Italian Citizenship and the Problem of Alteration of Names and Surnames of Italian Citizens in Emigration Countries
Are you a foreigner who wants to obtain Italian citizenship by descent? Do you have the necessary documents for the procedure but find errors in the transcription of your ancestor’s name or surname? Don’t worry! You are not alone! In this article, we will explain why this anomaly has frequently occurred over the years.
Italian Citizenship and Reconstruction of Bloodline Descent
Historically, the reconstruction of bloodline descent has been a phenomenon characterized by various anomalies concerning the alteration of ancestors’ details.
It often happened that personal details were altered in civil status records of emigration countries. This led to a chain error, meaning that even the details of other descendants can today be altered or not conform to the true surname of the Italian ancestor.
What is the Alteration of Personal Details?
Want to obtain Italian citizenship? You need to know this.
A few decades ago, emigrating Italian citizens were often associated with multiple first names that were not fully reported on documents. This was done to make one name prevail over the others.
The true alteration occurred in the case of multiple first names not separated by commas, such as Giuseppe Antonio Maria. If only one name was reported, it constituted an alteration of the first name.
Italian Citizenship and Emigration Countries: The First Cause of Alteration is Illiteracy
We cannot overlook the high illiteracy rate among Italian emigrants. When they arrived in destination countries, they were not all able to correctly communicate their personal details. Moreover, local authorities did not have a good system for identifying and registering Italian citizens. Sometimes, the Italian citizen simply wanted to create a new identity to completely resolve economic, political, or family issues they had in Italy.
Italian Citizenship and Emigration Countries: The Second Cause of Alteration is the Language of the Destination Country
The second cause of alteration was due to the phonetic adaptation of Italian words to the language of the emigration country. Naturally, the more different the language was from Italian, the greater the alterations. For this reason, the alterations were more significant for Italians in the United States, while they were less noticeable in Spanish-speaking countries.
Names were adapted to help the Italian citizen socially integrate into the local context.
Italian Citizenship and the Approach of Jurisprudence
Jurisprudence seems to have adopted a flexible attitude, especially thanks to the tool of presumptions.
What is a presumption in law?
According to Art. 2727 of the Civil Code, a presumption is the consequence that the law or the judge draws from a known fact to infer an unknown fact. Presumptions can be:
- Simple: Logical arguments through which the existence or mode of being of an unknown fact is inferred from a proven fact, left to the free appreciation of the judge.
- Legal: Provided by legal norms and impose a specific decision on the judge for all cases to which they refer.
Why is it necessary to refer to presumptions to obtain Italian citizenship?
Judicial authorities refer to presumptions to ease the difficulties in verifying bloodline descent that these judgments involve. The presumption system is necessary because it involves reconstructing very old genealogical trees.
For example, the surname is used as a legal presumption by judicial authorities to identify the line of descent through which Italian citizenship is transmitted.
The surname is a legal presumption for determining the status of a child and, consequently, for obtaining Italian citizenship.
It is possible that alterations in the information concerning the immigrant ancestor or other descendants in foreign civil status documents can be corrected through a rectification process with the competent authorities in the country of origin.
Therefore, the rectification process is well known not only in Italy but also in the countries that mainly attracted Italian emigrants.
The Rectification Process within Italian Citizenship: The Legal Reference is D.P.R. No. 396/2000
This procedure could be requested if discrepancies regarding the personal information of the involved individual are not the result of civil registration in the destination country but instead originate from errors in the Italian civil status documents.
These Italian documents might contain an error or an element that could cause confusion about the exact personal information of the person in question. In such cases, unless it is possible to obtain a certificate of congruity of personal registry data, the law always provides the opportunity to correct the civil register through the aforementioned judicial process.
In particular, in some legal systems, this process must be exclusively judicial, considering the special value and authority attributed to civil status documents, while in other cases, correction by an administrative authority is allowed.
The same issue applies to the verification of Italian citizenship by descent conducted through administrative procedures.
In this case, it is addressed within the broader context of assigning personal information to the new Italian citizen.
A very important normative reference is the Ministry of the Interior Circular No. 397/2008. Before it was promulgated, the Italian administration did not automatically recognize the personal information assigned at birth to dual citizens under the laws of the foreign country of which they were citizens.
Instead, it insisted on applying Italian law to assign only the paternal surname.
The Ministry of the Interior recommended that civil status officials rectify ex officio the transcriptions already made of foreign birth records of Italian citizens if they showed a surname not conforming to Italian law.
This resulted in greater rigidity in analyzing the information contained in the foreign birth certificate during administrative procedures for recognizing Italian citizenship by descent, to accurately determine the effective kinship link and the consequent transmission of Italian citizenship.
Only with the 2008 circular was this policy changed.
Through it, the Ministry issued directives so that “in the case of individuals born abroad and holding both Italian and foreign citizenship, the civil status officer shall record the birth certificate by assigning the surname indicated in the birth certificate.”
The circular does not address the fate of registrations prior to its publication, which assigned only the paternal surname. Without specific instructions, the civil status officer cannot intervene autonomously, and in the absence of an initiative by the Public Prosecutor, it is presumed that it is the responsibility of the individual concerned to initiate the rectification procedure.
What principle does this circular on citizenship follow?
The correct enhancement of supranational normative sources applicable to the right to a name, particularly Art. 8 of the ECHR and Art. 7 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, as well as relevant international conventions.
For this reason, the circular highlighted that the same principle extends to cases where there is a conflict between Italian citizenship and that of a non-EU country, especially when it concerns citizenship of a South American country.
The assertion that the law of the state of citizenship of the person concerned can be applied, upon request, even when the status of Italian citizen is derivative rather than original, has had significant consequences on the issue of modifying personal information.
This has reduced the need to systematically rectify foreign records in case of discrepancies between the information in the Italian ancestor’s records and those in the successor’s records.
Moreover, nothing prevents the individual from requesting the exclusive application of Italian law, thereby enhancing only their Italian citizenship.
Finally, the Ministry of the Interior clarified that Circular No. 397/2008 is valid and applicable even in cases where the paternal surname has been altered over time compared to that of the father or ancestor.
Are you interested in the topic of Italian citizenship by descent? Do you have further doubts on the subject?
If you have doubts, do not hesitate to contact an Italian lawyer specializing in Italian citizenship.
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