The transcription of personal names: the Japanese passport
Joseph DeChicchis
Kwansei Gakuin University
Sanda-shi Gakuen 2-1, Hyogo-ken 669, Japanj@kwansei.ac.jp
Abstract
An important matter of language policy today, affecting thousands of individuals around the world on adaily basis, is the roman transcription of personal names in identity documents. Yet, despite a halfcentury of effort by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) to standardize travel documents,
state authorities often issue passports with improper and contradictory roman spellings The modern
Japanese passport is notably bad, but such problems face international travellers from Chinese, Arab, andother cultural areas. The documentation and verification of personal names is an important feature ofinternational policing, banking, and general commerce; and linguists must help craft language policy
which informs the documentary records of people and their personal names.
Keywords: language policy, Japanese passport, names, document standards, roman transcription

1. Documentary names
One of the most important matters of language policy today, which immediately
affects thousands of individuals around the world on a daily basis, is the romantranscription of personal names in identity documents. Moreover, the current climate ofwariness over international terrorism has heightened the scrutiny of identity documents,
raising also the risks faced by normal innocent people. Strolling through today's global
village invites routine police stops, questionings, and requests for a "photo ID". One's
personal name is no longer what one utters in reply to a friendly greeting: "Hi! What's
your name?" Instead, personal names have become so many patterns of ink on
government documents; and woe be to the person with discrepancies in the
documentation of his or her personal name! Yet, despite a pressing need for rational
and perspicuous language policy decisions, and despite a half-century of effort by theInternational Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) to standardize travel documents, wehave a situation which may be aptly termed "unplanned language policy" (cf.
Touchstone 1996); in this case, where a state authority issues passports with insufficient
regard for the precise manner of name transcription. The resulting frustration andcomplaints are similar to those described for laissez-faire language policy by Phillipson(2003: 133-137).
In former times, passports were fairly casual travel documents in which a person's
name was written as he or she might desire,
1. a plausible introduction
which is actually a very good policy. After all, if
I were to say, "My name is 'Joe'," and you were
— Hello! My name is 'Joe'.
to say, "Oh, hi Jim," then I would correct your— Oh, hi Jim!
misapprehension of my name by saying— No, my name is 'Joe', not 'Jim'.
something like, "No, my name is 'Joe', not 'Jim'."

Similarly, as a competent adult, I tell people how to write my name, especially sincepeople often have a hard time with "DeChicchis".
Over the past generation, passport
2. spelling one’s nameoffices have increasingly usurped the
responsibility for writing a person's name— How do you spell your family name?
"properly", with unfortunate consequences— D, E, capital C, H, I, C, C, H, I, S.
for travelers. Such usurpation is done in the — Thank you.
name of "uniformation" (cf. Rubin 1977:
171-172), and Japan's passport offices have ostensibly done this in order to better meet
Japan's international obligations toward the standardization of travel documents.
Officials at Japanese passport offices have become more careful in checking romantranscriptions, and they have become less tolerant of variation, all with an eye towardachieving the goal of a uniform passport transcription policy. Ironically, in part due tothese same passport officials, Japan is now replete with stories about the bizarre
misspelling of names. By striving for passport uniformity, these officials have actuallycontributed to the proliferation of discrepancies vis-à-vis other identity documents.
Due to ICAO-led standardization, the passport has come to serve as a proof of
personal identity. Therefore, it is particularly surprising to learn that the passport nameof a person may not be that person's legal documentary name. This is the area where
the discrepancies between countries' documentary traditions and the ICAO's emerging
international standards are most glaring. Personal names may be natively written using
scripts or diacritics or styles which are eschewed by the international passport standard.
The modern Japanese passport is notable, not only because the person's roman script
passport name does not match the person's legal Japanese script name, but also because
the Japanese government's protocol for romanizing Japanese personal names is often at
odds with Japanese cultural tradition, documentary precedent, and the personal desiresof the Japanese people. As a result, many Japanese have become accustomed to using a
passport with an incorrectly spelled name. The passport spelling may not match thespelling on a credit card; it may not match the spelling on a school diploma; it may not
match the spelling on a driver's license.
The official Japanese documentary name of a person is written on a document whichconstitutes proof of that person's Japanese nationality. The data of the "koseki tohon"(戸籍謄本 "one’s family registry record") are written using a limited set of Chinese andJapanese script characters. This koseki system of family registration records andcertifies the official Japanese script name of each Japanese person.1
3. official Japanese name asregistered and printed on
proof of nationality

On the other hand, the official Japanese passport is printed without the Japaneseperson's official name; instead, in accord with ICAO guidelines, a romanized name isgiven.

