Thanks. I did phone them, and they said they'd call JL and see if they could do this for me. They said it should take 48 hours. I'll check back next week and post results.

This is a pretty common term. In Hong Kong, most well-to-do schools are Christian schools, even though lots of them are not really religious schools by US standard. And students will have a "Christian" name, aka western name.

Alot of people also insist that everyone has a middle name, even though I don't.

Ooops. Once again, I am guilty of being US-centric. :) You are correct, of course, and I appreciate the reminder.

Results: AA and JL both said there were no name changes allowed. However they did cancel the award booking and waive the redeposit fee, which meant I could then make another award booking with the correct names, but on slightly different dates.

That could also be a problem with banks and such that use mother's maiden name as a "secret password".

Granted it used to be - it certainly isn't now.

In parts of Asia such as Singapore and Hong Kong, Christian names are not the same as given (first) names. For example, Mr. 李光耀 has the last name "Lee" and the given names "Kuan Yew", but his Christian name is "Harry". This doesn't necessary mean they are Christian though: in Singapore, virtually everybody has Western nickname used by army buddies, coworkers who speak a different language and so on. Jayanth becomes Jay, Meng Hong becomes Mike, and women in particular seem to have a predilection for adopting utterly improbable names that they find stylish (Xynthia, Konstanze, etc).