How to Write Place of Birth on a Passport Application?

To write place of birth on a passport application, enter the city and state if you were born in the United States, or the city and country as it is presently known if you were born abroad. That is the wording the DS-11 form itself uses.¹ The rule is short, but a few situations have their own conventions, and getting the details right keeps your application from stalling.

If You Were Born in the United States

Write the city, then the full state name. “Miami, Florida.” You do not need to add “USA” or “United States.”¹

Spell the state out rather than using the two-letter postal code. The State Department’s Foreign Affairs Manual notes real confusion caused by abbreviations: officers have read “CA” as California when the applicant meant Central America, and “L.A.” as Louisiana when the applicant meant Los Angeles.²

The city is not strictly required. The Foreign Affairs Manual says it is “not necessary to annotate the city of birth if the applicant only provided the state.”² Including it is still the standard practice, since it gives officers one more field to match against your birth certificate.

Match What Your Birth Certificate Shows

Your birth certificate is what the passport agency uses to verify place of birth, so your entry should be consistent with it.³

If the certificate lists a township, village, or unincorporated area instead of a recognized city, you can use that name. The Foreign Affairs Manual allows applicants born in an unincorporated area to enter the area’s name as their place of birth.² If the certificate lists only a county with no city, writing just the state is acceptable.

If You Were Born in a U.S. Territory

Write the city followed by the territory name: “San Juan, Puerto Rico.” The same format applies to Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and American Samoa. The Foreign Affairs Manual keeps a separate table for U.S. outlying territories and possessions that passport officers use when processing these applications.²

If You Were Born Outside the United States

Enter the city and country where the birth physically took place. Citizenship status does not change the entry; the field records geography.

Child of a U.S. Citizen Born Abroad

If you were born outside the country to a U.S. citizen parent, use the city and country where you were born. The Consular Report of Birth Abroad, which serves as your proof of citizenship, instructs parents to enter the “city and country where the child was born.”⁴ Your passport application should match what the CRBA shows.

Born on an Overseas Military Base

Overseas military bases do not count as U.S. soil for this field. If you were born on a base in Germany, your place of birth is the city and country where that base sits, not “USA.”² Bases inside the United States follow the ordinary domestic rule of city and state.

Internationally Adopted Children

For a child adopted from another country, the place of birth is the city and country where the child was actually born, regardless of the child’s current U.S. citizenship status. The child’s Certificate of Citizenship, issued by USCIS, should be consistent with the legal documents and immigrant visa,⁵ and the passport application should use the same city and country.

If You Were Born at Sea or in the Air

Write “At Sea” or “In the Air.” The Foreign Affairs Manual lists both as standalone place-of-birth entries with their own codes, so use whichever phrase matches your birth records.²

If Your Birth Country Has Been Renamed

The DS-11 instructions say to use the country name “as presently known.”¹ If the country where you were born no longer exists under that name, you use the current one. The Foreign Affairs Manual keeps detailed tables mapping former names to the currently recognized country.²

Common cases from those tables:

Soviet Union (U.S.S.R.): use the current successor state where the city is located, such as Russia, Ukraine, or Georgia (one of twelve recognized successor states).
Yugoslavia: use Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, or Slovenia.
Czechoslovakia: Czech Republic for Bohemia, Moravia, or the Sudetenland; Slovakia for the former province of Slovakia.
Swaziland: use Eswatini (renamed in 2018).
Burma: the State Department maintains its own designation, so check the FAM table for the approved entry.

The same principle covers other historical name changes: Bechuanaland is Botswana, Southern Rhodesia is Zimbabwe, East Pakistan is Bangladesh, Upper Volta is Burkina Faso.²

Jerusalem Has Its Own Rule

If you were born in Jerusalem, you can choose to list “Jerusalem” alone or “Israel” as your place of birth. If you write “Jerusalem, Israel,” passport officials are required to contact you to ask which designation you prefer,² which usually means a processing delay.

Fixing a Place of Birth Error on an Issued Passport

If your passport was issued with the wrong place of birth, submit Form DS-5504 by mail to correct it at no charge.⁶ You will need to include:

Completed Form DS-5504 with the correct information.
Your current passport containing the error.
One color passport photo meeting the standard requirements.
Evidence of the correct information, typically your birth certificate.

There is no fee for a data-error correction.⁷ Timing matters: if you catch the mistake within one year of issuance, the replacement is valid for the full ten years. After a year, the corrected passport keeps the original expiration date.⁶ Catching the error early is worth the effort.

1
U.S. Department of State. Application for a U.S. Passport DS-11
2
Department of State Foreign Affairs Manual. 8 FAM 403.4 Place of Birth
3
Travel.State.Gov. Get Citizenship Evidence for a U.S. Passport
4
U.S. Department of State. Application for Consular Report of Birth Abroad of a Citizen of the United States of America
5
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Certificate of Citizenship for Your Internationally Adopted Child
6
Travel.State.Gov. Change or Correct a Passport
7
Travel.State.Gov. Passport Fees