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Certified Polish Name Change Document Translation
Certified translation of the documents that record a change of name in Poland, including the marginal annotations and registry endorsements that carry the legal effect and that a reader unfamiliar with the system will otherwise skip.
$24.95/page
Flat rate per page, up to 250 words. No hidden fees.
100% USCIS acceptance
Every certified translation is guaranteed to be accepted by USCIS.
24-hour delivery
Most 1-3 page documents are delivered within 24 hours. Same-day available.
Odpis skrócony or odpis zupełny
The Polish registry office issues an odpis skrócony — an abridged copy — and an odpis zupełny, the full copy that reproduces the entry with its wzmianki dodatkowe, the additional annotations.
A change of name is a wzmianka dodatkowa. The abridged copy simply prints the current name with no indication that it ever differed, so it is useless for proving a change and is what people order by default.
Ważne powody, decided by the registrar
Under the 2008 Act on the change of first name and surname, the change is granted by administrative decision of the head of the registry office (kierownik urzędu stanu cywilnego) where there are ważne powody — important reasons — which the statute illustrates rather than exhaustively defines.
The decision is a decyzja, not a court judgment, and we name the issuing USC and the decision reference precisely.
Surnames are gendered
Polish surnames in -ski, -cki and -dzki take feminine forms in -ska, -cka and -dzka, so a father is Kowalski and his daughter Kowalska. That is one family name, and a US system treating them as different names creates a mismatch that no name-change document will explain.
We reproduce both forms and say explicitly that they are the masculine and feminine of one surname.
PESEL, and the diacritics
The PESEL is the eleven-digit national identification number encoding the date of birth and a sex digit. It does not change with a name and is the strongest cross-check in a Polish packet.
Polish uses ą, ć, ę, ł, ń, ó, ś, ź and ż, and stripping them changes the name — Łukasz becomes Lukasz, Wałęsa becomes Walesa. We reproduce the Polish and note the stripped rendering. See our Polish page.
Ordering, and what the certification covers
Upload the document, choose certified translation at $24.95 per page of up to 250 words, and it comes back typically within 24 hours as a PDF formatted to mirror the original, with a signed certificate of translation accuracy on letterhead. Marginal annotations are translated in place, in the margin, so the reader can see that the change was recorded against the original entry rather than written into a fresh document. See how we translate and certified versus standard.
Frequently asked questions
My odpis shows no annotation.
You have the abridged copy. Ask for the odpis zupełny, which carries the wzmianki dodatkowe.
Is it a court decision?
No. It is an administrative decyzja from the head of the registry office, on important reasons.
Kowalski or Kowalska?
The masculine and feminine of one surname. We reproduce both and say so.
Does the PESEL change?
No. It encodes the date of birth and does not follow a change of name, which makes it the strongest cross-check.
Ready to get started?
Upload the order, the resolution or the annotated certificate and receive the certified translation, typically within 24 hours.