GitHub Education verification repeatedly rejects Vietnamese legal name due to first/last name mismatch

[DatrixDev]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Question

💬 Feature/Topic Area

Verification Help & Guidance

Hi everyone,

My GitHub Education student application has been rejected multiple times because the verification system says that the first name and last name in my GitHub Billing information do not exactly match my academic affiliation document.

My official academic document contains my full Vietnamese legal name with Vietnamese diacritics. I have already:

Set my GitHub profile name exactly as it appears on my academic document.
Updated my GitHub Billing name using the same Vietnamese spelling and diacritics.
Verified my academic email address.
Enabled two-factor authentication.
Logged out and logged back in before reapplying.
Submitted a recent official academic affiliation document using my device camera.

However, the application is still rejected almost immediately with both “first name” and “last name” mismatch messages.

Vietnamese names are normally written in the order Family name + Middle name + Given name, while GitHub Billing requires separate First Name and Last Name fields.

What is the correct way to enter a Vietnamese legal name in the GitHub Billing First Name and Last Name fields so that GitHub Education verification can match it with an academic document?

I have not included my real name, university, email address, student ID, or academic documents here for privacy.

Thank you for any guidance.

[Dani-8]

@DatrixDev This is a very common issue for Vietnamese students due to the structural mismatch between Eastern naming order (Family Name + Middle Name + Given Name) and Western form fields (First Name / Last Name).

GitHub's automated OCR parser expects the document's string order to reconstruct cleanly when concatenating your Billing fields. When your billing fields are inverted, the string match fails immediately.

Here is the exact way to structure your GitHub Billing fields to pass OCR validation:

---

1. Correct Field Mapping for Vietnamese Names

Assuming your full legal name on your document is Nguyễn Văn Ánh:

• Family Name (Họ): Nguyễn
• Middle Name (Tên đệm): Văn
• Given Name (Tên): Ánh

Configure your Settings → Billing → Payment Information / Billing Address fields as follows:

• First Name Field: Enter your Given Name + Middle Name (e.g., Ánh Văn) OR your Given Name alone depending on how your university writes it.
• Last Name Field: Enter your Family Name (e.g., Nguyễn).
• Public Profile Name: In Settings → Public Profile, enter your full name in exact document order: Nguyễn Văn Ánh (with full diacritics).

Key Rule for OCR Concatenation: The background parser checks if [First Name] [Last Name] or [Last Name] [First Name] matches the scanned text block. Grouping middle names under the First Name field prevents the string from splitting incorrectly during character matching.

---

2. Handling Diacritics & Character Encoding

While GitHub supports Unicode, some OCR engines strip diacritical marks during background normalization:

• Ensure your Public Profile Name retains full Vietnamese diacritics (Nguyễn Văn Ánh).
• If re-submitting with diacritics still fails, try entering your Billing First/Last Name using unaccented Latin characters (Nguyen Van Anh) while keeping the Public Profile Name accented.

---

3. Submission Checklist

1. Save your updated Billing and Profile settings.
2. Log out, clear your browser cache, and log back in.
3. Take a live, uncropped photo of your paper document under good lighting showing all 4 corners.
4. Ensure your device location/GPS is enabled during submission.

Once the name field order matches the string reconstructed by the OCR engine, the immediate automated rejection will clear.