[ImranHyd]

Originally Posted by motorworks

I don’t want to add my name as his surname. In some countries he may get called by his surname, which is nothing but my name! “Dhruv Sujith” sounds like two first names, no two ways about it! And he certainly wouldn’t respond to “Mr.Sujith”!

Having father's name as surname is quite common in parts of the world. My nephew was born in Saudi Arabia and when my brother went for birth certificate, the guy (or whoever he was at the government office) just asked for first name and automatically added my brother's name as surname of my nephew.

[narayans80]

Thanks to some exposure and awareness in my early 20s. My kids have expanded names right from birth certificate. I still have to be a brain surgeon to watch for idiots at government offices who find innovative ways to goof up names.

We are doing a multi-year project of aligning (rather expanding) our names in all government issued ID cards and parents name in our kids' passports.

Some goof ups from our parents generation, like having a birth certificate without name can't be corrected. It has to be done by the age of 13, or it remains like that for life.

This name discrepancies not only affect you emigrating to gulf or European countries. But there are some states in India that do not accept name discrepancies. Thanks to my Italian family visa adventure a decade back, I came across this bureaucracy called One and the same certificate, this is a short term fix for your name mismatch across different government issued certificates. A long winding process is to get the name changed in gazette.

If millennials want to enjoy their senior citizen concession in peace, please save these hassles for your kids before they get into grade 10.

[PreludeSH]

Even I was having initials with my name. It was my village name and father's name. That is kind of common in Karnataka. Or some have just their father's name.

It all changed when I lived abroad and had to expand my initials. Today my children have our village name as surname and my name as middle name. They find it too long to write the entire name

I wish instead of following everyone, we could have just stuck to what it was and have initials as last name !

[wocanak]

Have gone through the exact same situation. I ended up with "<my name> <my father's name>" as my full name, but...

Originally Posted by motorworks

...
Why this trivial topic now, you may ask! Just last week, there was an article in the times of India which mentioned that U.A.E is not going to be giving visas to folks who do not have a surname in their passports! Really, why? I just couldn’t comprehend the reasons behind this move!
...
There is no immediate travel plan at hand, but I might as well do something about this right now rather than leaving it for too late.
...

In my passport my surname is blank and the expanded name was all under given name. Had no issues with my first US visa in the late 90s, but when I applied second time it was returned asking me to apply with first name as FNU for "First Name Unknown" and the expanded name as last name. Basically first name can be blank/NA/FNU, and whatever is your name can be put as last name. This has so far worked for me.

So, if you want to stick to only one name and fight this battle, this could be an option, but check with your family, travel agent (and few more to reconfirm).

Originally Posted by ninjatalli

The answer to some problems are always the obvious ones even if we don't like it. The world runs on a model with surnames so better we stick to it. In addition to UAE, in the US it's a pain to not have a surname with all documentation carrying a placeholder LNU (last name unknown) for such individuals.

I see 4 options
1. Keep your name as his last name
2. Give your current surname (/your father's name) to him
3. Opt for some common (caste/location/etc based) surname
4. Give your wife's surname (if she has one from her family side)

Btw option 2 worked for me, ironically with my father's name that is a common surname in the west & north India.

+1 for option (2), that's what I did as we didn't want to fight this battle, my father's name sounds like a good surname and we have a tradition of including grandfather's name. Many of my cousin's picked (1), otherwise (4) may be better than (3)

A very informative thread, always learn something new here.

Please update us once you decide and the reason, it will be interesting to hear it.

[shipnil]

On a lighter note, this goes totally against the jokes with unending names a person from TN had. Like in the hindi movie Dhamaal.

https://youtu.be/D7felvV3JRc

As stated by others, I think you'll have to give some last name / surname to your son. Like what you read for UAE, I remember one case from Switzerland. I think an Indian person with only first name went and settled there. He bought some property over there but since the registration required both first and last name, the clerk ended up writing same name twice i.e. as first as well as last name. The next of kin had to go through a tedious legal process to get the property transferred after the person died, as the ID document passport did not match with title document.

BTW, we have a different problem in MH / GJ. Here even if you want to have first and last name given to your child, the schools or even govt departments would insist on adding your name as the middle name of the child. I have to fight with school to remove it but they were adamant on keeping it because what if there is another child with same first and last name then how'd they identify. Seems a unique school id number was alien to them.

Fortunately I got both my kids passport and aadhaar in the first name, last name format. Hopefully, in future, they should be able to continue using the same.

[narayans80]

Originally Posted by shipnil

Fortunately I got both my kids passport and aadhaar in the first name, last name format. Hopefully, in future, they should be able to continue using the same.

Make sure the same name appears on the grade 10 hall ticket. Because that's what will be printed on the class 10 board marksheet. And this historically has followed through all consequent academic certificates.

In the absence of government issued IDs, class 10 and later class 12 mark sheets are the baseline for the name if you want to apply voter ID for example.

[subraiyr]

Oh God - The travails of South Indians and surnames. Thank God, you have got yourself a surname. I say this because when I applied for my PAN card, I had to literally do it around 8 times due to the surname issue. This one is very quirky

For reasons of anonymity, I am not putting the actual name, but aliases

My Great Grandfather's name - Murugan Hari Iyer
My Grandfather's name - Hari Murugan Iyer
My father's name - Murugan Hari
My name - Hari Murugan

Finally, I broke the chain and called my son - ABC Hari

Now, the surname has been changing. Also, in the past, at least in Kerala where all of us, with the exception of my son, studied - there was no need for a surname. You had to just have initials. So here comes further confusion

My Name - In School - M. Hari
My Name - In Marriage Certificate - M.Hari
My Name in Passport - Hari Murugan

To make matters worse, I was in a weird phase when I started working and wanted to show off my caste. So, I got it added to my name.