4, Japanese name as written on theJapanese passport

Two questions immediately present themselves. First, how is the roman script nameto be decided? The Japanese government has devoted some attention to this question,and their policy is discussed below. Second, when looking upon a Japanese passport,
how is an official looking at the passport able to infer the actual Japanese documentaryname of that person? Considering the romanization of many common Japanese names
yields an appreciation for the relevance of this seemingly abstract policy question, For
example, the passport name "Watanabe" can correspond to one of four common familynames: 渡部, 渡辺, 渡邊, 渡邉. The passport name "Tachibana" can be 橘 or 立花;
and "Sakai" can be 坂井 or 酒井. The Passport Law (法律第二百六十七号) remains
underspecified as to the nature of Japanese orthography; however, it does require thatthe "shimei" 氏名 be written in the passport. Now, the authority for a Japanese person's
shimei is undeniably the "koseki", i.e., the family registry, where the shimei is written
without the use of roman characters, and where the shimei is typically written using
only kanji. In other words, the official documentary name of a Japanese person, theshimei, is never written in roman and is typically written only in kanji. One
immediately wonders why the passports currently issued by Japan do not bear thisshimei, as required by law.
Of course, romanizing names for passports does not just affect Japanese people.
International travellers from Chinese, Arab, or other cultural areas experience similar
choices, and even absurdities. How should
5. Arabic
Arabic be romanized? Moreover, troublesome
transcription problems are not necessarily
Yusef, Yousef, Yusf, or Joseph?
associated with nonroman scripts, as the Latvian
court cases involving the variant spellings of"Mentzen" and "Mencena" made clear. Although Latvia's ultimate court decision on
this particular woman's passport name transcription indicates that even a linguistically
hard-line government can show sensitivity in language
policy making (cf. Republic of Latvia 2001), such
6. spelling in Latvia
sensitivity is still uncommon.
Mentzen or Mencena?

2. Japan's modern personal name
Japan's modern era begins with the Meiji Restoration, shortly after which all
Japanese were required to adopt surnames, and these became the inherited family namesof today. Thus, the modern Japanese personal name, the seimei 姓名, consists of afamily name and a given name,both of which are recorded in the
7. the Japanese namefamily registry (the koseki 戸籍)
pattern: seimei 姓名 = myōji 苗字 + namae 名前
maintained for each Japaneseexample: 田中犬 = 田中 + 犬
person by the appropriate
romanized: Tanaka Ken.
municipality. Such registration
constitutes proof of Japanese nationality.
Today, a person's family name may be called a myōji (苗字 or 名字), uji (氏), or sei(姓), although these terms were not synonymous in former times. The given name iscalled the namae (名前 "name") or, when disambiguating, the shita-no-namae (下の名前). In the family registry, the family name is written
in an area separate from the given name, but in other8. common seimei variants
documents the family name and given name are written
田中犬
together and in that order. Technically, for Japanese
田中 犬nationals, there is no space between the family name田中 犬
and given name when written together as one seimei;
田中、犬however, on many official documents, a space or even田中・犬a punctuation mark can separate the family name from田中，犬the given name. Thus, a person's documentary namemay be printed in several ways.
A myōji may be written with between one and five kanji, though most family names
are written with either two or three kanji. Of the fifty most common Japanese familynames, forty-six are written with precisely two kanji. Thus, even when written without
an intervening space or punctuation, the boundary between the myōji and the shita-nonamae is normally easily guessed.
The Japanese family registry records theofficial transcription of the seimei, and only aproper subset of the Japanese script characters areused in this registry's transcription. Moreover,the pronunciations of the names are not explicitly
recorded. Consequently, the family registry
record cannot differentiate homonymous names,
nor can it identify homophonous names.

9. script ambiguity
homonymous 上野 and 上野(i.e., Ueno and Uwano)
homophonous 川村 and 河村(i.e., Kawamura)

Using the Japanese syllabary, we can easily write the pronunciation of a family nameor a given name. For example, my own family name (which is the registered name ofJapanese nationals) is written デキキス with syllabic characters. However, mostregistered Japanese names are written with kanji (i.e., with Chinese logographic
characters). Thus, for a typical Japanese person, the family registry affirms the official
documentary name of that person, in Japanese script, and the name is typically writtenwith logographic characters. The indeterminate nature of such pronunciations is well

known.2 Nevertheless, the pronunciation of such logographic characters is not explicitly
written on the koseki tohon and other Japanese family registry documents.
10. names registered in syllabic script
Although it is not written on thefamily name: デキキス
koseki documents, the pronunciation of agiven name: りな
Japanese person's documentary name iswritten on other official documents. For
example, it is now always written on the document used to register a person's birth. The
official pronunciation of a seimei may also be transcribed with the Japanese syllabary in
the person's residence certificate, which replicates the data of the jūminhyō 住民票, theaddress registry maintained by the appropriate municipality. The city of Kobe prints thepronunciation using the Japanese syllabary on the residence certificate; however, thecity of Osaka does not.
11. Kobe pattern:
The Japanese pronunciation
is printed on the residence
certificate above the official
seimei (jūminhyō 住民票).

