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My sister's name on her passport is 25 characters not including spaces: 5 letters for her given name, 7 letters for her middle name, and 13 letters, including a hyphen, for her last name. (It's NOT a hyphenated name in the usual sense of one half coming from one spouse and the other half from the other spouse: some benighted ancestor of her husband's chose to spell his last name with a hyphen, and his hapless descendants have been fighting with bad form/database designs ever since. This is important because people's default reaction of using one half or the other when the whole thing won't fit results in a name that might belong to somebody on the planet, but it sure doesn't belong to my sister or any of her relatives.)

She was just trying to book a flight, and the website had the usual warning about "your name on the booking must match the name on your passport". It also had, in smaller letters, a statement that "names cannot contain special characters", and in the list of disallowed characters was, guess what: a hyphen. Rock, meet hard place.

After the usual round of cursing (this is not the first time That Dratted Hyphen has caused trouble), my sister went ahead and entered her name without the hyphen. Hit submit, form comes back all red with the error message: maximum total name length is 20 characters. What the hucking fell?

Other than wishing the designers of that website a slow, tortured death in the lowest depths of hell, what can my sister do in such a case? If she leaves off her middle name and omits the hyphen, her name will definitely not match the one on her passport, but that's basically what the website is forcing her to do. Will the airport staff (in China, just to complicate matters) know that "First LongLastname" is roughly the same name as "First Middle Long-Lastname"?

Martha
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4 Answers4

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Many of the systems involved in air ticketing have been around for 50 years or more, and definitely show their age as you've seen...

The good news is that these restrictions are very well known, and there are standard ways to work around them.

  • The Hyphen. This one is simple - just leave it out. ABC-DEF and ABCDEF are treated as exactly equivalent according to the rules. The fact the passport has the former whilst the ticket has the latter is NOT an issue.

  • The length. Presuming the issue here comes down to the middle name only, then the easiest is to simple leave it out. Whilst the name on the ticket must match the passport, than requirement does NOT apply to the middle name which can be either omitted completely, shortened to a single initial, or shortened to the number of characters require to meet the maximum length.

eg, if the middle name was Jonathan, then all of "" (ie, nothing), "J", or "Jonat" would be considered valid.

Note that at Check-in there will almost certainly be different requirements. Depending on the countries being traveled to/from/through, you may need to provide the full name, including middle name. If this is required, you will be able to enter it on the airlines website in advance (often under the heading of "APIS"), at online check-in, or at the airport check-in.

Doc
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    Regarding the last paragraph - I have never seen a system that lets you change your name for APIS purposes at check in time. So it won't be an issue there either. Plus it doesn't ever matter what you enter at check-in. – JonathanReez Jul 08 '18 at 21:45
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    @JonathanReez APIS systems frequently let you change the middle name online, and always allow it for check-in agents. My corporate travel agents book by tickets with only a first initial, but I always change it to the full name during checkin. – Doc Jul 09 '18 at 03:50
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    Is ESTA approval by the airline sensitive to middle names? Otherwise you don't even have to do that. – JonathanReez Jul 09 '18 at 04:25
  • @JonathanReez Eh, I'd say, "It doesn't matter" is an exaggeration. If you were to enter the information of, say, someone on a terrorist watch list, it would probably matter. Also, the information you enter at check-in determines whether you get PreCheck, SSSS, etc. (this is all determined and printed on your boarding pass before you even get to the airport in the U.S.) If your name doesn't reasonably match your Global Entry PASSID/TSA KTN you won't get PreCheck, for example. – reirab Jul 09 '18 at 21:10
  • drop the hyphen is exactly what I would have answered. My mother maiden name has an apostrophe in her name ... which proved very challenging in all sorts of online form and obviously in some airline website too. The simple trick was just to accept to see your name without it ... no website, airline or even custom/immigration agent ever has anything to complain about it. – Hoki Jul 11 '18 at 08:21
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    Middle names are often just merged into the FirstName field in Airline ticketing systems. Joe Frank Oz becomes JOEFRANK OZ. Last names are also a requirement in older systems, but some people simply don't have them. So, in those cases, you just enter your first name twice. Should Japanese Emperor Akihito ever fly on a revenue ticket, his ticket would read: AKIHITO AKIHITO and Cher would be CHER CHER. – Armstrongest Jul 11 '18 at 16:37
  • @Doc you say "and there are standard ways to work around them". Are these standards formalized and available? I also assume these things have to be standardized, because in the past basically every travel agent knew how to enter the name in (at least for me) pretty cryptic way. For example "John Doe" would become DOE J/MR and Jane Doe would become DOE J/MRS (don't remember the slash direction though), so I assume they somehow learned the standards when training. – xmp125a Jul 12 '18 at 11:58
  • @Armstrongest Perhaps if Emperor Akihito and Cher were ever on the same revenue flight, they use a single ticket under Akihito Cher and share a seat. That would totally work, right? – David Richerby Jul 13 '18 at 12:12
  • @DavidRicherby Now we're talking! the partner of Sonny and Emperor of sun. – Armstrongest Jul 20 '18 at 21:20
  • What about Engrish names i.e. Šåräh, Jöhn, Lõis, etc? – kiradotee Oct 13 '19 at 12:53
  • @kiradotee Sounds like a great topic for a new question! – Doc Oct 13 '19 at 15:26
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I had a French client who had four first names, and a last name that spanned six words (three last names from noble families). 45 letters give or take without counting the spaces. So for both everyday interactions and things like airplane bookings, he cut that down to two first names (#1 and #4) and his "last" last name, a noble "de XXXX" thing. Something like Jean Marie de Chose (not the real name).

As you can imagine, airline staff and immigration officers had a fun time trying to match his passport ID page to his booking/boarding pass. Especially in Asian countries, where people are a little less familiar with the Latin alphabet and/or European names. His English was also very limited, so when problems happened (every single time), he would point one by one at the four words, first on the booking or boarding pass, then on the passport. Usually that ended with the staff saying "Ohhh Ohhh OK", and that was it.

I suspect your sister will be okay. Airlines know their antiquated systems aren't always up to handling odd names. As long as the front-line humans are satisfied, it's ok.

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We had the same issue with my indian husband with 3 words of 40+ characters on the last name. This was dependent on the airline but our travel agent told that there is some specific comment field, that only the airline employees (and maybe travel agents) can fill where the whole name was listed. Into the main system the name was put without spaces and with abbreviation of the last last name. My own name containing the european dotted letter ä was always written as teletype (ä -> ae) as is in the bottom part of the machine readable area of the passport. I think that is your hint with what they might compare the "exactly as in passport".

Pille
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  • For German, at least, the official transliteration for Ä to the machine readable zone is AE, so that is what the machine will be comparing in a German or Austrian passport (and perhaps Swiss and Belgian, too). I don't know about other countries, but I expect at least a few of them use the same substitution, while others will just use A. – phoog Mar 10 '20 at 18:40
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My surname is not uncommon in The Netherlands where my parents come from.

While I’ve always had to go to extra lengths to make sure my name is as correct as possible in official documents, I have never even had the hint of a problem when traveling.

My airline tickets often show me as THART C MR, yet that’s apparently close enough to my real name that it has never caused me any problems at all: I have never even be asked about it.

Colin 't Hart
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  • Does your passport's machine readable zone have placeholder characters before and/or after the first letter of your surname? – phoog Mar 10 '20 at 18:37