Silly question..does having a common name slow...

[Maverick64 0]

the K1 process? Seems I read something about that...hope not...with a name like William Jones!

[Bobby+Umit 161]

the K1 process? Seems I read something about that...hope not...with a name like William Jones!

Sometimes, mostly for the benificiary (and they are male, and from the MENA region)

[Gary and Alla 3,694]

the K1 process? Seems I read something about that...hope not...with a name like William Jones!

Maybe. But I do not think "William Jones" is on too many "hit lists", what d'ya bet?

[Marina-Del 10]

Yeah, it's mostly for the male beneficiary. It's not too common for this to slow down the American petitioner. Like Gary said, there probably aren't that many William Jones' on the "bad guy" list...but you are also providing other information so that they can insure that you are this William Jones and not that one. Like place of birth, address, middle name, parents names, ect, ect, ect. Don't worry.

[JimVaPhuong 4,863]

the K1 process? Seems I read something about that...hope not...with a name like William Jones!

It would be hilarious if that were a problem in Vietnam. More than half the population have the family name "Nguyen" (this is really true!). It is so common, in fact, that the family name is frequently omitted from references to the person's name, in which case it's just presumed to be "Nguyen". In other cases, it's abbreviated "Ng", since everyone knows what it represents. To further complicate things, more than 75% of the girls have the middle name "Thi". The reason for the latter fact is that the given names in Vietnam are mostly gender neutral, and "Thi" simply means that the name belongs to a girl. So, for any particular given name - Ngoc is quite popular, for example - there are literally tens of thousands of girls whose full name is "Nguyen Thi Ngoc" (family name comes first in east Asian cultures).

Fortunately, there are many other ways to identify people beyond their name. In the US there is also SSN, drivers license number, and passport number. In the worst case, date and place of birth will narrow it down considerably. If there were a serial killer named "William Jones" who was born in New York City on January 1, 1970, it's a safe bet he isn't the same "William Jones" who was born on December 1, 1965 in Seattle, Washington.

As Bobby stated, it can become a problem with beneficiaries from Middle Eastern, North African, and South Asian countries, where Arabic names are common because of the Islamic religion. The Arabic/Islamic naming system follows a fairly loose set of rules, and produces very long descriptive names that might include a reference to the father or ancestry (son of so-and-so), and a reference to the tribe, geographic area, or occupation of the person. The latter is most often used as the surname when creating a westernized version of the name. As a result, names like "Muhammad Abdullah" (Muhammad, servant of Allah) are very very common. Without absolute information to differentiate one from another, the likelihood of one of these names being on a government list of known terrorists is pretty high.

[TBoneTX 45,910]

Yes to all that JimVa has said. Funny sidebar: In the mid-1980s, I was inside a store (a TJ Maxx, if I recall) in the Washington, DC area. An Arabic-accented voice came on the P.A. system: "Mohammed to register 2." I heard loud, intense voices at the front of the store. The voice came back on the P.A.: "No, no -- Mohammed ABDUL to register 2!" These years later, I still laugh at the memory... yet it bears out what has been said above about common names.

Edited June 16, 2009 by TBoneTX

[JimVaPhuong 4,863]

Yes to all that JimVa has said. Funny sidebar: In the mid-1980s, I was inside a store (a TJ Maxx, if I recall) in the Washington, DC area. An Arabic-accented voice came on the P.A. system: "Mohammed to register 2." I heard loud, intense voices at the front of the store. The voice came back on the P.A.: "No, no -- Mohammed ABDUL to register 2!" These years later, I still laugh at the memory... yet it bears out what has been said above about common names.

"NO, NO! I'm talking about Mohammed Abdullah ibn Mahmoud al Baghdadi!"

[Mrs. Disney 0]

A friend of mine applied for a visa to go to Dubai with her grandma, and they have the same name, same last name, live on the same address, work on the same place etc. The embassy ended up sending them back only one visa because they thought my friend sent 2 visa requests for herself. The mistake was corrected with a phone call, the embassy people took a better look on their pictures on the applications and checked the birth dates and they mailed her another visa on the same day. I think her case wasn't common, since they are two people from the same household with the same name who mailed the applications together. Two random people with the same name, from different places... I think that will not confuse them. You should be good. Good luck!