What Is Considered a Surname on a U.S. Passport?

On a U.S. passport, the surname is your legal family name — the name printed in the field labeled “Surname” or “Family Name” on the biographical data page. What is considered a surname on a U.S. passport is whatever appears as your last name on your evidence of citizenship, typically a U.S. birth certificate, naturalization certificate, or consular report of birth abroad, entered exactly as it appears there.¹ For most applicants that’s simple. The interesting questions come up when a name doesn’t fit neatly into a single last-name slot.

The Basic Rule: Match Your Citizenship Evidence

The State Department expects the surname on your application to match the surname on the document proving your U.S. citizenship. If your birth certificate reads “Smith,” your passport surname is “Smith.” If a legal event since birth changed your name — marriage, divorce with a resumed former name, or a court order — you provide the certified document showing the new name, and that becomes your passport surname.²

The surname field is separate from your given names. What you consider your “first” and “middle” names go in the given name field; the family name stands alone.

Hyphenated and Multiple Last Names

A hyphenated last name like “Garcia-Lopez” goes into the surname field in full, hyphen and all. The same is true if you have two or more last names without a hyphen: they all belong in the surname field together.

Under State Department rules, adding a matrilineal surname or rearranging name components to follow a cultural naming convention is treated as a minor discrepancy that doesn’t require a court order, as long as the fundamental order of names isn’t changed.² So if your birth record shows one last name and you customarily use two that include your mother’s family name, you can generally reflect that on the passport without a formal court-ordered name change.

Using a Former Last Name as a Middle Name

The Foreign Affairs Manual allows you to move a last name into the middle name field, provided the order of names stays the same. If your legal names are “Juan Perez Rojas,” you can have “Perez” appear as your middle name and “Rojas” as your surname.² This is useful when only one of your family names is treated as the “true” surname in the country you’re traveling to, but you still want the other on record.

If You Legally Have Only One Name

If you legally have only one name, with no distinct given name and surname, international standards require that single name to go in the surname field. The given name field is left empty in the passport system. Some identity documents show “FNU” (First Name Unknown) or “NFN” (No First Name) as a placeholder in the given name slot, and the State Department treats these as single-name situations, placing only the one name in the surname field.²

An FNU designation can create friction later. Airline booking systems expect a first name, and when the government ID shows only a surname, check-in agents sometimes need extra time to reconcile the ticket with the passport. If this applies to you, plan for longer counter times at the airport and be ready to explain.

Suffixes: Jr., Sr., II, III

Suffixes are handled more flexibly than most people expect. You can add or remove a suffix like Jr., Sr., II, or III based on your preference, regardless of whether it appears on your birth certificate or other citizenship evidence. If you write it on your application, it gets printed. If you leave it off, it stays off.

Sr. and Jr. can be used interchangeably with I and II, and Arabic numerals such as “2nd” or “3rd” are converted to Roman numerals (II, III) in the printed name.²

One caution: the Spanish honorific “Sr.” (short for “Señor”) is treated as a title rather than a suffix, and titles are generally not included in the name fields on a passport.

How Your Surname Appears in the Machine-Readable Zone

Below the photograph on the biographical page are two lines of characters known as the machine-readable zone, or MRZ. Border agents and automated gates scan this zone. Your surname is called the “primary identifier” in international aviation standards and appears first on the upper data line, followed by two filler characters, then your given names.

Punctuation is stripped in the MRZ. Hyphens, apostrophes, and spaces disappear, so “O’Brien” becomes “OBRIEN” and “Garcia-Lopez” becomes “GARCIALOPEZ.”³ If your full name exceeds 39 characters, the MRZ truncates it under ICAO Document 9303. Truncation does not change what appears on the biographical data page itself, but automated systems at borders may see a shortened version of your name, which occasionally causes brief delays when scanned records don’t line up perfectly.

If the Surname on Your Passport Is Wrong

If the State Department misspelled your surname or made another printing error, you can get it corrected using Form DS-5504. You mail in your current passport, a new color photo, and evidence of the correct information, such as a birth certificate showing the right spelling. The correction is free while your passport is still valid.⁴

Timing matters for validity, not price. Catch the error within one year of issuance and your replacement passport gets a full new 10-year validity period. Report it after one year and the corrected passport inherits the expiration date of the original.⁴ Check every letter of your name the day the passport arrives.

If Your Surname Legally Changes

After a marriage, divorce, or court-ordered name change, the form you use to update your passport depends on how much time has passed since your current passport was issued.

Within one year of your most recent passport being issued, Form DS-5504 handles the update. There is no application fee, though expedited service costs an extra $60. You send in the form, your current passport, one new photo, and a certified document proving the name change.⁴

After a year, and if your passport otherwise meets the mail-renewal conditions (you have it in hand, you were at least 16 when it was issued, it was issued less than 15 years ago, and it is undamaged), you use Form DS-82 with certified proof of the name change. The renewal fee for an adult passport book is $130.⁵ If you are relying on a divorce decree to prove the change, it must specifically state that you may resume use of a former name.²

Keeping the Surname Consistent With Your Ticket and Other IDs

A correct surname on the passport is only useful if it matches the rest of your travel paperwork. TSA requires the name on your boarding pass to match the name on the government-issued ID you present at the checkpoint. Suffixes are the one exception: TSA accepts a mismatched suffix between your boarding pass and ID, so “Jr.” on one but not the other is fine.⁶ Everything else in the name needs to line up. Book flights under whatever surname currently appears on the passport you will actually be carrying.

After a legal name change, the Social Security Administration also expects you to update its records with evidence of your identity, your new name, and the name change event.⁷ Updating Social Security first, then the passport, then the driver’s license tends to produce the fewest verification snags.

1
U.S. Department of State. Apply for Your Adult Passport
2
Department of State. 8 FAM 403.1 Name Usage and Name Changes
3
ICAO. Doc 9303 Part 4 – Specifications for Machine Readable Passports
4
U.S. Department of State. Change or Correct a Passport
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U.S. Department of State. Passport Fees
6
Transportation Security Administration. Acceptable Identification at the TSA Checkpoint
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Social Security Administration. How Do I Change or Correct My Name on My Social Security Number Card