I still remember the time Peach had super cheap flights, and I joined everyone in a mad rush. But when I got to the checkout page, the system kept showing “Name format error.” I checked again and again but couldn’t find the problem. Have you had a similar experience? When booking hotels or buying flights online, even though your passport name is entered correctly, the system keeps saying it’s wrong and won’t let you through?

First, check a few basic issues:

  1. Are you entering the name in Chinese? For flight tickets and overseas hotel bookings, the address and name usually need to be entered in English.
  2. Did you swap your family name and given name?
  3. If you're booking a homestay in Japan, the host may ask you to enter the Japanese pronunciation of your name.
But more often, the problem is actually very simple: just remove that symbol!

My English name is HSI-CHE, LIN, and every time I book a flight, it gets rejected. At first I thought it was a system error, but after talking to a friend, I learned that internationally, English names don’t need any punctuation at all. In my case, I should enter HSICHELIN. If the website has separate name fields, remember to fill them in separately.

In short: remove the symbols and just enter the name.

I’ve run into this problem with both Peach and Rakuten Travel. If I enter HSI-CHE, LIN, I get an error, but if I enter HSICHE LIN, it passes validation.