GeoffM

Wife went to the social security office today with the kids. Although she's in the system, they need to manually verify her name because it's too long, also one of the kid's. She's been told this will only take a couple of weeks, not the months long manual process that others have suffered. Do you think she's been told the truth regarding timescales? As I say, she's in the SAVE system but the name immigration put down doesn't match something exactly, presumably because they truncated it differently to what SS are expecting. Other son is okay and has had a number issued.

For interest, her name format is aaaaaa bbb ccccccccc dddd, with dddd our surname.

MadRad

I've had this problem, all because I have two middle names. Social Security office was fine but the DMV were not happy. The second of my two middle names is one that's used as a surname in the UK, but has been hijacked as a first name in the US. When I had to go to the DMV to get my full license they'd entered that name as my surname. They were not happy to discover it was wrong, and gave me a really hard time about it even though they'd had all the relevant documentation to start with and it was definitely their mistake. It got sorted out eventually but it was a huge hassle. Now, for most things, I just go by forename/surname - that seems more acceptable than an extra middle name. Daft system.

Bob

Our kids have double barreled middle names. One has both on her SS card, the other only has one name on her SS card.

When we double checked with the SS office, the info was correct, just the way the cards got truncated.

As they're kids, they can figure out the DMV for themselves when they're old enough as I don't want anything to do with the DMV when the time comes

RICH

You should write to "The Office of The Deputy Assistant Database Supervisor of the Social Security Administration (Field Length Appropriations Division)" and complain about not being able to deal with long names.

GeoffM

Wifey took her last name to replace her (2nd) middle name, just the way Filipinos do it apparently. But she only lost a letter when she gained my surname! Damn Spaniards and their invasion!

Yeah, thanks for that Rich

scrubbedexpat099

Hispanics have the same issue.

Jscl

An Indian friend of mine actually came to use his first name as his last name in all official documents, because it was just so horrible to try to fix it.

Just popping into the thread to say whatever name ends up being on their social security cards, use that when they are included on your tax return. You might know it's actually wrong, but just play along to save yourself a lot of rejections when you file your taxes!

SpoogleDrummer

Neither of my middle names are on my SS card. My drivers license has one and half of them and no-one mentioned it as an issue.

GeoffM

To follow up: received a pair of letters from the local SS office today to say that the cards should be here within 2 weeks. The letters had their abbreviated first/middle names, both simply truncated at 16 characters including spaces.

GeoffM

Update: cards arrived today, all three. That's still only 14 days since she arrived in the country!