Question middle names

[millefleur 5,046]

22 minutes ago, Shiran said:

Calm down. It won't matter. Patronymics are not middle names, do not worry about what is on 129F. 129F is about you, the petitioner for the most part, not beneficiary. Once 129F is approved, US Embassy in Kyiv will know what to do, and they will issue K-1 visa that will match the names on International passport, without Patronymic. When she files DS-160 before the interview just tell her to copy the name from her passport, leave MIDDLE NAME blank forever, do not put patronymic in there, that goes for her parents names as well. But do not worry about 129F discrepancies for her name.

The whole patronymic name thing comes down to a matter of choice for Eastern Europeans...USCIS will let you use it as a middle name if you want but there are a lot of people who choose to not use it at all and then they are legally "no middle name" folks.

 

I was born without a middle name (my parents bickered and argued over it so they just decided that I shouldn't have one, lol) and honestly, it's been a pain not having a middle name. There have been times when I have to double check on documents to specify "NO MIDDLE NAME" because people will question me thinking it's an error and left it out...or government officials will be baffled as to why I have no middle name, one such official even got mad at me once and warned me that not having a middle name makes my identity less secure or something...who knows. It's really quite rare for Americans not to have one.

 

So, back to the OP's question: if your fiancee wants to use her patronymic as a middle name, she totally can, USCIS will allow that. And since the spelling isn't dictated by any rules (since it's not in the passport) she can just spell it however she wants. On the other hand, she can just opt out altogether and not even use it at all, resulting in officially having no middle name. Up to her at the end of the day. Regarding issues with the official spellings of her first and last names...that will be trickier given the fact that it's in the passport of course.

 

 

[Rusk Marcotte 20]

Thanks guy’s ! 

[DaveAndAnastasia 2,092]

1 hour ago, millefleur said:

I see, that is super frustrating. The new transliteration guide for Russians is equally annoying, trust me. Any name that ends with -ий or -ия ends up being "-ii" and "-ia" so basically interjecting these totally unnecessary i's into the name, i.e. you can't be just Maria, you would be Mariia. It's awful.

Yeah. Anastasia is Anastasiia on her passport (and so on every official government document we fill out), was Anastasiya on the site we met on, and is Anastasia on Facebook ...

[millefleur 5,046]

2 minutes ago, DaveAndAnastasia said:

Yeah. Anastasia is Anastasiia on her passport (and so on every official government document we fill out), was Anastasiya on the site we met on, and is Anastasia on Facebook ...

Unfortunately she'll have to use that double "ii" spelling on just about anything official...even probably for jobs/work since that crosses over with tax documents. What's more fun is when people just assume the name is spelled a certain way so they spell it a more logical way, then you have to call them and get it corrected. It's such a headache. This happened on our electricity bill...

 

Technically there's the "court order name change" option where this can be done at any time during LPR status. It costs money and is time consuming, plus it highly varies by each state...we're just going to wait until Naturalization as they offer a name change option with that, which is much easier than the separate "court order" thing.

[TBoneTX 45,303]

6 hours ago, millefleur said:

one such official even got mad at me once

Neither my parents nor their siblings had middle names, nor do I.

Anyone who lectures me about it will get the thousand-yard stare and an order to take a long walk off a short pier.

[HP+IC 292]

Sometimes you can just outwait it I have witnessed several spelling policies come and go. 20 years ago patronymics were mandatory in foreign passports and 99% new immigrants used them as middle names, they could not adopt the idea that they may do well without them. This is what happened to my now USC fiance. In early 90s came the first Ukrainian spelling policy, where people's names were converted to Ukrainian, regardless of what they called themselves. That is how I stopped being Anna and became Ganna. Then they changed the spelling again and I could choose whether to remain Ganna or to become Hanna which at least sounds less scary. But at that point Olgas became Olhas and my younger son got his name spelled with -ii, which is absolutely of no importance to him because there is a straightforward English equivalent to it and of course he will go by it in everyday life. It is my intention to just wait till the naturalization and decide what to do, I would like to change my last name through marriage but I am not yet comfortable with having everything issued to my married name but my passport still bearing pre-marriage name.

[TBoneTX 45,303]

8 hours ago, HP+IC said:

In early 90s came the first Ukrainian spelling policy, where people's names were converted to Ukrainian, regardless of what they called themselves. That is how I stopped being Anna and became Ganna. Then they changed the spelling again and I could choose whether to remain Ganna or to become Hanna which at least sounds less scary. But at that point Olgas became Olhas and my younger son got his name spelled with -ii [...]

I have a splitting headache right about now... aspirin... aspirin...

[Ty/Ir 32]

I put the patronymic name in the middle name slot. I hope that wasn't the wrong thing to do. Prior to meeting my fiance I didnt know anything about Slavic naming customs. However her passport had her name in English Letters as well as Russian letters so I knew the translation would be correct.

 

Edit: just to clarify my fiance absolutely has her patronymic name on her passport. Mine has my middle name on it too. From what I gather patronymic/middle names exist to serve the exact same function.

