Civil Registry and Passport Identity
The name recorded in your residence permit and in the Population Register is primarily based on the form of your name as stated in your travel document. However, if you, as a foreigner, have been issued a Czech civil registry document (e.g. a birth or marriage certificate), you are assigned what is known as a civil registry identity (matriční identita).
A civil registry identity refers to the transcription or transliteration of your name into Czech, as indicated in the civil registry document. This version of the name may differ from the one in your travel document, especially if it was originally written in a non-Latin script.
For example:
Name in Cyrillic: В’ячеслав Шишка
International transliteration in the passport: Vyacheslav Shyshka
Czech transcription: Vjačeslav Šyška
By law,1 the civil registry identity takes precedence over the passport identity in the Population Register. This means that once your Czech civil registry document is registered by the Ministry of the Interior, your name in the Population Register will be updated to match the name in the Civil Register, regardless of the form of the form used in your travel document.
At the same time, your residence permit is always issued under the name stated in your travel document, as it must match the details for travel and border control purposes.
As a result, the name shown on your residence permit card or travel document may differ from the name in the Population Register. When dealing with authorities, it is recommended that you inform staff about this discrepancy in advance.