc. Even if the certificate shows those letters HMPO will simplify them into the simple equivalent, like oe or ue, without raising an issue.

Thanks! Yes, this is what I have always assumed, hence why I simplified the spellings from the start on all our applications to remove any issue.

There is a policy guidance on this but can't find the link just now.

Thanks. I'll try to find it, but if at all you come across it, do share!

See page 7: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.u ... sports.pdf

alterhase58 wrote: ↑

Mon Jun 06, 2022 12:31 pm

See page 7: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.u ... sports.pdf

Thank you so much, yes, it says:

Customer already using an alternative spelling
If a customer sends their passport application and it is clear from the supporting documents that they already use an alternative spelling shown on the transliteration table, you must:

1. Accept the spelling without asking for any more supporting evidence. Add a case note to explain the difference in the spelling of the name (see Names: name related case notes, system checks and warnings for what must be included in the case note).

3. Deal with the application, in line with current guidance.

I just checked that pretty much all supporting evidence we sent for the naturalisation application does use the simplified spellings, which are consistent throughout, so we should be good.

That's exactly what I wanted, thank you!