Documents for New Baby

R

Ruza

Registered User
Hi,

Looking for advice here regarding birth cert, ID card etc for new baby. My wife is a Mainland China citizen. I'm Irish. Both of us have temporary residency in HK (work visas) and she is due in Feb.

My questions are:

1. Does a child qualify for HK ID and HKSAR passport if only one parent is Chinese?
2. On the birth cert we can only provide a given name in English and/or Chinese. My surname is not Chinese. Does this mean that our child will not be able to have an English name based on my surname as well as a Chinese name based on her mother's surname on her ID card/HKSAR passport? I hear a Chinese name is required for a Home Return Permit, which my child will need.
3. If we put a full Chinese name (inc surname) with an English name in the given name part of the birth cert, will the Chinese characters be romanized and used as middle names on ID card and other docs?
4. Does anyone know of anyway to find a solution to these issues quickly after the baby is born-- we live and work between HK and China and intend to cross the border soon after hospital discharge?

Could badly do with some clarifications on these issues. Thanks
 
1. Yes
2. For us, my daughter's English name is based on my husband's last name, for her Chinese name, we dropped the surname, so just whatever we named her in Chinese.
3. We used pinyin of her Chinese name as her middle name.
4. Go to birth registry, once you get the birth cert you can then head to HK Immigration office (we went to the one in Wanchai) and register for her PP and HKID.

Hope that helps.
 
This is my understanding:

1. yes your child will be eligible for "right of abode" and therefore HKSAR passport due to your wife being ethnically Chinese
2. I have friends that did one of two things, either they used the wife's family name for the Chinese, or they "invented" a Chinese family name for the husband. It's your choice, as far as I understand...
3. You can choose to either put the romanised Chinese name or not. My husband and I had this debate because I wanted my kids to have an English middle name in addition to their Chinese name. I wanted to only have their English name in English, but we ended up agreeing to have their Chinese name hyphenated as one "name". Also up to you is whether you want the English name first, the Chinese name first, etc... The English name and the Chinese name are completely different and you can choose whether or not you want to have them the same or different.

I hope that helps...
 
I'm permanent HK resident & hubby is American and didn't choose a Chinese surname for his HKID.

Our daughter has right of abode in HK, therefore, she has permanent resident HKID and is a HKSAR passport holder.

Her English name on birth certificate is First name/ Middle name/ husband's Surname

Her Chinese name on birth certificate is a 3-character Chinese First name and NO Chinese surname
 
Oh, i think if I remember correctly, you child CANNOT have a different surname from father's (please double check)

Also, you have 40 days after baby is born to finish the process.
 
On hk birth cert, there is no surname column. I was told by birth registrar that HK law states a child born in HK takes the father's surname automatically. So, no box is needed!

However, my husband is not Chinese, so do not have a Chinese surname. My daughter takes my chinese surname. On the birth cert, her Chinese name is 3 character, one of them my surname. Her English name and her Chinese name is totally different. So, her english surname take after hubby's but Chinese name takes mine! This is fine in HK.
 
Thanks inkmink. This is what is hoping to hear -- and I have met one person who has this done, though her parents had the Chinese name added when she was an infant. So you just put the three Chinese characters, including your surname, in the given name section of the birth cert along with the English given name, correct?

And I presume, as nicolejoy mentioned above, you can request not to have the Chinese name romanised on the ID card and passport, to avoid the little one ending up with at least four given names!
 
Thanks Bonita. I think there is some flexibility with this. At the same time I posted hee, I sent an email to the Immig Dept and this is their reply:

"Upon birth registration, parents may choose to register the baby's name on their own desire. You may put up your request to registration officer's consideration."

Not exactly a firm committment but also not an outright "no way."!

As inkmink seems to say below, the Chinese given name can include a character that is the mother's surname.
 
Thanks Bonita. I also emailed the Immig Dept with this question and they replied:

"Upon birth registration, parents may choose to register the baby's name on their own desire. You may put up your request to registration officer's consideration."

Not a firm committment but also not a "no way".

As inkmink seems to say below, the first charachter in the three entered as the Chinese given names can be the mother's surname.

(Phew -- as if naming a baby wasn't mind-bending enough!)
 
I did the same as inkmink. My husband doesn't have a formal Chinese surname. My dad thought of one for him over a meal of Peking duck!

Also, in your context you really only need to have an English name (surname will be yours obviously) within a certain amount of time. You can take your time with the Chinese name. We only finally decided on a Chinese name for our son after 12 months (I know - pathetic) and I have yet to add it to his birth certificate. Think it's $180 to add a name or something.
 
Ruza - you can put whatever you like as said by Nicolejoy. Yes, my daughter 's given Chinese name on birth cert has 3 characters including my surname. The hk birth cert's chinese name section also doesn't have a surname box like the English section. Because of this, they had to show the Chinese surname in the Chinese given name section and "treat it" as a Chinese given name ONLY on the birth cert.

The registrar told me to explain to hk immigration if I encounter any problems. So far, I haven't have the need to explain to anyone. I have applied hkid, hk passport, home return permit as well as bringing daughter out of hk a couple of times.

For home return permit, yes, they require Chinese name and the form has to be filled in Chinese including address!
 
Last edited:
One thing that I HAVE heard of is that if you choose a "non-traditional" romanisation of the Chinese name, you need to sign that you know that it's spelt "wrong" and you choose to have it spelt that way. I also have friends who did that for various reasons, and it was ok, they just had to acknowledge that it was not spelt the conventional way... not sure if that's relevant to you or not though!!
 
Hi Nicole joy...might be a silly question but how do I indicate this to immigration? I might want my daughters Chinese name romanized in pinyin mandarin instead of Cantonese....
 
I think that pinyin or cantonese are both fine with the birth certificate place - just if you want it spelt "uniquely" for whatever reason... one of my friends chose a Chinese name which sounded similar to an English name which is not spelt how it should be romanised in either Mandarin or Cantonese - and it was in that situation that they needed to sign off that they knew it wasn't how it should be romanised. Another friend chose a name which looked funny in English, so they spelt it differently, more how an English speaker would pronounce it, and less "rude" looking... and they also had to sign off on it. It's no big deal, they just want to make sure that you know what you're naming your kid. Now if only they would do that for all the poor Chinese kids called something like "Milk" or "Demon" out there...
 
Dont know if this is relevant; but a few of our freinds have given their kids surnames which are not the surname their dads (respectively) carry. At the time of applying for birth certificate you have to put in this request - and firmly. They allot you a senior officer and if there is a reason enough the officer agrees.

However, in all the cases I know of the parents belonged to a part of India where traditionally children take father's first name as the surname.

Apologies if this is completely usless info :)
 
Miran, last year my husband who is from that part of India argued for about an hour with the officer and his manager at the birth registry. They refused to go with anything other than the father's last name (well, maybe they would have considered mother's last name but to my undying irritation my husband would not consider that). Finally, they said that birth certificate does not have a last name anyway... so just get whatever name you want put on the baby's passport. It's true that the birth certificate (in English) does not have a last name column; however the sticker they gave us for immigration has my husband's last name as my son's last name (not what we wanted) which means on some record somewhere that is the name registered. We were able to get the name we wanted on the Indian passport but it irritates me that the birth registry is so fascist about naming. I have a feeling they are more rigid with Chinese people because they told my husband for Chinese people this is how they do it - to which my husband pointed out we are not Chinese.

Apologies also that this is not relevant to the original thread. However, if anyone did manage to negotiate variation from the father's last name or else dictum in recent times please let me know as I will need to fight this battle again for my second child.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top