Instead of starting a whole new thread, I thought I'd post my inquiry here.
In a few months, I'll be eligible to apply for US citizenship (though who knows how long that'll take with the pandemic), and I'm pretty excited at the possibility of getting a US passport (again, outwith a pandemic, travel restrictions and a sever delay in passport issuance).
As I fill out my citizenship application, I'm presented with the opportunity to change my name legally. I've toyed with the idea of shortening my last name because it's far too long. (Think about it this way: if one's last name is AlAbdurrauf, for example, they can drop the "Al" and leave it as Abdurrauf, and what I'm considering doing is dropping the "Al" part, as many Arabic last names start with that.) I also feel like getting
employment is a lot more difficult in the US with a name that might be hard to decipher or come off as "ethnic."
However, a possible travel complication might occur as a result. You see, I'm a Saudi citizen, and Saudi officially doesn't allow voluntary dual citizenship, but it's pretty much "don't ask, don't tell" in practice. There are tens of thousands of Saudi-Americans who travel between the two countries and it's rarely an issue, and many have first or last names that might be spelled differently on their US and Saudi passports due to transliteration differences.
But I don't know how it would work in terms of booking tickets to Saudi (or Bahrain, where I usually fly into instead) from the US. I know that immigration usually doesn't check or ask for boarding passes upon entering a given country. But if I book a round-trip ticket with the last name "AlAbdurrauf" from the US to the GCC, it might be an issue leaving the US since I'm presenting US security a US passport with the last name "Abdurrauf" but that boarding pass says "AlAbdurrauf." And on the other side, if I book the ticket with the last name "Abdurrauf," leaving Saudi (or the GCC) might be difficult if I present exit immigration with a boarding pass that says "Abdurrauf" when my Saudi passport would say "AlAbdurrauf."
Does anyone have any insight on this, or should I just suck it up and leave my last name as is?