English Name On Hanko?

7 comments

1. My 認印 is just my first name, vertical, in katakana.

   For registered hanko, there are more specific rules but you actually have a fair amount of leeway here. You need to use parts of your real name, but there is some flexibility with the order, and whether to include middle names. I don’t have 通称名 or anything officially registered in katakana. The only thing city hall has is my name as written on my passport and zairyu card, so my 実印 is in English.

   For reference this is from Shinjuku-ku as something you *cannot* use:

   * 住民票に記録されている氏名、氏、名、通称または氏名、通称の一部を組み合わせた文字で表していないもの

   Sorry for the weird double negative, but basically you need to use some combination of real names they have on file.

   My 実印 is my first and last name, in English order, all caps, no middle name.

   I’ve registered this at two different city halls in Tokyo, and have used it for buying a mansion and the associated home loan.

2. In general, as long as part of your real name is shown, it should be fine. So either your last name or your first name or even both. In my case, it’s not possible to have both (too long!)

   My experience though…This is in Machida-shi so mileage may vary.

   They required us for the ff. when registering for jitsuin:

   (1) Name can be in katakana or English (for bank purposes, it needs to be in katakana)

   (2) Name that is printed on the hanko has to match your registered name

   –> for instance if you have more than 1 first name and you only had one name on your jitsuin, they would reject it.

   –> e g. If my name is Mary Ann Smith and the name on hanko is just メアリー instead of either メアリー アン or スミス, they would reject it.

   –> e.g. similarly in English, if I just had it as Mary then they’d reject it

   Found these out the hard way and had to have hanko created several times.

   Different outcome for when I was living in Yokohama, they didn’t have a problem with either English nor katakana version of my first name (just Mary/メアリー).

   By the way, if in your juminhyo, your name is registered in Roman Alphabet, you would need to register your katakana equivalent to your English name. The staff would help you out anyway. If registering an English name hanko, this would be skipped naturally.

   EDIT for formatting.

3. It depends on your city’s guidelines.

   For me, I’ve registered the same jitsu-in at five previous city halls and two banks. It’s my long surname in English going around, and my given name initial in the center.

   The mitome-in has the nickname of my given name in English.

4. I would just ask the ward office, how they want it, and then do that. I had my name in katakana first, but they wouldn’t want that. They told me, they’d accept my first name in romaji, and I did that. I went back to the ward office, and made sure to ask the same lady to register it, so I wouldn’t get a “second opinion” on my stamp. it worked.

5. Mine is my first name in vertical Katakana, and I’ve never had any problems with it.

   You can register the same hanko as your jitsuin and ginkoin, and you don’t actually *need* one to sign for packages and stuff; you can just use a pen.

6. Everything except jitsuin can be just about anything. First name, last name, katakana, English, you can [have drawings on it if you want](https://mc-web.jp/life/zatsuneta/39096/).

7. I’ve used full romaji letters for my jitsuin hanko.
   Accepted by banks and house.