The worldwide problem is often not meaning. It is the one-box form and the passport machine.
Spanish two-surname issues are a sibling problem: software erases structure.
Regions
- China — Generation names
Cohort characters as default kin tech for many lineages.
- Taiwan / Singapore / diaspora — Mixed scripts
Characters at home, Latin at school — stacked.
- Japan — Koseki + jinmeiyō
High legal friction on the written given name.
- Korea — Hanja / 돌림자 / KOSTAT
Design plus public frequencies; no fate claims here.
- Vietnam (related but Latin now) — Hán-Nôm past, quốc ngữ present
A cousin history of leaving characters in the file.
- Anglophone offices — Romanisation only
Everyday reach shrinks to the Latin string.
Laws
- Japanese Family Register Act + jinmeiyō Japan — The strictest common character-list regime.
- Korean family-register practice Korea — Hanja may be recorded; hangul is the everyday legal script — check current registrar guidance.
- Chinese household registration China — Character given names in the hukou system — local rules on rare glyphs have existed.
- ICAO Latin transcription International travel — The machine-readable line flattens characters.
If a system cannot store a character or a generation logic, the defect is in the form.