[name_m]Just[/name_m] wondering if this is a super pain to deal with when typing official documents, passport, legal stuff, paypal, online shopping etc.
I heard horror stories that in [name_f]France[/name_f] the legal docs cannot have tildes or that people are turned away from stuff because their name was missing an accent so was ‘the wrong name’
Does anyone actually have these accents in their name and how to deal with?
I don’t, but I have 2 friends who do. I only see them at school, so this is probably only a snippet of what they go through.
Both girls get heaps of mispronounciations at school because I live in Australia, and you can’t have accents in your names (There’s exceptions to dual citizens, and both of them are), so the computer won’t read the â’s or the š’s, and very few teachers get it right, and you can always hear a bit of laughing when their names come up in the rolls. Once a teacher didn’t believe he was prouncing š’s name wrong because of the missing accent.
Š has passport trouble I think. She has both an English and a Forreign name, but she only uses the latter, so she has double identities. We joke about it sometimes.
I don’t have a solution, but yeah, it’s a pain for those 2. I’ll edit the post later, so I can just ask them questions.
EDIT: Š goes by her forreign name due to legal issues. I won’t be going into that.
I know some states in the US don’t permit any diacritical marks. It’s not common in the US to have an accent mark and it would definitely be disregarded a lot. Many Americans have Anglicized versions of European surnames designed to get around the problem, e.g. Müller became Mueller and Ó Briain became O’[name_m]Brian[/name_m] (although apostrophe names have issues too).
[name_f]France[/name_f] doesn’t allow tildes because tildes exist in [name_m]Breton[/name_m] names and [name_f]France[/name_f] doesn’t like minority languages. I’m sure if [name_m]French[/name_m] names had tildes they would be permitted.
I honestly think it’s way more hassle than it’s worth in the US, and also, even if accent marks are allowed, English speakers have no idea how to interpret them. Sure, we know how to say [name_m]Jos[/name_m]é without its accent mark, but that’s only because it’s common–some name from a much more rare language? Nah. I know ‘š’ is not the same as ‘s’, but I don’t know how.
I have an accent in my name and it can be a little tricky but it’s actually not too bad. I live in the UK and you can’t have an accent on your passport here, so my name on that just uses a regular e rather than é, and I also use this on a lot of official online forms (eg. applications for uni, housing, etc). I’ve never had any problems with having the “wrong name” or anything, even when I’d fill out the front of national exam papers using the two interchangeably. I think everyone understands that it’s just a phonetic thing and some forms don’t allow it. It is a bit of a hassle to type it out everytime though! For anything non official I use my nickname because it doesn’t have the accent in it so it’s a lot easier. I guess it’s kind of become that for official things my name is [name_u]Andrea[/name_u] and for personal things I’m Andréa or [name_f]Andie[/name_f]
I definitely don’t mind having a non english character in my name, even if it’s a little bit of a pain at times. It means people who see it written properly pronounce it right haha, instead of how the name is pronounced without it. But even when people get it wrong they pick it up pretty quickly. And I also like the uniqueness of it!! And it can make for interesting conversation
My name is [name_f]Lu[/name_f]ísa, I’m from [name_u]Brazil[/name_u], but right now I live in the US. I always put the accent, because it’s the “right” way to spell it (without it, it’s pronounced differently). However, if the system used does not accept the accent (computer-based) or it doesn’t have any space for it, I simply don’t put it (this applies for both countries, even though in [name_u]Brazil[/name_u] accents are the norm and not the exception -_- ).
I’m from Kansas which is one of the only states that allows diacritics in names. I know a girl named [name_m]Zo[/name_m]ë who is a friend of my sister’s. I’m not sure if she has any trouble with her name but I can assume the dots get dropped a lot because [name_f]Zoe[/name_f] is pronounced the same way without them.
One of my friends is named Mädchen and I know she has the dots on her student ID so they do appear on some documents. I go to school in South [name_f]Carolina[/name_f] though, and I don’t know the laws on diacritics here.
I don’t think there are any firstnames containing it, but the lastnames do sometimes create problems, esp since there wasn’t even a capital version of that letter until some years ago. A workaround, like @greta-elizabeth mentioned, does exist (ß turns into ss), but sometimes creates even more problems as it can alter the pronounciation and meaning.
I live in [name_f]Canada[/name_f], which is a bilingual country ([name_m]French[/name_m] and English), and this is what the government of [name_f]Canada[/name_f] states for people immigrating to [name_f]Canada[/name_f] and registering their names;
“[i]If a document used to identify a name contains a name with [name_m]French[/name_m] accents such as (Â - À - É - Ê - Ë - È - ” - Î - Ô - Ü - Ù - Û - Ç) in the VIZ, the same spelling can be used when establishing a name record in CIC’s system of record.
If a document used to identify a name contains a name or part of a name in a foreign alphabet, the MRZ or the MRC, if present, will take precedence over the VIZ to determine the name and its spelling. For example:
The VIZ of a Swedish passport could present the name as “Pöllä” while the MRZ or MRC would render the name as “POELLAE” and the name on the application form could be spelled “POLLA.” In such a case, the spelling of the MRZ or MRC is to take precedence over any other spelling.[/i]”
So long story short: [name_m]French[/name_m] accents can be used in [name_f]Canada[/name_f], anything else will be “corrected” for use in [name_f]Canada[/name_f]. Makes sense to be honest, considering all computers here have two keyboards, one for English, one for [name_m]French[/name_m].
If my crappy 15 year old laptop can type [name_m]French[/name_m] accents, then I’m guessing the government can too!
My name doesn’t have any odd letters but surname does, fortunately I live in Turkey so that’s not a problem for me, I do like odd letter names like Kürşad and Çağrı but don’t think I will use them.
My name has an accent… I’m from Latin [name_u]America[/name_u] but also a [name_m]German[/name_m] national and my documents from both countries display the accent on my name. So far I haven’t really encountered any issues with it
