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Certified Syrian Name Change Document Translation

Certified translation of the documents that record a change of name in Syria, including the marginal annotations and registry endorsements that carry the legal effect and that a reader unfamiliar with the system will otherwise skip.

Your record is where your family is from

Syrian civil registration is held at the civil registry of the family's place of origin rather than the place of birth — a person born and living in Damascus may have their record in a village in Idlib or Hasakah, because that is where the family is registered.

That single fact explains most of the confusion in Syrian packets. We name the registry office and its governorate exactly as printed, because a reader assuming the birthplace is the registry place will query a correct document.

Ikhraj qayd, the extract

The document to send is the ikhraj qayd (إخراج قيد) — the civil registry extract — which lists the person with their family and the registered events, including a change of name once entered. An individual extract and a family extract exist and show different things.

A change of name is granted by court ruling and then entered, and the packet should contain both the ruling and an extract issued after it.

Displacement, and documents issued elsewhere

Since 2011, Syrians have obtained records reissued from the central register when local offices became inaccessible, documents issued at consulates abroad, and reconstructions of destroyed registers. All are lawful and all read differently from a peacetime original.

We describe the document as the reissue, duplicate or consular record it says it is, and name the issuing office exactly rather than normalising it.

Arabic, and legalisation

Eastern Arabic numerals are given in Western digits and Hijri dates alongside Gregorian ones are converted individually. Syrian names commonly run given name, father, grandfather and family name, and a shortened form on one document is not a change.

Syria is not a party to the Hague Apostille Convention, so documents for use abroad go through consular legalisation, and those stamps are translated with the rest. See our Arabic 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.

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