My name in Bank Records - Hari Murugan Iyer

Then, I got slammed by my parents to drop it and finally my bank records, passport, aadhar and pan now feature this name

Our family migrated to Kerala over 400+ years ago as part of a larger migration from Thanjavur. So we are called Palakkad Brahmins or Pattars colloquially. Now, most of my mother's side have got their village names added to their name. So, when my uncle migrated to Canada, he had 3 names to his credit

Thayankolangara Lakshminarayanan Ramswamy - Of course, since all of us were pattars he could have added Sharma to the end, which he refrained from thankfully. Another uncle of mine on the father's side had added his house name as well. It was not an elegant name, but he was called Paruvur Kizhakkemadam Ganeshan Krishnamoorthy. A lot of folks in Kerala have their ancestral home name added to the beginning of their name

I am now digressing and will stop

[Everlearner]

An off beat suggestion. Is it not possible to have the same word as both name and surname? Official records can be handled, filling forms can be done, there will be no risk of anyone calling him Dhruv Dhruv.

[Deep Blue]

Aah! I see this thread one day late.
Just yesterday, I filled up my son's passport renewal form. Agonised over what to put as surname/lastname. Following his given name is my name. Finally, I left the surname blank and put both names in the given name as I realised that if I put my name as surname, everybody will call him in my name. Now I will have to ask the PSK officer to correct the anomaly.
When we named him, we only bothered about his given name, never his surname.

[dragracer567]

Originally Posted by motorworks

No problem with my initial and my name until class 7. I moved to an anglo-Indian boarding school for Class 7, and thats when I realised that the school records had no initials, they always used the full name! So my name suddenly became “Sabanayagam Sujith”! Can you imagine the anglo indian teachers calling out my father’s name! Most people just called me “Subramaniam Sujith”! Obviously my father’s name was so synonymous with “Subramaniam”!

Had the same issue myself. I originally had my father's name as initial but when I got my passport, back then they didn't recognize initials (they do now), so they expanded my father's entire name. Thankfully, my father's name got relegated to my surname, so I don't have the issue of people calling me by my father's name but I still have two names in my 'First name' column and two names in my 'surname' column. Naming in South India is really a mess.

I guess the primary reason is due to the erasure of caste identity - especially in Kerala and Tamil Nadu where people increasingly don't want to be associated with their caste.

[DigitalOne]

Originally Posted by motorworks

What can i do now? I don’t want to add my name as his surname. In some countries he may get called by his surname, which is nothing but my name! “Dhruv Sujith” sounds like two first names, no two ways about it! And he certainly wouldn’t respond to “Mr.Sujith”!

Is there also a discrepancy in the formats used for male and female children? For e.g, Dinesh Karthik, Viswanathan Anand, Ravichandran Ashwin, Murali Vijay, N Chandrasekharan (Tata Sons Chairman) etc seem to be using the <father name><son name> format, whereas don't recall any <father name><daughter name>.

I use <given name><father name> in the given name field, and have the surname blank in my passport. In all other places I use <given Name> <initial>. I have not faced too many problems.

[itwasntme]

Originally Posted by condor

I am not excluding people of other states, but I find that many Maharashtrians still have their father's name in their name. And I appreciate and respect them for this, and all others who still follow this.

Originally Posted by shipnil

BTW, we have a different problem in MH / GJ. Here even if you want to have first and last name given to your child, the schools or even govt departments would insist on adding your name as the middle name of the child. I have to fight with school to remove it but they were adamant on keeping it because what if there is another child with same first and last name then how'd they identify. Seems a unique school id number was alien to them.

I don't know whether it's a cultural thing in MH/GJ or something mandated by the respective state governments, but it created a lot of issues when my wife and I spent 5 years working there. She got her first passport shortly after marriage, and they insisted on adding her dad's name as her middle name. That in turn led to a mismatch with her Aadhaar, PAN and other GoI documents which were from our native state. In my case, we bought a LIC term LIP and they inserted my father's name in between.

In my wife's case, it led to unnecessary complications for visas, and was a stress factor at multiple immigration desks.

In both cases we faced substantial issues later to correct the documents once we moved to KA.

[aargee]

Originally Posted by motorworks

Would be great to hear from people who have gone through something like this!

I've gone through exactly the same as yours & here's what I do now
1. From correcting people addressing me by my Father's name, I've chose to ignore until they've graduated to an acquaintance of mine
2. Expanded my Son's initial with my name so as he doesn't have to undergo my strange experience

In simple terms - I moved on!!

[mazda4life]

Originally Posted by aargee

In simple terms - I moved on!!

Same here, have made my peace with people calling me by my father's name and lessons learnt , we have added my grand father's surname 'Rao' to our kid's name.

[gischethans]

My name is Chethan S. and it first got expanded as Chethan Srikrishna in my passport and later in PAN and at my workplace. Work email has last name first convention and I end up being called by my father's name by quite many who don't understand it - after all both the parts look like a complete name.

To avoid such a situation for my daughter and also to ensure she has a two-part name, we decided to get back the family surname (Bhat, essentially based on caste) as the last name. After all, for some reason, the last name is accorded more importance in today's world.

Lastly, my DL which had it in expanded form, after an address update reads as ChethanSrikrishna. I really hope this does not crop up some new issues in the future. Interestingly, the filled application form had them separately in the first and last name fields. Some developer forgot to add a space during the concatenation operation when the data was migrated from a state-specific database to Vahan.