Every time I enter China, I have to go to a separate special terminal at customs because their regular systems don't have my Chinese character in their character set.
Even worse is if you try to apply for a bank account in China as a foreigner. Their systems are designed for 2-4 character logogram names, so if you are using a 15-30 character alpha numeric name, then good luck. My English name attached to my bank account has gone through a half dozen permutations over the years, with spaces, without spaces, in the wrong order, etc. I've given up trying to fix it and now am content with a name that is not quite my name, but is close enough to pass passport checks when I go to the bank.
I have a last name with accent and multiple complicated last names, separated by hyphens, commas in my passport. I never encountered a system which accommodated all of these in China. Best case scenario, the accented letters gets switched to a the standard ones. Then usually my multiple last names are cut at the middle as it's too long. Finally sometimes all my name components gets stuck together, no space or hyphens.
Félicité Jean-David François Laurent => FELICITEJEANDAVIDFRANCO
Linking different bank cards on one app was impossible for example because my name was butchered in different was by the system and mismatched.
I'm never able to enter systems who ask for name as part of authentification, it's impossible to remember how my name was altered for each thing I registered.
As additional fun, many app or services are not accessible or crash if you are not a Chinese citizen with Chinese id, even if you have a long term resident permit.
Administrative life in China just sucks in general if you don't fit the norm. It really made me think using name as part of any authentification/login process is harmful because it's never gonna be handled well by programs. Let me login with my passport number and phone number for example, they are designed to be handled by such systems.
I'm surprised you don't use Félicité Laurent as your official name (though no judgement at all). In USA people will often drop "middle names" except on only the most official paperwork.
I also drop the middle names for all daily usages, but in China, the banks and any kind of public offices are required to enter your name as displayed on the passport, meaning the whole thing. Interestingly it could work as a passive way to protect my privacy since different organism recorded my name differently so they might not join the data properly
Sounds like the inverse of what some Asians, who have 2-letter surnames like “Ng”, have to put up with when systems expect last names to be 3+ characters. Though I don’t think that minimum restriction comes up in major govt systems.
My previous boss had a single letter last name. Turns out most airline ticketing system have a 3 letter minimum so he just entered his single character name 3 times to purchase the ticket. But this meant that every single time he got to the airport he would get stopped because his ticket didn't match his passport.
That's really interesting to me. I have an account with Bank of China, China Merchants Bank, and used to have one with Agricultural Bank of China (needed it temporarily to receive some money once). My passport full name has 26 characters, including one hyphen and three spaces (I have two middle names). I've never had a trouble making a bank account anywhere (made in multiple cities). I also have no problem linking my online payments (Alipay and WeChat) with my bank accounts and using them to buy things every day.
I have recently had a problem where my Internet line stopped working. Customer service called me and told me it's because my name has a hyphen and their system can't process hyphens. When I talked with them more, it sounds like China Telecom's IT department made some kind of system change that made hyphens impossible to process in names. That sucked, not sure why they would do that when it was perfectly fine before. There may or may not have been a good reason for it from their side, I obviously didn't get to talk with anyone in their IT department about it. So now my China Telecom account has my name all mashed up with no spaces and no hyphens. But banks I'm still OK for some reason.
I'm curious why some people have certain experiences that I don't share. We're all using the same service and system. I'm waiting one day for some Chinese bank IT employee to finally write up a really weird debugging story and submit it to HN for discussion. It would be good to know what's up.
Or... it could be a bank employee's user error too, I suppose.
It is pretty common for Asian people to use a phonetic version of their name in latin alphabet in the West. Would it be reasonable to do the same in reverse with your western name? Would it even be accepted by banks/government institutions?
Initially, when I applied for a bank account under the name of "Jack Middle Chen," they listed my name as "Jackmiddlechen." Just one name, like Cher. Chinese names don't have spaces so it made sense, but this of course made it impossible for me to pay online, where they require family and surnames separately.
So I went back and asked them to differentiate between my first, middle and last names, so they added spaces, without changing the order. So my name became "Jack Middle Chen," where "Jack" was my last name and "Middle Chen" was my first name.
So I went back and asked them to change the order, because it's obviously wrong. So they changed my name to "Chen Middle Jack." Where Chen is now my correct family name, but my new first name is now "Middle Jack."
So I went back and asked them to change my first name to "Jack" because "Middle" is my middle name. But of course, Chinese don't have middle names so they don't have a field for that. So my first name then became "Jack Middle." Which is fine.
