Reflections | Why travellers with passports issued by Malaysia and Singapore are at a disadvantage
- Airline computers – and online apps – cannot cope with names in which the forename and surname are not defined, let alone customers with no surname at all
- For travellers in this boat long queues await. Why does anyone need to state a ‘last name’? Hundreds of millions of people have alternative name configurations
A recent study led by a Japanese economist from Tohoku University posited that by 2531, all Japanese could have the same surname, Sato, if Japan keeps the archaic law that forbids married couples from using separate surnames.
On my trip to Japan with friends last month, the issue of surnames was one of the reasons why there were long waits at airports. Of the four different passports carried by the five of us, two – the ones issued by Malaysia and Singapore – don’t explicitly differentiate between family names and given names.
My name in my passport is not presented as separate first and last names, but simply rendered as “Wee Kek Koon” in a single line.
The passport name of our Malaysian friend, let’s call him “Sim Ong Teck Gabriel”, must have confused the airline computers in Hong Kong and Japan because multiple attempts to print boarding passes and luggage tags at self-service kiosks failed. He had to join the long queues.
