Mazlinah’s full name is Mazlinah Binte Haji Mohamad Noor. It does not include a surname, because her Malay culture generally uses a patronymic naming system.

Mazlinah is her own name. “Binte” means “daughter of”. “Haji” is an honorific meaning “pilgrim” indicating that her father performed his pilgrimage (hajj) to Makkah. Her father’s name was Mohamad Noor.

Millions of people in many countries do not have a “first name” and a “surname” as so often required by the designers of forms.

A different “problem” arises with the many Indonesian names (Javanese mainly) that are a single word with no family name or patronym. Soeharto (aka Suharto), the country’s second president, was one. The answer for some authorities issuing documents has been to insist on these people duplicating their one name.

Many Chinese people have long had problems getting their names properly rendered because their names are often in reverse order to “Western” names: in Lee Hsien Loong, the Prime Minister of Singapore, for example, Lee is the family name.

Pasifika and Māori people have also expressed difficulties because of their names. Okirano Tilaia is a young Samoan who had to put up with his schoolmates calling him Oki because they found “Okirano” too hard. By such means members of the majority ethnicity fail to respect and fail to adapt to real changes in New Zealand society.

The solution is simple: a single form field labelled “Full name”.

But this easy fix seems to elude government departments, companies and organisations, who appear blind to “the other” and continue to insist on first names and surnames.

People’s names continue to be deliberately and knowingly misrepresented (as has Mazlinah’s for her New Zealand passport, for her bank account, and for the IRD) because they do not fit the majority ethnicity’s expectations of a name.

It is easy to see why people’s names could be another barrier to being interviewed. If your own name is Elizabeth Black, why would you shortlist Mazlinah Binte Haji Mohamad Noor, Suharto Suharto or Okirano Tilaia when you could instead call in Susan Smith, someone whose name structure is just like your own, and whose name you can easily spell and pronounce?

Also see:

What's in a name?

Ministry acknowledges bias in teacher recruitment