Feature: The troubled "dot" in ethnic names

"Send me a 'dot', please!" Such prompts have plagued Murat Mamut, 29.

He belongs to one of the ethnic groups in China who need a dot between their Mandarin surnames and given names to distinguish them.

However, the inconsistent use of dots means minorities including Tibetans and Uygurs struggle for recognition with banking and e-commerce services.

"I feel as if I wasted half of my life dealing with this dot," says Murat, who has been filling forms since primary school. The dot in his name might be in the middle or lower middle register and the slight difference causes some real headaches.

Bank tellers type out different dots on their computers. "Everything is fine if it's the first time you open a bank account. But you'll have difficulties in interbank transfers, paying for a mortgage, or accessing Alipay, an online payment platform," Murat says.

He has written to the authorities and posted comments on social platforms like Sina Weibo, but to no avail.

When working in Shanghai four years ago, Murat spent a whole month standardizing all the dots in his bankcard names to the "middle dot". "I've been to all the big banks in Shanghai. They just didn't understand what I was talking about," he says.

Uygur Abulat Ruzetohut, a post-graduate student of Beijing's Capital Normal University (CNU), has studied web punctuation and found four different typing forms. "I've no idea which bank uses which form until I try them out," he says. "Even so, a middle dot in one bank might be incompatible with another."

Abulat could not get a credit card from his bank in Beijing because he has a card from a bank in Yinchuan that uses a different dot form.

He now lives in Hotan, Xinjiang. Once a month, he makes a repayment on his car loan, but his bank card is not recognized by China UnionPay so he must find an ATM or a bank counter.

Lazat receives dozens of parcels via express delivery every day in college. She has become an overseas online shopping agent for her friends because she has no dot in her name.

"Shopping for overseas goods requires a lot of procedures that need verifying with your identity card. That's impossible for classmates who have a dot in their names," says the young Kazakh.

Fellow Kazakh Erken Jakul has run into trouble when booking flights. He found it impossible to input a dot as the default dots were all forbidden character codes so he had to omit the dot. However, when he arrived at the airport, "the airport staff refused to let me board the plane as the name on my board pass was inconsistent with that on my ID card." Fortunately reasoning prevailed after a lengthy explanation.

Now all Chinese airlines have canceled the dot punctuation in names.

The tiny dot can bring bigger problems. Nefesa Nihemet, a Uygur lawyer in Shanghai, dares not to link her graduate and postgraduate degrees with her ID, fearing they will be judged as "fake" as the dots are different.

She says many people in regions inhabited by ethnic groups still hold old IDs that have the dots in the lower middle position, while newer IDs put the dot in the middle. If they update their IDs, their related security cards and medical cards must also be altered.

Mutalip Mametmin, 38, says more than just few people are bothered by dot issues: "There are millions of Uygurs in China, already a bigger population than that of some countries."

Some people suggest to replace the dot with a space. While it would mean a comprehensive reform, it would resolve the problem once and for all.

Canceling the dot is another possibility, says Kyrgyz student Ayqurek, "The surname and given name can be written through in a way even computer illiterate or less-educated people can do."

The most economic and effective way is to issue a standard for banking and security departments and have other industries use it, says Professor Cui Yanhu, of Xinjiang Normal University.

In 1995, China's Standardization Administration issued an internal code specification for the middle dot, he says. This code can be typed out by any input method editor, and is supported by China's banks, public security and border agencies, and railway systems.

Shen Xiaofei, a teacher at Jingjiang College of the CNU, which has up to 600 students from ethnic minority backgrounds, says Beijing has fewer issues with the dots now, but there is still no national standard.

"One little dot reflects a big issue," he says. "Sometimes we do everything to make this world a better place to live in, but we ignore the details." Endi