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Different Katakana spelling in official documents (self.japanlife)

submitted 1 year ago by udon to c/japanlife

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Before coming to Japan I heard from other foreigners that it's best to choose one spelling for your name in Katakana and stick to it. I made sure to follow this advice.

But I just noticed that my name is spelled differently in an official document (年金手帳). I guess someone in some public office just had to come up with their own spelling. It also looks like a reasonable transcription, but it's different.

Do you think this causes problems down the road? If so, how could I change this? Any experiences also with other official documents welcome.

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[–] th3dogcow 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The best way to once and truly solve this would be to register a 通称名 (Tsūshō-mei), which is like a legal alias.

You can do this at city hall, provided you have evidence of its use.

I used my health card, and a bank card, which both had my katakana written.

Although my English name has multiple middle names, my katakana doesn’t have them. So, doing this has made my life much easier.

In my case, all official mail from the city now comes addressed to that name. Also, it is printed as an addition in the front of the my number card.

[–] udon 1 points 1 year ago

Oh nice, that's good to know. I'll try that. Still, with my pension book, the problem was that someone, somewhere just transcribed my name without me being there and now I have to try to fix that. I don't know if that registration would fix it (but maybe it does help sometimes).

Anyway, thanks!