Malaysia Airlines and AirAsia have updated their respective name entry guidelines for flight bookings. These changes seem to be better accommodate Southeast Asian passengers whose names do not confirm to conventional Western naming conventions, clearing up any confusion.
The national airline splits names into “First & Middle Name” and “Last name/Surname”, while the AirAsia uses “Given Name” and “Family name/Surname”, but both systems work similarly. The updated guidelines now take into account diverse naming conventions, including Malaysian, Chinese, Indian, Filipino, Thai, and Vietnamese.
For those with a Chinese and Vietnamese names, you are allowed to put your family name in the surname column, even if it appears as the first or second name on your passport. For example, for “Vincent Tan Ming Ban”, you can put “Tan” in the surname column while “Ming Ban Vincent” can be entered as the given name. Another example that Malaysia Airlines gave is “Foo Mei Mei”, with “Foo” being the surname and “Mei Mei” designated as the first and middle names.
As for passengers with titles like “Bin” or Anak” in their names, those words are now required to be entered into the surname column. The name “Mohd Ali Ahmad Bin Mohd Abu” would be split into “Mohd Ali Ahmad” and “Bin Mohd Abu”. Regarding names “A/P” and “A/L”, those words do not need to be entered into either columns for AirAsia, but Malaysia Airlines’ guidelines gave no example for this.
For those with upcoming flights with Malaysia Airlines, the airline says that the updated rules do not apply to existing bookings, so you do not need to worry about making changes.
(Sources: Malaysia Airlines, AirAsia)
