I sympathise with Paul Grixti (November 6) for the Passport Office giving him the Italian name of Paolo when he renewed his passport.

I recently had the same stupid experience when I renewed my expired passport and went to the Passport Office to collect it. They issued my new passport with the name of Filippo instead of Philip when all my old four Maltese passports show that my name is Philip together with my ID card.

When I objected I was told that my baptismal certificate says Filippo and they cannot do anything about it. Even my car licence is down as Filippo and therefore if I get a parking ticket (as I did) it was addressed to Filippo Grech. It appears that when they updated the data in the computer they took the details from the Church data which in my view is ridiculous.

I have no problem in travelling in EU countries because they will accept the ID card but outside the EU, say in Australia, I might encounter problems, as my brother did. He has an Australian passport with the name Francis Xaviour instead of Frank and this is because he was born in Malta and his Maltese passport was Francis Xaviour. He had a difficult time, when he went back to Australia, trying to persuade the authorities that he is a resident of Australia although all the other Australian cards show his name as Frank. I hope the authorities concerned will take note of this anomaly and correct their data on the computer and stop relying on Church details.

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.