A Ukrainian Birth Certificate With a Foreign Father and No Patronymic

What We Received

A client submitted a Ukrainian birth certificate (свідоцтво про народження) marked 'ПОВТОРНО' (Duplicate) above the heading, Series I-ЖС, and asked for a [certified Ukrainian birth certificate translation](/translate/ukrainian-birth-certificate) for a USCIS filing. The original act had been registered in Donetsk in early 2003; the duplicate was issued in March 2017 by the Berdiansk City Department in Zaporizhzhia Region — a different oblast from the original record.

On the parents block, the father's citizenship line read 'Громадянин Пакистану' (Citizen of Pakistan), and the form's '(ім'я, по батькові)' — first name + patronymic — field showed his given name in Cyrillic followed by an em-dash. The child's own patronymic field carried the same word — the father's given name — per the standard Ukrainian convention for non-Slavic fathers. The mother was a Ukrainian citizen with a standard '-ївна' patronymic.

How We Handled It

We preserved the em-dash on the father's first-name+patronymic field as a literal '—' immediately after the transliterated given name, mirroring the source exactly. A Translator's Note explained that the em-dash is the Ukrainian registry mark for 'no patronymic recorded,' standard on the lines of foreign citizens whose own naming systems do not use patronymics — so a USCIS adjudicator can recognise it as a registry convention rather than missing information.

The father's given name was transliterated once, from Ukrainian Cyrillic, using BGN/PCGN, and the same Latin-script form was used everywhere it recurs on the page — including as the child's patronymic. A second note recorded that any Latin-script spelling held on the bearer's Pakistani passport governs in official use; the transliteration is a faithful rendering of the Ukrainian record, not a claim about how the name is written outside Ukraine.

The 'ПОВТОРНО' marker was rendered as 'DUPLICATE' on its own line above the 'BIRTH CERTIFICATE' heading, so the document cannot be misread as an original. The two offices — the Kalininskyi District Justice Department in Donetsk that registered the original act, and the Berdiansk City Department in Zaporizhzhia Region that issued the duplicate — were translated in full and labeled by their two separate roles, so the cross-oblast chain reads cleanly. The date of birth carries both figures and long-form words on the source ('другого січня дві тисячі третього року'); both forms were rendered. The round wet seal of the Ministry of Justice was described in brackets with its visible text translated, in line with our [stamps-fully-translated practice for USCIS submissions](/accepted-by/uscis). Series and number 'I-ЖС No. ######' were transliterated to 'I-ZhS' with the Cyrillic prefix kept in brackets on first mention.

Expert Note

"On the line for the father's given name and patronymic, the original shows the father's given name in Ukrainian Cyrillic followed by an em-dash. The em-dash is the mark used by Ukrainian state registration offices to indicate that no patronymic was recorded — standard practice when the father is a foreign citizen whose naming system does not use patronymics. It has been preserved as a literal '—' in the translation. The child's patronymic on the form is the father's given name, in accordance with the Ukrainian civil-registry convention for non-Slavic fathers; the identical Latin-script transliteration has been used in both locations. Personal names have been transliterated from Ukrainian Cyrillic using BGN/PCGN; any Latin-script spelling held on the bearer's passport or other identity documents governs in official use."

Elena SokolovaSlavic-Languages Civil-Registry Translator (Russian, Ukrainian, Polish)

A second Translator's Note documented the standard DD.MM.YYYY → Month DD, YYYY date conversion. A third note identified the document explicitly as a re-issued (duplicate) birth certificate based on the 'ПОВТОРНО' marker, distinct from the original act, which remains in the Donetsk office's books. None of these notes makes a determination about identity, citizenship, or the administrative reason the duplicate was issued from Zaporizhzhia rather than Donetsk.

The Outcome

The certified translation was delivered with the em-dash preserved, the father's given name transliterated once and used identically as the child's patronymic, the 'ПОВТОРНО' marker rendered as 'DUPLICATE' above the heading, and the cross-oblast Donetsk-original / Zaporizhzhia-duplicate issuing chain shown in full. The Translator's Notes documented the registry conventions without editorial determinations.

We apply the same approach on every Ukrainian civil-registry document with a non-Slavic father — Pakistani, Arab, Turkish, Indian, Vietnamese, Chinese, or otherwise.