12. Osaka pattern:
No pronunciation is printed
on the residence certificate,
Currently, as seen here, the Kobe residence certificate prints these pronunciations alongwith the seimei. In Osaka, on the other hand, the pronunciation is not printed. A
person's birth registration certificate, or sometimes even a national insurance card, canbe used as documentary evidence of a name's pronunciation; however, a Japanese rarely
has to document the pronunciation because simply saying the name aloud suffices inmost contexts. In the case of passport applications, when documentary proof of apronunciation cannot be provided, the passport official must be willing to accept theapplicant’s attested pronunciation.
3. Japan's romanization schemes
Neither the family registry nor the residence registry provides for a romanization of apersonal name. Thus, in order to comply with ICAO passport standards, it is necessary
to romanize the personal name of each person who receives a Japanese passport.
Japan's foreign ministry has thus been entrusted with the task of romanizing the seimeiof any Japanese who desires a passport.

Japanese language has been romanized in various ways over the years, but the mostcommon romanization schemes used today are all either a Hepburn version or a variantof the Nihon-shiki. Varieties of the Hepburn romanization scheme have been used since
1885, although no Hepburn system is currently the legal standard of Japan. Since 1954,
the legal standard for romanization has been a variant of the Nihon-shiki known as the
Kunreisiki, which was the basis for the international standard ISO 3602. Figure 13
shows how some Japanese names might be romanized under different systems.

13. variant romanizations
大谷 Ohtani, Ôtani, Ootani, Outani, Otani
中島 Nakajima, Nakazima
藤原 Fujiwara, Huziwara, Fudziwara
鋂治 Meiji, Meidi, Meizi
A Cabinet Order of 1954 (内閣告示第一号) standardized the romanization,
resulting in the so-called Kunreisiki system. However, the wording of this order wasvague enough to allow for continuing discrepancies. In particular, exceptions listed in"Table Two" were intended to accommodate the most common Hepburn transcription
practices. Figure 14 gives the three rules of the 1954 Order.
14. government romanization rules(1) In order to transcribe Japanese into romancharacters, you must follow Table One.
(2) If, due to international relations or convention
or such, you are unable to follow Table One, thenTable Two may be in order.
(3) In any case, the notes below must generally
be applied.

To compensate for such vagueness, one would expect that the administrative
protocols for transcription be well specified. How are the tables to be read? Precisely
when should Table Two be used? Who is authorized to answer these questions?
However, as is often the case in Japan, a consistent protocol for resolving transcriptions
according to these 1954 guidelines has not been published.
As can be seen in the passports issued by the various passport offices of the Foreign
Ministry, passport names generally violate the 1954 law. To take two simple examples,
Japanese passports have been issued which vary on the spelling of し as either SHI or SI,
and on ち as either TI or CHI.

15. Table One and Table Two conflicts
し should be romanized as:(re Table One)SI
(re Table Two)
SHI
ち should be romanized as:(re Table One)TI
(re Table Two)
CHI

Passports have also been issued which vary on the use of R~L and N~M, even though
the 1954 Order is clear that L and syllabic M should not be used. According to theNotes of the Order, ん should always be written as N, and both Table One and Table
Two require writing れ as RE (never as LE). Some representative variants are listed in
Figure 16.
16. authorized and unauthorized romanizations
pronunciationin hiragana

authorized by
Table Oneauthorized by
Table Two

unauthorized
romanization

しまのSimanoShimano

みちえ

Mitie

Michieじゅんぺい

Zyunpei

JunpeiJumpei

れお

Reo

Reo

Leo

In defense of their deviation from the Kunreisiki standard, passport officials
routinely state that they are adhering to Hepburn rules for romanization; however, they
do not specify which version of Hepburn they follow. The traditional Hepburn systemsometimes transcribes ん as M, whereas later versions always use N (often with adiacritic, such as an apostrophe or macron). In any event, to explicitly claim to follow
Hepburn rules is still a violation of the 1954 Cabinet Order which mandates Kunreisiki.
Moreover, no version of the Hepburn transcription permits writing LE for れ, yet such aspelling can be used on a Japanese passport, and Japanese passports have indeed been
issued which spell names with L.
4. The problem: no protocol, case-by-case variation, local passport office capriceIn short, there is no published protocol for uniquely transcribing Japanese names intoroman letters, and examination of official practice reveals that transcriptions actually
vary on a case-by-case basis. Currently, at Japanese Passport Offices, the reality ofJapan's transcription protocol is simply this: An applicant for a Japanese passport isbrowbeaten to transcribe the pronunciation of the seimei in conformity with Table Two

