4 ms·

I have the exact same problem with my European passport. maximum name length, that is total first+middle+surname must be less than 30 characters. Officially I

I have the exact same problem with my European passport. maximum name length, that is total first+middle+surname must be less than 30 characters. Officially I am not who I am.

toyg 5y ago
That's not a limitation of the European format, which is in fact not agreed on in the original resolution [1]. Your country is doing it wrong. In the UK, where the format has been set in 2014 so still in an EU context, the limit is 60 (30 for surnames, 30 for the rest). Interestingly, it looks like we're actually going backwards on this: accented characters have actually been dropped from the main passport page in recent years, to be replaced with ICAO transliterations. Which is shameful, to be honest, since it implies passports are now incomplete as a form of ID (unless the real name is recorded somewhere else). Airline lobbying clearly won the day, years ago. This seems to be a UK-only thing at this point. [1] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:41981X0919:EN:HTML https://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX...
- wdb 5y ago
  UK likes to put your full name on bank cards and spend a long time to convince Lloyds to put my initials + last name instead. Why would I want a random user in a shop to know my full name?!?
  - tialaramex 5y ago
    > UK likes to put your full name on bank cards Do they? I had three unexpired bank cards to compare. My good bank issued me my non-contactless credit card, which is a backup and also the card my Phone "is" when I use that to pay for stuff, which is most of the time. That card (which a little worn) has my first and last name with middle initial. My good bank also issued me a debit card very recently. This card is entirely black on the front except for the name of the bank and the logo of the card network. However on the back it has my initials and surname. The other bank I use that does card transactions issued me a more traditional looking card with just my initials and surname on the front.
    - wdb 5y ago
      That's not my experience, Monzo, Revolut, Lloyds, my private bank, and Halifax (they even misspelled it) all put my full name on the card until I called them and asked for it to be changed. I think they should ask you how you want your name on the bank cards
      - tialaramex 5y ago
        It seems like that's another question most people don't care about, which hurts your acquisition flow if you insist on asking it. Just allowing you to call up and change it seems adequate to resolve strong preference from customers like you. If you ask people fifty questions they don't care about, and they don't need to complete the process, they just won't do it at all. "Would you prefer our letters to you addressed you by your first name, your surname and initials or just Dear Sir/Madam?" "If we have to call you about your account, should we text first or is it OK to just call immediately?" "Our cards can be doused in artificial lemon scent instead of smelling of plastic when new. Would you prefer the lemon scent?" "If you had to fight either one angry goose every Tuesday, or an enraged orangutan on a random day once per year, which would you prefer?" "Would you prefer Contactless cards or should we disable the Contactless feature on your new card?" "Going back to the goose question, does your answer to the previous question change if the orangutan has a sword?"
- jart 5y ago
  Wow this PDF is interesting. It explains how to canonically transliterate European ligatures/diacritics, Cyrillic, and even Arabic into Roman. The government clearly wants ASCII to become the one charset to rule them all.
  - dane-pgp 5y ago
    That got me wondering what percentage of the world uses the Roman alphabet, and the answers I found vary from "36% of the world population"[0] to "nearly 70 percent of the world’s population"[1]. In any case, I think it's fair to say that it's a plurality, if not a majority, and that the letters A-Z are the most natural "core" set of glyphs from which the other (upper case) Roman-derived letters are built. [0] https://www.worldstandards.eu/other/alphabets/ https://www.worldstandards.eu/other/alphabets/ [1] https://www.britannica.com/list/the-worlds-5-most-commonly-used-writing-systems https://www.britannica.com/list/the-worlds-5-most-commonly-u...
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- RF_Savage 5y ago
  That's a very interesting document for future reference. Decent ground truth on how to transliterate stuff like the EU does.
- azalemeth 5y ago
  That is fascinating – thank you. I always wondered why my first names got truncated on the driving license despite there being space – now I know.
- twic 5y ago
  > replaced with ICAO transliterations Here's the (a?) specification for the machine-readable part of the passport, with transliteration and so on: https://www.icao.int/publications/Documents/9303_p3_cons_en.pdf https://www.icao.int/publications/Documents/9303_p3_cons_en.... (toyg, did you originally include this link in your comment, then edit it out?) > passports are now incomplete as a form of ID Passports are, and always have been, tools for travelling internationally. Depending on a passport for general identity is arguably as much of a mistake as using social security numbers for identification.
  - spdustin 5y ago
    > Passports are, and always have been, tools for travelling internationally. Depending on a passport for general identity is arguably as much of a mistake as using social security numbers for identification. In the U.S., every state-issued ID card or drivers license requires, among other things, a document proving identity; a current, valid U.S. passport is considered to meet that requirement. Here, a passport is a federally-issued identity document.
    - xxpor 5y ago
      And is usually the only acceptable form of ID when traveling internationally (outside of Canada and Mexico), for example when trying to enter a bar.
markstos 5y ago
My wife's name was adjusted by the Department of Motor Vehicles in Indiana because the format she wanted "wasn't allowed in the computer". Of course, the name on your driver's license becomes your legal name for many practical purposes.
anthk 5y ago
I call it bullshit because a lot of Basque names+surnames could pass the 30 char limit with ease.
Bayart 5y ago
Seems short sighted, considering it's normal in a lot of European countries to have three given names (and completely legal to have far more).

