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-   -   Hyphenated name (https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/cathay-pacific-cathay/1960129-hyphenated-name.html)

goob3r Mar 9, 2019 8:10 pm

Hyphenated name
 
I purchased my mom a ticket on CX a few weeks ago. She has a Chinese first name and in her travel documents, her first name has a hyphen in it. i.e. Abc-Def. When I entered it in the system I entered it as Abc Def since it wouldn't let me enter the hypen at the time of booking. Will this pose an issue for her? Should it have been just run together as AbcDef instead?

carrotjuice Mar 9, 2019 10:20 pm

Either Abc Def or AbcDef will be fine. By the way in the airline's system every letter is capitalised anyway.

feh Mar 9, 2019 10:44 pm

Well, my first and middle names run together on boarding passes, I've noticed.

Also, my surname is two words with a space (though no hyphen) and even when entering the space in an online booking, I end up with the two words of my surname run into one.

If you're worried about the CX warnings regarding consistency of name, my understanding is that these are more to do with people using consistent latinizations of Chinese names, i.e. if travelling on passport using a Hong Kong latinization of a Chinese name (based on Cantonese pronunciation of characters), then use that same spelling in the ticketing and not a name spelling based upon Putonghua pronounciation/ pinyin romanization

ieuan1 Mar 10, 2019 12:17 am

I have a hyphenated name and it doesn't seem to matter for boarding whether it's Mr Smithjones, or Mr Smith Jones.

Sometimes when claiming miles from other airlines they may query if the boarding pass says Smith Jones and my frequent flyer account is Smithjones.

I also get addressed by cabin crew as Mr Smithjo, which takes a while to get used to, as my full name is too long to print out for whatever system they use.

plunet Mar 10, 2019 9:28 am

This is all a non-issue. The basics of airline booking systems were built many many years ago and their name handling is very very basic and punctuation, spaces and other unusual characters are removed or converted. Provided that the name is on the reservation is recognisable to that in the passport or other ID document then you would be very unlucky to face any problem.

SilverChris Mar 10, 2019 6:01 pm


Originally Posted by goob3r (Post 30867678)
I purchased my mom a ticket on CX a few weeks ago. She has a Chinese first name and in her travel documents, her first name has a hyphen in it. i.e. Abc-Def. When I entered it in the system I entered it as Abc Def since it wouldn't let me enter the hypen at the time of booking. Will this pose an issue for her? Should it have been just run together as AbcDef instead?

Have a pleasant flight :)

gobblercat Mar 10, 2019 11:32 pm


Originally Posted by goob3r (Post 30867678)
I purchased my mom a ticket on CX a few weeks ago. She has a Chinese first name and in her travel documents, her first name has a hyphen in it. i.e. Abc-Def. When I entered it in the system I entered it as Abc Def since it wouldn't let me enter the hypen at the time of booking. Will this pose an issue for her? Should it have been just run together as AbcDef instead?

Both of my sons have hyphenated names, and we are regulars on CX.

CX's & the travel agent's advice to us has been to use Abc Def - they warned us that any other form might render the ticket invalid. Not sure if this advice is correct, but we have always followed this in putting the kids names down and never had a problem (so far anyway!).

ernestnywang Mar 11, 2019 3:18 am

Just treat hyphen as space. If you look at the machine readable section (barcode) of a passport, you will find that both are rendered as >.

goob3r Mar 19, 2019 12:03 pm

Awesome, thanks for the reassurance everyone.


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