of the 1954 Cabinet Order, unless the applicant can show good reason to do otherwise.
Passport officials may also insist on transcriptions which violate the Notes of the 1954
Cabinet Order (e.g., syllabic M instead of N). In general, in completing the application
form, whenever an applicant for a passport provides a roman transcription which a
passport official does not like, the transcription is routinely changed, and a passport isissued in the "acceptable" spelling; the applicant can either take it or leave it.
Thus, the modern Japanese adult who travels abroad now receives a third
transcription of his seimei. Besides the seimei as traditionally written with kanji in the
koseki, and besides the official pronunciation of the seimei as written with the Japanesesyllabary on the birth certificate and elsewhere, there is now the romanized seimei as
written in the Japanese passport.
5. The case of Genmoto~Gemmoto
Japan's passport authorities and their romanization insensitivity have been a sourceof trouble for many people. The case of the Genmoto げんもと family is illustrative.
The traditional Hepburn transcription occasionally uses M to transcribe the syllabic ん,
but later versions of Hepburn (e.g., the Library of Congress version) do not use M inthis way. Under Japanese law (e.g., the 1954 Order), this name should be transcribed as
GENMOTO, and it is so transcribed on the credit cards and important civic andcommercial documents of one Genmoto family. Yet, in the case of this family, thepassport office has insisted on spelling their name GEMMOTO. The spelling
GEMMOTO explicitly contradicts the 1954 law, which specifies that the syllabic ん
must always be transcribed with N.

17. Genmoto~Gemmotopronunciation in hiragana:
VISA card romanization:
passport romanization:
air ticket romanization:

げんもと
GENMOTOGEMMOTO??????????

Since 2001, heightened scrutiny of documents at airports has been troublesome for
the Genmoto family. If an e-ticket is issued in the name GENMOTO, then it will matchthe name on the purchasing credit card; however, it will not match the name on the
passport. Alternatively, using the passport spelling makes it difficult to purchase aticket. Despite pleas from the Genmoto family, the Japanese passport officials haverefused to issue a passport with the desired spelling of GENMOTO, even though this is
the spelling which has been official since 1954. As one member of the Genmoto familyputs it: "I have spelled my name both Genmoto and Gemmoto. For Japanese friends
and when I am in Japan, I use 'Genmoto', and for friends outside of Japan and when I go
abroad, I use 'Gemmoto'. This is because of my passport." 3 Of course, the Genmoto
family would like to use a uniform roman spelling of their name, but the Japanesepassport authorities have made this impossible.

In 1954, Japan showed promise for implementing rational language policy when it
reaffirmed its pre-war decision on Japanese romanization; however, today, Japanesepolicy in this area remains inchoate. Romanization is important in Japan because of its
widespread use in banking and commerce. In addition, the roman transliteration andtranscription of Japanese names is widespread outside Japan, especially in the Americas
and Oceania, and the reconciliation of alternate spellings of family names acrossinternational boundaries is an issue of Japanese concern. For other reasons as well,
Japan has long recognized the need for a sensible romanization policy, but it has simply
failed at implementation.
To appreciate the extent of this failure, it is enough to note that Japan's current
passport law contradicts an earlier cabinet order. Moreover, Japan's passport law, inspite of Japan's ICAO membership and participation, also fails to comply with the ISO
standard and with the ICAO's own guidelines for passport name transcription. After all,the 1954 Kunrei romanization system is the ISO standard, and it is cited in the ICAO
passport guidelines as the proper way to romanize Japanese. Clearly, Japan's passport
offices are not only failing to serve their own people, but they are also failing to meettheir obligations under international agreements.
6. Government awareness of the problem
Passport officials are aware of the problems which name transcription currently
creates. The biggest single problem is that a person's official Japanese script name does
not appear anywhere on the modern Japanese passport. Towards rectifying this problem,
and as a way of also bridging the gulf between disparate spellings, passport officials
now encourage Japanese citizens to sign their passport using the Japanese script inblock style.
Unfortunately, many Japanese have cultivated cursive signatures in both Japaneseand roman scripts. Given that their passport signatures may be used as an identifying
feature in their foreign commerce, they are reluctant to sign a passport in block letters,
and they often prefer to use a roman script signature.
International experience often prompts a Japanese person to develop a cursive romansignature. Here is an example of the
cursive roman signature commonlyused by one Japanese man:

