The middle name problem

It is standard practice in a lot of ‘foreign’ countries for the middle name to be a ‘given’ names that is retained by a woman when she gets married. Here in the Philippines the middle name is a family name. When a woman gets married in the Philippines she loses her original middle name which is then replaced by her maiden surname. This causes problems if a Filipina is married abroad. We were married in the UK and my wife retained her original middle name of Tabora which also appears on her UK Passport. When she tried to use the Passport in the Philippines as ID together with her Birth Certificate, some places would not accept it, because they were expecting De Guzman as the middle name. We even got an affidavit explaining the differences, but that was also not acceptable. We eventually got around the problem by my wife getting lots of different Philippine Photo ID’s using the Philippine naming convention and not using her UK Passport. Any dealing with the UK use the ‘foreign’ convention.

Colin

[John Amend-All]

Ouch, that rings a few bells. When asawa regained her Philippine citizenship, being divorced from Pinoy husband only in UK, her new Philippine passport was in her maiden name, some documents are in my surname, others in her first husband\'s, with concommitant shuffling
of middle names. All good fun.

John