Edited April 2, 2019 by Tyler26

[millefleur 5,046]

32 minutes ago, Tyler26 said:

I put the patronymic name in the middle name slot. I hope that wasn't the wrong thing to do. Prior to meeting my fiance I didnt know anything about Slavic naming customs. However her passport had her name in English Letters as well as Russian letters so I knew the translation would be correct.

 

Edit: just to clarify my fiance absolutely has her patronymic name on her passport. Mine has my middle name on it too. From what I gather patronymic/middle names exist to serve the exact same function.

She can use it as a middle name, so no worries.

 

There's just a debate about whether or not patronymic names are "middle names" – some people feel they aren't, some do. It's certainly not a middle name in the Western sense (we don't typically use our father's first names for middle names nor do we have suffixes to accompany them) but in terms of identity and being part of a person's true full name, a patronymic name does serve that purpose, which is also part of why we use middle names in the West.

 

On my husband's passport, his patronymic name is listed but it's just not translated/transliterated into English. It's only listed in Cyrillic.

Edited April 2, 2019 by millefleur

[Shiran 1,134]

It is fascinating to me how experiences vary. And this is first time I hear about ii thing... Why, who decided on that Almost as bad as using "off" instead of "ov" as in Smirnoff. I was NEVER questioned about my lack of middle name, but the fact that my first and family names are pretty foreign already, it was never brought up. I work with a few guys from Brazil and have opposite problem, I have no idea which name if their family/last name. Also, I am pretty sure old Soviet international passports used French spelling. So Ja instead of Ya?

[millefleur 5,046]

15 minutes ago, Shiran said:

It is fascinating to me how experiences vary. And this is first time I hear about ii thing... Why, who decided on that Almost as bad as using "off" instead of "ov" as in Smirnoff. I was NEVER questioned about my lack of middle name, but the fact that my first and family names are pretty foreign already, it was never brought up. I work with a few guys from Brazil and have opposite problem, I have no idea which name if their family/last name. Also, I am pretty sure old Soviet international passports used French spelling. So Ja instead of Ya?

I can't stand the "-off" spelling. It also totally obliterates any possibility for a feminized version, as "-offa" would just sound ridiculous. I don't know where "-off" came from but I mostly associate it with old fashioned anglicizations such as "Rachmaninoff" - honestly I haven't really seen it used with most contemporary names thankfully.

 

Edited April 2, 2019 by millefleur

[millefleur 5,046]

5 hours ago, TBoneTX said:

I have a splitting headache right about now... aspirin... aspirin...

If you think this is bad, try studying Russian and then actually trying to speak it! Word endings change literally for every single noun depending on context, and you can cycle through up to 6 different endings, plus variations of that if it's masculine, feminine or neutral gender. So let's see, here's just an example of the grammatical insanity :

 

 

And, yes, this also applies to first and last names! So there can be up to 6 different variations for someone's name...

Edited April 2, 2019 by millefleur

[Prizm123 1,086]

23 hours ago, DaveAndAnastasia said:

Yeah. Anastasia is Anastasiia on her passport (and so on every official government document we fill out), was Anastasiya on the site we met on, and is Anastasia on Facebook ...

what did you guys put for the plane ticket?

 

Tali's passport is like that too, Наталия is how it is spelled in cyrillic, but her passport lists it as Nataliia, she is kind of concerned about it, but thats how it came i guess for the same reason

 

she actually goes by Natalie, but her daughter calls her Natasha 😄

 

all of the forms we have filled out also we listed her patronymic name, but i am not sure that is really a big deal, we did it in the interest of trying to be as truthful as possible

Edited April 3, 2019 by Prizm123

[millefleur 5,046]

2 minutes ago, Prizm123 said:

what did you guys put for the plane ticket?

 

Tali's passport is like that too, Наталия is how it is spelled in cyrillic, but her passport lists it as Nataliia, she is kind of concerned about it, but thats how it came i guess for the same reason

You have to put the name on plane tickets exactly as it appears in the passport. If she's Nataliia in her passport, she must be Nataliia on her boarding passes. This is for security reasons, they must match. We don't put my husband's patronymic name on boarding passes/flight info because it's not transliterated in the passport therefore it cannot be verified by security unless they can read Cyrillic.

 

I really wish they would get rid of this double "ii" rule....nobody I've met likes it, it's pretty much unanimously hated by everyone...But as long as it stays, whatever is in the passport is the official name and spelling whether we like it or not.

 

 

[Prizm123 1,086]

1 minute ago, millefleur said:

You have to put the name on plane tickets exactly as it appears in the passport. If she's Nataliia in her passport, she must be Nataliia on her boarding passes. This is for security reasons, they must match. We don't put my husband's patronymic name on boarding passes/flight info because it's not transliterated in the passport therefore it cannot be verified by security unless they can read Cyrillic.

 

I really wish they would get rid of this double "ii" rule....nobody I've met likes it, it's pretty much unanimously hated by everyone...But as long as it stays, whatever is in the passport is the official name and spelling whether we like it or not.

 

 

ok thats good to know. I was already thinking this was what we had to do

 

was it hard to get the correct spelling upon arrival in the US for forms?