The issue is that my names now all had spaces. Chinese names don't have spaces, as mentioned, so to separate my alpha numeric names, they literally had to insert the space character into my name. So when I try to shop online, my name doesn't match because my official registered name has several space character somewhere in there, encoded in a weird way.
So at this point, I go back and try to clarify what my name actually is in their records. I tell them just to make it look exactly like my passport. So now my name is "JACK MIDDLE CHEN," all caps. I still have no idea what my first name and last name is but I've given up shopping online with this card, and since it matches my passport exactly, I can use it at the bank, which is good enough for me.
Fun anecdote: In Sweden it's not uncommon for people to have their middle name first in the passport. For example a person named Gustav Sven Andersson might actually have Sven as his "first name". This of course causes problems in the US which assumes everyone's first name is the one that comes first in their passport. I have several friends who have just given up and go by a different name in the US (ESTA, immigration, plane tickets etc).
Are you paying online with a credit card? What type of sites are you having issues with? In a normal online payment gateway, there is no facility to verify the cardholder’s name so I’m curious what type of transaction you are doing.
Dunno about China, but in Japan your bank name is supposed to match your government name (for foreigners, this means your passport) for money laundering regulatory reasons, although this isn’t always enforced.
That would be fun for me as the first word on the name field in my passport is my nobility title, which is not supposed to be part of my name; On my national ID it’s in a different field.
"Would it even be accepted by banks/government institutions?"
No. You can choose a Chinese name (or have one chosen for you) to make life easier for your Chinese friends and colleagues, but your bank account etc. will use your real name.
The name on your bank account is likely to be on of the below, depending on which bank you use, and what type of day the teller is having:
SURNAMEFORENAME
FORENAMESURNAME
FORENAMEMIDDLESURNAME
And you need to know what it is, because without the correct name it's impossible to receive inbound bank transfers, or to link your bank card with WeChat/AliPay. Your name is not usually printed on your bank card, which you are given as soon as you open the account.
Fun anecdote: Born in China, given a Chinese name, then naturalized in Canada. My name was spelled out phonetically on Canadian documents, unsurprisingly. When I return to China now, the name shown on all documents is LASTNAMEFIRSTNAME, not a single Chinese character in sight.
My friend has a Chinese driver's license since he lived there for 4 years, and he had to use his Chinese name for it. I don't know why (inability to enter Latin into their system?) But they insisted he give them a Chinese name.
I am surprised at this. Even in Hong Kong, if you choose to take a Chinese name, at the time that you apply for your HKID, that becomes your legal name.
There are very few foreigners in mainland China who are eligible for and have received a Chinese ID card. I've never met one in person, so don't know what name is shown on there. But that card is especially for foreigners so I'd expect it to use the regular name.
God forbid if your last name has a space in it in your passport (MC DIRMID). The fun in China will never end with that. Also, your middle name is now a part of your first name, sigh.
On the other hand, reverse roles for a second. Try opening a bank account in a Western country with a real Chinese name and you don't even get to the "fun" part. We have to put up with some language gotchas; they're forced to invent an entire new name.
If you're Chinese and find yourself in the West, you spell your name in Pinyin. You don't have to invent a new name unless you want to (I know a Chinese person who did this, but it was for social reasons, not necessity.)
On the flip side, you definitely should invent a new name if you're from the West and want to live in China for a extended period of time, or you'll find that life can be very painful. Sometimes you can even find a direct translation, e.g. David => 大卫 (Da Wei).
I'm from a country with the Cyrillic alphabet, and somewhere in 2012 or so they decided to change the romanization rules. When I renewed my passport, I became e.g. VASILII MAIAKOVSKII instead of VASILIY MAYAKOVSKY. Endless grief in China. There is literally no way to certify you are you if your passport number has changed (never ever happens with Chinese ID) and your name has changed (never ever happens with Chinese names). In the end, it was so much trouble that I had to change the passport again and supply a special letter to the Consul asking to romanize my name in the old way.
I have a German friend with Ö in their name which is sometimes written by Chinese staff as "O", but in some German documents it's transcribed as "OE" so he has one bank account with O and one with OE, and of course it never works right. Also, almost no Chinese system would allow to input Ö, and a few times it changes it to "Ö"...
Even worse is if you try to apply for a bank account in China as a foreigner. Their systems are designed for 2-4 character logogram names, so if you are using a 15-30 character alpha numeric name, then good luck. My English name attached to my bank account has gone through a half dozen permutations over the years, with spaces, without spaces, in the wrong order, etc. I've given up trying to fix it and now am content with a name that is not quite my name, but is close enough to pass passport checks when I go to the bank.