this post was submitted on 12 Dec 2023
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True story: some newspaper in Poland organize a competition for the weirdest name. The guy who won had last name of 'Zyc or Cyc' (in polish, of course). Basically when his grandfather was registering his name some guy couldn't read it or something so he put 'Zyc or Cyc' and it stayed like this in the documents.
According to this guy when police would stop him and try to write a ticket they would get confused and ask him which one was it? He would say that maybe they shouldn't write anything because their boss will they they're stupid or something. They would usually let him go.
It's crazy how much names get garbled through immigration paperwork! My roommate moved from Africa (idk what country), and I've always known her as Ndeye (pronounced like "day" in English). Well apparently, that's not her "real" name! She told me that where she's from, "Ndeye" is a common title given as a prefix to a girl's name, and it means something along the lines of "mother." In her country, everyone called her by her first name. But when she moved here, on her new birth certificate they wrote Ndeye as her first name and her actual first name as her middle name. She told me she just decided to go with it. Ndeye is plenty unique here!
It's unfathomable to me that they're so careless with people's names (like in your story), and that for my roommate, the paperwork meant for immigrants has such a rigid US-style structure. I've never met anyone who was especially upset about their name being changed like that, but it seems super messed up to me! 🤷
Course, I guess it's a relatively smaller problem compared to the rest of the issues with the immigration process. Sorry for the rant lol.