Dear Trust7,

I have been a silent reader of this forum and I have gathered some valuable tips from this forum and I would like to share my experience of attaining "Naturalization".

I did my Masters here in Germany and have been working here for the last 8+ years and today we received our "Einbürgerungs Urkunde". The whole process was smooth and at the time of applying, I had all the required documents and we were well prepared. The whole process took just under 2 months. We had to surrender our Indian passports and the Visa cards while we were handed over our naturalization certificates! 

In the naturalization certificate, our names are stated as is - meaning the firstname and surnames are just written as-is. Say, if my firstname is A B C and my surname is D, in the certificate it is just written as A B C D and we were told that we should go to the Standesamt to get this split into Surname and Firstnames so that we could apply for the ID card and the Passports.

I had been to the Standesamt and they asked me to come back with some additional documents like the birth certificates. The birth certificates that I have is actually from the Indian Consulate and I guess this certificate does not mention explicitly the Surname and Firstname. They just mention "A B C D son of D is born on so-and-so date based on his passport"

So the question is:

1. I would like to just have my German ID card and my German Passport to have the firstname and surname as it was in our Indian passports, which is Surname - D and Firstnames - A B C

2. In India it is pretty common for the child to take over the fathers firstname as their surnames. Now if I want to change that to a family name, what is the procedure here in Germany?

I would like to have some valuable inputs from you guys!

So I just wanted to add a few updates to my status:

Seems like here in Germany, a person could have only one name as his family name, so for my children and wife this would mean that they have to change their family names. So right now their family names are my first names which is A B C, so they now have the option to either choose A or B or C or even D (D is my Surname) as their family name.

I have managed to successfully apply for my German ID card and the passport. As soon as we decide on how we want the family names to be for the children and my wife, we would have to then apply for their passports. Seems straight forwad and simple than I thought!