WE LIVE IN USA
Change the name on your Taiwan passport together with the household registration and save a trip
If you hold dual nationality and change your name, you replace the US passport (see item 13 of the checklist), and the Taiwan one too. The Taiwan side overlaps heavily with registering the marriage back home, so doing them separately is wasted effort.
Where to go
The Taipei Economic and Cultural Office (TECO), divided by jurisdiction based on residence. Confirm which office covers you first, which is not about which one is closest to you, but rather which one is assigned to your state of residence.
What to bring
- Your US marriage certificate (certified copy)
- A Chinese translation
- Your current Taiwan passport
- Photos
Typically about 2 months.
Where the overlap is
Registering the marriage in Taiwan goes like this (see item 15 of the checklist):
- Obtain a certified US marriage certificate
- Have TECO authenticate it
- Prepare a Chinese translation
- File with a household registration office in Taiwan
Steps 1, 2 and 3 are exactly the same documents the passport name change needs. Since you're going to TECO either way and preparing a translation either way, assemble the paperwork for both at once.
In practice: ask the officer "I want to do both the marriage registration and the passport name change. How many authenticated certificates do I need?", then request enough copies in one go. This is also why item 10 of the checklist recommends ordering 3–5 certified copies up front.
Watch the order
The name on a Taiwan passport is supposed to match the name in the household register. So finish the marriage registration and name change on the household register first, and the passport follows.
If you submit both together, the officer will usually tell you which has to go first. When in doubt, ask rather than guessing the sequence.
Whether to change it at all is a decision
Worth thinking through first: does your Taiwanese name need to change too?
Plenty of people take their spouse's surname in the US while keeping their original name on their Taiwan household register and passport. That is legally completely fine, because these are two separate legal systems.
The cost is that your two passports carry different names, which causes trouble in these situations:
- Cross-checking of entry and exit records when you use different passports
- Cross-border property, inheritance and insurance documents
- Taiwanese bank accounts whose names don't match your US ones (this ties into FBAR reporting, see item 79 of the checklist)
So this isn't a "might as well change it" matter, it's a decision: keeping both sides consistent saves hassle later, but changing the Taiwan passport itself costs two months and a round of paperwork.
A Chinese name for a foreign spouse
If your spouse is a foreign national who will appear on the Taiwan household register, they must submit a declaration of adopted Chinese nameThat means deciding how your Chinese name is written. This name will follow you across every document in Taiwan, so it is worth giving it some serious thought.
In one line
The paperwork overlaps with the marriage registration, so do them together and save a trip, but decide first whether the Taiwanese name should change at all.