The scenario: An Irish baby is born outside Ireland in an English speaking country where the ‘fada’ is not part of the lexicon and the birth certificate issued by the non-Irish authorities does not contain a ‘fada’.

The question: If the Irish baby subsequently applies for an Irish passport and, in the application form, uses the ‘fada’ that should properly have appeared in the baby’s (non-Irish) birth certificate, will the Irish passport authorities issue the passport with a fada?

Part of the background here is that I noted recently that when one applies for a U.S. passport, one cannot - as far as I can ascertain from the eForms - use a fada. The baby in question may be born in the U.S.. If one cannot use the fada on the eForms for a U.S. passport, it seems even less likely that the ‘very local’ authorities will use it in the birth certificate, whatever is said to them at the time.

Thanks

Search the following and the pdf file will download on your computer. Then you can scroll down to "11 Irish and Gaelic names" and it gives what you see below. It seems that whatever is evident on the birth certificate will be issued.

Search - Annex A: use of names in passports - gov.uk

11 Irish and Gaelic names

11.1 Irish and Gaelic forenames will often be different when translated into English. We issue as set out in the birth certificate unless documentary evidence of the change of name has been provided.

11.2 Alternatively, we can issue as the birth certificate with an observation when we know the reason for the difference is because an applicant wishes to have their passport in the translated version of their birth name. For example, Irish BC shows Sean Donnelly and the applicant wishes to have the passport in the name John Donnelly, which is the English translation.

Uhm, "Old Donnelly" is the English translation of Sean Donnelly.

My birth certificate is in English, that's what people did in those days. When I got my first passport about 12 years ago, all I had to do was provide documentation to prove I used my name in Irish (bills, bank account, letters with my name on them etc). In America you can't use diacritic marks on any name as far as I know, but in Ireland we can. I think there would be outrage if we couldn't.

There was a case in Brittany not long ago where the name Fañch was refused on a birth certificate, because of the accent on the n. There was uproar about it and eventually it was officially accepted. I think that it might already have been found acceptable when it occurs in names in Spanish. (I'm going to have get mine officially translated into French next year,for a nice fee, of course and even then the translation is only valid for one month. It's just a few names, dates and addresses, so it only takes five minutes to do but that's easy money for some.)

Tiom, thanks for the link to the UK guidance on names in passports. Reading the guidance in its entirety, I took a few things from it though I’m certainly not entirely clear:

- A child born in the US is likely to have a US passport. A US passport as Brid points out will never contain a fada. The UK will look to any existing passport issued to a dual national and take the view that whatever name is in the foreign passport should also be used in the UK passport. They set out some very limited exceptions where they may take another view and none of them relate to fadas. Therefore the UK would not, on this reading of things, issue the same child a passport with a fada where the fada does not appear on the child’s other passport or on the other child’s birth certificate.

- The UK will also look to the birth certificate as you pointed out Tiom and as I’d always expected which was the source of my original question. As Brid has pointed out, there is no possibility for the US birth certificate to include a fada.

- The UK seems to be willing to accommodate translations of Irish names. But in their guidance they muddled up a basic translation. They said that ‘Sean’ is a translation of ‘John’. But of course, that’s not correct. Seán is a translation of John. It’s unclear to me whether they would accept that in order to translate the child’s name into Irish, the fada has to be added (notwithstanding the non-UK passport of the dual national concerned would never contain a fada).

- Brid, I certainly understand your experience. My own name has a fada in it. It’s not in my (Irish) birth certificate - though birth certificates in those days had actual handwriting on them and one could argue a dot was intended as a fada. They aren’t that anymore. They are properly typed leaving no room for creative ambiguity. But, in any event, I’ve always used my fada from when I was a young child. When I applied for my first (Irish) passport over 20 years ago, I applied for it with the fada and it was duly issued with the fada. When I renewed my passport 8 years ago, they omitted the fada. I went back the next day to return it. They apologised for the mistake and duly issued my corrected passport. But we are both - I think - from a different generation. Going forward, everything will be electronic and the child will struggle to be able to get a fada added where the child cannot point to any document where it is used. The child will not be able to have a bank account with the fada in it either because the banks will go by the official government ID for opening the account. It’s a bit of a vicious circle. Or the Irish authorities may be more reasonable about things and less rigid. I’m not much the wiser. I’m not at all confident that the UK, going by their guidance, would be flexible at all.

Thanks all.