I have the exact same problem with my European passport. maximum name length, that is total first+middle+surname must be less than 30 characters. Officially I am not who I am.

toyg 5y ago

That's not a limitation of the European format, which is in fact not agreed on in the original resolution [1]. Your country is doing it wrong. In the UK, where the format has been set in 2014 so still in an EU context, the limit is 60 (30 for surnames, 30 for the rest). Interestingly, it looks like we're actually going backwards on this: accented characters have actually been dropped from the main passport page in recent years, to be replaced with ICAO transliterations. Which is shameful, to be honest, since it implies passports are now incomplete as a form of ID (unless the real name is recorded somewhere else). Airline lobbying clearly won the day, years ago. This seems to be a UK-only thing at this point. [1] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:41981X0919:EN:HTML https://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX...

wdb 5y ago
UK likes to put your full name on bank cards and spend a long time to convince Lloyds to put my initials + last name instead. Why would I want a random user in a shop to know my full name?!?
- tialaramex 5y ago
  > UK likes to put your full name on bank cards Do they? I had three unexpired bank cards to compare. My good bank issued me my non-contactless credit card, which is a backup and also the card my Phone "is" when I use that to pay for stuff, which is most of the time. That card (which a little worn) has my first and last name with middle initial. My good bank also issued me a debit card very recently. This card is entirely black on the front except for the name of the bank and the logo of the card network. However on the back it has my initials and surname. The other bank I use that does card transactions issued me a more traditional looking card with just my initials and surname on the front.
  - wdb 5y ago
    That's not my experience, Monzo, Revolut, Lloyds, my private bank, and Halifax (they even misspelled it) all put my full name on the card until I called them and asked for it to be changed. I think they should ask you how you want your name on the bank cards
    - tialaramex 5y ago
      It seems like that's another question most people don't care about, which hurts your acquisition flow if you insist on asking it. Just allowing you to call up and change it seems adequate to resolve strong preference from customers like you. If you ask people fifty questions they don't care about, and they don't need to complete the process, they just won't do it at all. "Would you prefer our letters to you addressed you by your first name, your surname and initials or just Dear Sir/Madam?" "If we have to call you about your account, should we text first or is it OK to just call immediately?" "Our cards can be doused in artificial lemon scent instead of smelling of plastic when new. Would you prefer the lemon scent?" "If you had to fight either one angry goose every Tuesday, or an enraged orangutan on a random day once per year, which would you prefer?" "Would you prefer Contactless cards or should we disable the Contactless feature on your new card?" "Going back to the goose question, does your answer to the previous question change if the orangutan has a sword?"
jart 5y ago
Wow this PDF is interesting. It explains how to canonically transliterate European ligatures/diacritics, Cyrillic, and even Arabic into Roman. The government clearly wants ASCII to become the one charset to rule them all.
- dane-pgp 5y ago
  That got me wondering what percentage of the world uses the Roman alphabet, and the answers I found vary from "36% of the world population"[0] to "nearly 70 percent of the world’s population"[1]. In any case, I think it's fair to say that it's a plurality, if not a majority, and that the letters A-Z are the most natural "core" set of glyphs from which the other (upper case) Roman-derived letters are built. [0] https://www.worldstandards.eu/other/alphabets/ https://www.worldstandards.eu/other/alphabets/ [1] https://www.britannica.com/list/the-worlds-5-most-commonly-used-writing-systems https://www.britannica.com/list/the-worlds-5-most-commonly-u...
- deleted 5y ago
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- deleted 5y ago
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RF_Savage 5y ago
That's a very interesting document for future reference. Decent ground truth on how to transliterate stuff like the EU does.
azalemeth 5y ago
That is fascinating – thank you. I always wondered why my first names got truncated on the driving license despite there being space – now I know.
twic 5y ago
> replaced with ICAO transliterations Here's the (a?) specification for the machine-readable part of the passport, with transliteration and so on: https://www.icao.int/publications/Documents/9303_p3_cons_en.pdf https://www.icao.int/publications/Documents/9303_p3_cons_en.... (toyg, did you originally include this link in your comment, then edit it out?) > passports are now incomplete as a form of ID Passports are, and always have been, tools for travelling internationally. Depending on a passport for general identity is arguably as much of a mistake as using social security numbers for identification.
- spdustin 5y ago
  > Passports are, and always have been, tools for travelling internationally. Depending on a passport for general identity is arguably as much of a mistake as using social security numbers for identification. In the U.S., every state-issued ID card or drivers license requires, among other things, a document proving identity; a current, valid U.S. passport is considered to meet that requirement. Here, a passport is a federally-issued identity document.
  - xxpor 5y ago
    And is usually the only acceptable form of ID when traveling internationally (outside of Canada and Mexico), for example when trying to enter a bar.

markstos 5y ago

My wife's name was adjusted by the Department of Motor Vehicles in Indiana because the format she wanted "wasn't allowed in the computer". Of course, the name on your driver's license becomes your legal name for many practical purposes.

anthk 5y ago

I call it bullshit because a lot of Basque names+surnames could pass the 30 char limit with ease.

Bayart 5y ago

Seems short sighted, considering it's normal in a lot of European countries to have three given names (and completely legal to have far more).