Am I a certified Boat Master ?

[jwfrary]

Officially you need a what's known as a CoC or Certificate of competency. (or be one of the other accepted vocations on the passport form)

The CoC looks like a little black book, with the same insignia as a passport on the front of it. RYA qualifications don't cut the mustard in this regard.

On the subject of 'boat masters' They are given as exemptions, they also don't meet the criteria, but often the holders will also have a CoC anyway.

How to apply for a UK Certificate of Competency - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

 

[NotBirdseye]

Yes, but in her case because of complications over getting a passport (the name she has routinely used in the UK since her teens not being on her birth certificate), she had to swear an oath that she'd use a particular form of her name. No problem, it was merely making official the existing state of affairs, but it does mean that the passport office know her "official" name! Her full British citizenship is also quite new and hasn't had the corners rubbed off yet.

That's horrifying. I mean, I voted Brexit with the best (worst?) of them, but that's just racism.

 

[JumbleDuck]

Job Title or Professional qualifications??

Job title. In fact my job (university lecturer) has no professional qualifications, although most of us have doctorates. I could and did sign passport pictures before I got mine,

 

[AntarcticPilot]

That's horrifying. I mean, I voted Brexit with the best (worst?) of them, but that's just racism.

Not really - it's just UK officialdom conflicting with the normal practice of Hong Kong Chinese to adopt a name that is easier for westerners to pronounce when operating in the West. These days most Hong Kongers are given a suitable name at birth and it's on their birth certificate, but my wife and I are of an earlier generation when it wasn't usually adopted until the need arose - in my wife's case, in her teens. The Passport office's problem arose because the name on her birth certificate didn't align with the name on her marriage certificate or any other documentation.
To illustrate the necessity, although my wife's Chinese name is reasonably pronounceable, I know someone called Tsz Yan, and Ng is a regular surname! And then there's the problem that names are often two words in Chinese. Making an official change of name meant we could address both concerns by hyphenating the Romanized version of her Chinese name, as well as making her adopted name "official". It wasn't a big deal - even a solicitor couldn't charge her more than a fiver for it!

 

[JumbleDuck]

Not really - it's just UK officialdom conflicting with the normal practice of Hong Kong Chinese to adopt a name that is easier for westerners to pronounce when operating in the West.

Twenty or thirty years ago I used to teach a lot of students from Hong Kong, almost all of whom had bizarrely old fashioned English names: Raymond, Geoffrey, Letitia, that sort of thing. Not that I have anything against Raymonds, Geoffreys and Letitias, but they were not usual names for 19 year olds.

Eventually I asked one of my students, a very nice lad who had not adopted an English name and who was very happy to teach me how to pronounce his name as best I could. His story was that the British Council in Hong Kong employed an elderly lady who advised students coming to the UK that they needed an English name and also suggested a name to use. Since she had been out of Britain since the 50s, her ideas of inconspicuous British names were a tad outdated.

By the time I stopped that work, ten years ago, most Hong Kong students used their Chinese names, perhaps because by then there was a significant number of non-Hong Kong Chinese students who never even thought of changing their names. I preferred it like that.

 

[AntarcticPilot]

Twenty or thirty years ago I used to teach a lot of students from Hong Kong, almost all of whom had bizarrely old fashioned English names: Raymond, Geoffrey, Letitia, that sort of thing. Not that I have anything against Raymonds, Geoffreys and Letitias, but they were not usual names for 19 year olds.

Eventually I asked one of my students, a very nice lad who had not adopted an English name and who was very happy to teach me how to pronounce his name as best I could. His story was that the British Council in Hong Kong employed an elderly lady who advised students coming to the UK that they needed an English name and also suggested a name to use. Since she had been out of Britain since the 50s, her ideas of inconspicuous British names were a tad outdated.

By the time I stopped that work, ten years ago, most Hong Kong students used their Chinese names, perhaps because by then there was a significant number of non-Hong Kong Chinese students who never even thought of changing their names. I preferred it like that.

Interesting. I only know one Hong Kong lady (one of my sisters in law) who doesn't have a Westernised name; like my wife she wouldn't have one from birth, and she lives in Germany + she and I have no common language (barring a little pidgin German on my side ). But the modern generation often use western sounding made up names - for example, I know a Rivius and a Novia. All my wife's relatives that have western names use them freely; I know most of their Chinese names, but rarely use them. And in Hong Kong, most people introduce themselves to me using their Western name. However, I have noticed that they seem more likely to be known by their Chinese name in the west - my wife is known by her Chinese name to her colleagues when she was a post-doc.

As you say, mainland Chinese are less likely to adopt Westernised names, and your hypothesis may well be correct.

 

[Daydream believer]

That's horrifying. I mean, I voted Brexit with the best (worst?) of them, but that's just racism.

Not really. When the police stopped her outside a well known takeaway & she told them her name was Colonel Sanders alarm bells started ringing