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Zhao C Had Used His Name for 20 Years. When He Applied for a New ID, the Government Said It Was Illegal.

His name was 赵C.

Not 赵 (Zhao, a common Chinese surname) followed by a character that looks like C. The actual Latin letter C — the third letter of the Roman alphabet — as his legal given name. His parents had registered him this way in the 1980s, when the regulations around naming were less precisely enforced. Every document in his life — school records, university transcripts, marriage certificate, bank accounts — read 赵C.

At age 26, he applied for a second-generation identity card, which used a new standardized system. The authorities informed him that Chinese law prohibited the inclusion of foreign language letters in Chinese names. His name was, legally, inadmissible. He would need to change it.

He sued the local public security bureau.

The case

赵C's argument was essentially one of reliance: he had built an entire documented life under this name. Every institution that knew him, knew him as 赵C. A forced name change would require him to update every document simultaneously — a process that, in Chinese bureaucratic practice, is extraordinarily time-consuming and carries the risk of creating identity inconsistencies that are difficult to resolve.

He also argued that his parents had registered the name in good faith and that the administrative system had accepted it for over two decades. The failure to flag it at registration was a government error; the cost of correcting that error should not fall entirely on him.

The court initially found in his favour at the local level. The case was appealed. The provincial court reversed the decision, ruling that Chinese law clearly requires names to use Chinese characters, and that the original registration had been an administrative error that could not create a permanent right to use a non-compliant name.

赵C was required to choose a new given name.

What the case established

The 赵C case became one of the most-cited examples in Chinese legal scholarship on naming rights for two reasons:

1. It confirmed the character-only rule. Chinese names must be composed of characters from the standard Chinese writing system. Foreign letters, numerals, symbols, and punctuation are prohibited — regardless of how long a person has used them.
2. It showed the limits of administrative error as a defence. The fact that the registration system accepted a non-compliant name does not make the name legal. The acceptance was the error; the rule remains.

The parallel: Elon Musk's X Æ A-12

In 2020, Elon Musk announced his son's name as X Æ A-12. California's naming regulations, similar in this respect to China's, prohibit names containing numerals and most special characters. The name was modified for the birth certificate — reported as X AE A-XII, using Roman numerals and letters but removing the special character Æ and the numeral 12.

Two countries, very different legal systems, same basic rule: names must be expressible in the standard writing system of the jurisdiction. Neither wealth nor parental creativity can override this constraint.

The lesson for anyone choosing a Chinese name

A Chinese name must be fully encodable in standard Chinese characters. This seems obvious, but it has practical implications:

• Characters must appear in GB18030 or the General Standard Chinese Character Table (通用规范汉字表) to be processable by government systems
• Names cannot include Latin letters, Arabic numerals, Japanese kana, or other non-Chinese scripts
• Very rare characters — even if technically Chinese — may cause processing failures in hospital, bank, airline, and government systems

赵C spent twenty years as himself. Then he had to become someone else. The characters you choose today will define the person in every system they ever encounter.

✨ Choose characters that every system can read — try ChineseNameCraft →

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