baby birth certificate ?'s

[ears73]

I am trying to get a passport for my son who has an accent, an umlaut, in his middle name. I just got his birth certificate and the umlaut was not represented. After having the hospital see that I filled it out that way on their paperwork they called the state records bureau - in my case, in Albany NY. Albany said, according to this woman, that the U.S. does not allow accents of any type on birth certificates. Is this true?? Also, my son's SS card came a week later, no umlaut. I need to get a passport before the summer and this is driving me nuts...

[Sweet.Bee]

Our family's last name has an umlaut in it, and our son has both US and German passports. The US consulate in Zurich (or Zürich ) told us the US does not recognize umlauts.

We were given the option of replacing the "ö" with "oe" or "o". The normal way to do this in German is "oe". For instance, the German city Köln (Cologne) would be written out "Koeln". Umlaut replacement is actually very common in German-speaking countries, particularly in web URLs, e-mail addresses, bank cards, etc. My husband claims umlauts are broken and has wanted to change his "ö" to an "oe" for years, but the German government won't let him.

In short, I fear you have to go with "a" or "ae" (for "ä"), o or oe (for "ö"), etc.

Hmm, just remembered that there are umlauts in languages other than German. There may be another umlaut replacement scheme for those languages.

[ears73]

Nope, you are exactly right - it is a german name I am dealing with - Bäumer
Thanks for the info - although I really, really wanted his passport to reflect his heritage I am glad that I can stop being stalled up and go get his paperwork finished. *sigh* what a pain though!!!