2010/01/16

What's in a name (and a passport)?

The UAE has gone on a full gear to get everyone an ID card. So all nationals and foreigners with residence visa need to get an ID card. The first thing to do is to download an .exe program from the official website, and fill in your details electronically. The .exe will then generate a pre=registration form for you, which you need to print out before making an appointment with the authority via the online appointment system.

I'm now on the form filling stage, and slightly baffled by the form fields.

I am not sure why the Middle Name is a compulsory field while the Family Name is not. But what if you don't have a middle name, like me?

I think I understand the rest of the fields, but what I really don't get is the Famous Name. I tried asking a Lebanese who lived here before about the Famous Name,and he had no idea. But he said when Arab people ask for your middle name, it means your Father's name. But since I am not Arabic, I find it weird to put Dad's name on any documents coz Dad's name never appears on any of my official documents except for the birth certificate.

And then there is the passport section. 5 kinds of passports! What is a private passport? How does that work? I definitely do not hold a diplomatic passport, and am pretty sure my passport is not temporary.

So I was tossing between the Standard passport and the Travel Document passport. I decided to choose the Travel Document option. Only to find out from a friend the next day, that Travel Documents in the Middle Eastern context means Palestinian refugees in say Jordan. They do not have Palestinian passports, and the Jordanians do not give them citizenship. So they end up travelling with a Travel Document.

Now where is the Save and Continue button?

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