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My wife and I, we are a Vietnamese-Korean couple. My wife just gave birth to a boy and we intend to register Vietnamese citizenship for him. In this case, may he take my family name in the Korean language?
If you and your wife agree to register Vietnamese citizenship for your son, the naming of your son must comply with Vietnam’s law.
Under Article 4 of Government Decree 123/2015/ND-CP providing the contents of birth registration, the family name, middle name, given name and ethnicity of a child will be determined based on the agreement of his parents as stated in the birth registration declaration form. If the parents have no agreement or fail to reach agreement, the child’s family name and ethnicity will be determined according to local practices.
Article 26.3 of the 2015 Civil Code stipulates: “The giving of name shall be restricted in case lawful rights and interests of other persons are infringed upon or it contravenes the fundamental principles prescribed in Article 3 of this Code. Names of Vietnamese citizens must be in Vietnamese or languages of other ethnic groups, and may not be given in numbers or characters that are not words.”
So Vietnamese citizens can only be named in Vietnamese or languages of other ethnic groups. In the case of your son, as he is a Vietnamese citizen, he may not take your family name in the Korean language.
However, you can transcribe your family name from Korean to Vietnamese and give that name to your son.-(VLLF)
