Last name put as surname on UK visa. Would this cause issues at the border?

12/6/2016 12:22:50 PM

In the Western world, specifically Germanic and Slavic speaking countries (explicitly excluding Iceland), there is a strong assumption that people have a given name, potential (or mandatory, e.g. patronymic names in Russia) middle names and a surname, with the surname being the same or at least strongly similar within families while given and middle names may vary considerably. This already fails when dealing with Spanish people who typically have two (technically equivalent; so I am told) surnames. Other countries have even more different sytems.

Before the days of worldwide international travel, this was hardly any issue; names were close enough to the first, middle, surname format that they could be made fit. Hence why airline tickets do so and many countries’ visas.

Nowadays, there is a considerably larger variety of nationalities and thus names travelling, but the visa procedures have remained rather the same. It is rather rare for people to be referred to by one name and one name only, so in most cases an arbitrary call can be made which name is to be considered a given name and which a surname. Thankfully, visas are processed approximately locally (Gayot mentioned that UK visas for Myanmar citizens are processed in Bankok, which is close on a global scale while being in a different country) and the local officials will have experienced this type of name for quite some time. Thus, they will format it in a way that is appropriate on the visa itself.

When entering the UK, the border officials will check if the name matches. They also will have experience with different types of names. They might not be well-trained to recognise every local variant immediately but they know that variants exist so they expect them. If your passport’s name section contains all the names that your visa does, they will not worry or suspect much if the ordering has changed. It is important that the picture(s) match(es) you and that the names are similar enough when comparing the data page and the visa page. Names may even be spelt differently due to different transcription/transliteration standards.

Thus, as has been mentioned in comments, you are worrying about a non-issue. I doubt the ordering of the names will even be remarked. The only question on the topic may be something along the lines of ‘So, Mr/Mrs Min …?’ (awaiting confirmation that you feel addressed by the official using that name).

Credit:stackoverflow.com‘

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Hello,My name is Aparna Patel,I’m a Travel Blogger and Photographer who travel the world full-time with my hubby.I like to share my travel experience.

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