18. Cursive roman script signature
Of course, before developing his roman signature, he had also developed a cursive wayof writing his name in Japanese, for both vertical and horizontal directions. For
example, upon receiving certain letters or parcels, he commonly would write his

"shomei" 署名 in Japanese script as a mark of such receipt. When writing his Japanese
shomei, (i.e., his Japanese signature), from left to right, it looks like this:

19. Cursive Japanese script signature
However, this same man, when writing in the block style suggested by the passport
office, writes his name this way:

20. Name written in block-style Japanese
Clearly, the block style suggested by the passport office is the least personal of the three.
Moreover, it can not serve as a basis of signature comparison for identification purposes.

7. An easy solution
In general, Japanese language policy in this area requires four things:(1) There should be uniform government compliance with the 1954 government
romanization rules. These rules are not perfect, but they are fairly clear, andgovernment officials should generally not violate them. Moreover, the 1954 rules havebeen taught to Japanese school children for over a generation, they are institutionalizedin various areas of commerce, and they are well accepted by the general public.
(2) With respect to the transcription of a personal name, any deviation from the 1954
rules should be made in accordance with the desires of the person affected. A passport
official should not presume to tell Japanese citizens how to spell their own names.
(3) A passport name spelling should be amended whenever this is so desired by the
person affected. Just as a foreigner living in Japan can change his or her official
pseudonym (i.e., the tsūshōmei 通称名, which is registered in the municipal registry) at
will, a Japanese citizen should be accorded a similar courtesy vis-à-vis the spelling of
his or her passport name.
(4) Without violating ICAO specifications, the format of the Japanese passport should
be revised to incorporate the Japanese script seimei of the passport holder, and theseimei should be printed in a standard style.

8. Linguistic expertise must inform government policy
The actual adoption of any reformulation of Japan's passport name policy would
naturally be a governmental decision. Nevertheless, the precise articulation and therational evaluation of such policy is the proper concern of "language policy" as an
object of linguistic attention. Expert linguistic opinion is particularly important intechnical issues which lack enough popular interest to make the political agenda, forabsence from the agenda does not diminish the importance of an issue. The
documentation and verification of personal names is an undeniably important feature ofinternational policing, banking, and general commerce; and linguists have a duty to
inform governments and other entities which manage the documentary records ofpeople and their personal names. Despite today's focus on Japan, the issues raised here
have global ramifications, not in an abstract academic way, but immediately for real
people trying to live their normal lives.4
9. Notes
1. The graphic depictions of documentary name tokens herein are not exact replicas ofactual personal documents. Rather, they are good simulations which preserve theimportant graphic features of those Japanese documents.
2. Often the indeterminacy involves a trivial morphophonemic variation, such as thepronunciation of を書宮川 as either みやかわ (Miyakawa) or みやがわ (Miyagawa).
In many cases, however, the difference is quite significant, such as the pronunciation of
角田 as either かくた (Kakuta) or つのだ (Tsunoda).
3. Mrs. Genmoto, personal communication.
4. I am grateful to Yasushi Miyazaki, Bouzid Omri, Maki Nishizawa, and others fortheir help with various parts of this paper. Any errors of fact or interpretation are
attributable solely to myself.
10. References
ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization). 2007. Machine readable travel
documents (MRTDs): History, interoperability, and implementation. Montreal:
ICAO, TAG-MRTD, New Technologies Working Group.
Japan. 1954. 国語を書き表わす場合に用いるローマ字のつづり方を次のように定める ("Establishing herewith the system for romanizing the national language").
Tokyo: 内閣 (National Cabinet), 告示第一号 (Order number 1).
Jones, C. O. 2001. An Introduction to the Study of Public Policy. New York: Harcourt,
4th edn.
Phillipson, R. 2003. English-Only Europe? Challenging Language Policy. London:
Routledge.
Republic of Latvia. 2001. On Compliance of Article 19 of the Language Law and the
Cabinet of Ministers August 22, 2000 Regulations No.295 "Regulations on Spellingand Identification of Names and Surnames" with Articles 96 and 116 of theSatversme (Constitution). Riga: Constitutional Court, case 2001-04-0103.

Rubin, J. 1977. Language Standardization in Indonesia. Language Planning Processes,
J. Rubin et al., eds. The Hague: Mouton.
Touchstone, E. E. 1996. Language services planning in the banking industry: An
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