Whelan changed his name by deed poll four years ago and reportedly has a drivers licence in his new name.
"This is a breach of my human rights," said the Lib Demo activist from Birmingham.
"They want to put my birth name on my passport. But that is not my name any more." ...
[D]espite filling out the relevant forms and sending the £72.50 fee, Body Art received a letter from the Passport Office on 15 January, which said that they were sticking to policy and were refusing to issue a passport because of his unusual name.
The government agency told the Birmingham Mail that a policy section regarding "strings of words or phrases" meant his name was not admissible.
The section reads: "Where an applicant changes his or her name to a string of words or phrases that would not normally be recognised as a name, this should not be entered on to the personal details page of the passport."The Mail adds a bit more info -
“I applied for an update on my passport because it had expired. I got a phone call from an administrator at the passport office and they said there was a problem".
“They said my application was being reviewed by the policy department, they said they needed further government documents with my name.”
Body Art said that he promptly sent off his driving licence, a letter from his MP and mortgage letter, all by recorded delivery.
But on January 15, he received a letter from the Passport Office saying that they were sticking to policy and were refusing to issue a passport because of his unusual name. ....
A spokeswoman from Passport Office said they did not comment on individual cases and referred us to the ‘strings of words or phrases’ of their policy.
It read: “Where an applicant changes his or her name to a string of words or phrases that would not normally be recognised as a name, this should not be entered onto the personal details page of the passport. For example, the names ‘New Year’ ‘Happy Easter’ or ‘Good Bye’ are unacceptable as, when put together, they become a recognised phrase or saying.”Pointers to aspects of the Australian, UK and US name change regime are here.
'Private Lives, Public Records: Illegitimacy and the Birth Certificate in Twentieth-Century Britain' by Nadja Durbach in (2013) Twentieth Century British History comments that
In the early decades of the twentieth century, as the British government expanded its social programs, and private charities and co-operative associations began to offer more benefits, birth certificates became essential to the bureaucratic process of establishing both age and identity. But every time a birth certificate was produced, it made the private circumstances of an individual’s birth public knowledge. For those born out of wedlock, handing over these certificates was often stigmatizing at a time when illegitimacy remained for many a shameful family secret. When the government finally introduced an abbreviated birth certificate in 1947, which documented name, sex, and birth date without reference to parentage, they were responding to long-standing concerns both within and beyond the state bureaucracy about the tension inherent in keeping public records about people’s private lives. The emergence of the short form birth certificate is thus part of a much larger human story that can help us to map significant shifts in the relationship between the individual citizen and the modern state in the information age.
In the decades after the First World War, the birth certificate emerged as an important legal document. As the British government expanded its social programs, and co-operative associations began to offer more benefits, birth certificates became essential to the bureaucratic process of establishing both age and identity. In the 1920s and 1930s, birth certificates were required to gain access to elementary education, National Insurance, unemployment insurance, friendly society benefits, as well as state and private pensions. They were often necessary for employment purposes, particularly to initiate apprenticeships and to obtain jobs in industries with age restrictions. By the early twentieth century, an official birth certificate had become a vital document, which every time it was produced made the private circumstances of one’s birth public knowledge. For those born out of wedlock, producing these certificates was often stigmatizing at a time when illegitimacy remained for many a shameful family secret. When the government introduced an abbreviated birth certificate in 1947—that documented name, sex, and birth date without reference to parentage—they were responding to long-standing concerns both within and beyond the state bureaucracy about the tension inherent in keeping public records about people’s private lives.
Social theorists have tended to treat government record-keeping as part of a Foucauldian surveillance regime characteristic of the modern state that operates as a tool of social control by rendering the governed legible. But recent scholarship by historians working in diverse contexts has provided more nuanced readings of the multiple purposes and effects of the state documentation of individual persons. While recognizing that civil registration is part of processes of governmentality, these historians have also argued for the critical role that state records play in the recognition of individuals as subjects with rights. They have argued persuasively that individuals are often invested in the documentation process and frequently deploy it for their own ends. In the case of early twentieth-century Britain, citizens could no longer choose to operate outside the registration system. During this period, an ever-widening swathe of the British public became even more invested in civil registration, as it provided the mechanism for accessing benefits in an age that saw a rapid expansion of social services. Registration was nevertheless a dynamic process: some citizens petitioned the state, whereas others falsified their records, used loopholes in the law, or otherwise attempted to manipulate the system to obtain identity documents for themselves or their children that were not stigmatizing. The public’s use of these tactics led ultimately to a renegotiation between the British government and its people over what would remain private in the process of public record-keeping.
Britain’s long history of registration suggests that although the documentation of persons served the needs of the government, this tool of statecraft was also advantageous for a variety of British subjects from different social locations who participated in the process because it materially benefitted them to do so.
