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DS-160 Personal Information
This section takes your name, your date and place of birth, your sex, marital status and nationality. It is the part of the form applicants rush, and it is the part that determines what is printed on the visa itself.
This page explains what the rules are and where they come from. It is not legal advice.
Your name must match the passport, and an officer checks
The Foreign Affairs Manual tells the officer to compare the two directly. From 9 FAM 403.9-2(A) (CT:VISA-1835; 09-20-2023), read on 21 September 2026:
You should check personal data on Form DS-160, Online Nonimmigrant Visa Application, against the biographical data page in the passport to ensure accuracy before entering this information in the system.
So the instruction "enter your name exactly as it appears in your passport" is not house style. It is what the officer is checking against, field by field, before anything is printed.
The same paragraph adds that without the required information the system will not accept the application at all, and that F, M and J applicants must have a SEVIS ID — see the DS-160 for F-1 students.
Why the visa may not look like the passport
Three rules in the FAM explain almost every "the name on my visa is wrong" question.
The data fields reject special characters.
The data fields do not accept special characters: comma, hyphen, asterisk, foreign-language diacritical marks, etc.
If your passport shows Müller, Ngô or Jean-Luc, the visa will not. The accents come off and the hyphen goes. That is the system working as designed, not an error on your application.
Titles are not permitted in the data field.
You may not enter titles such as "Dr.", "Sr.", "Mr.", "Mrs.", etc. in the data field on an MRV.
They may appear in the annotation field where appropriate, but not as part of your name.
If you have only one name, the visa will say FNU.
In certain countries where many nationals have only a surname, the applicant's first name should be entered as FNU. For example, "Smith, FNU", the "FNU" stands for "First Name Unknown."
This alarms people, and it should not. If you hold a single-name passport — common for many nationals of Indonesia, Afghanistan, and parts of India and South Asia — FNU is the correct and expected entry, not a mistake and not a suggestion that anything about you is unknown to the officer. Your single name goes in the surname field.
A misprinted visa is reissued, not corrected
You may not make handwritten annotations or alterations on an MRV. In the event of a data-entry error, you must re-enter information electronically to reissue the visa.
Nobody will write on your visa to fix it. If there is a genuine data-entry error — as opposed to the expected loss of an accent or hyphen — it is corrected by issuing a new visa. Raise it with the post rather than at the airport.
Other names used
The section asks whether you have used other names — maiden names, religious names, names from a previous marriage, transliterations. Give them. This field exists so that records held under a former name can be matched to you, and a name you omit is a record that does not match.
Concealing a former name is not a tidy-up; it runs into the misrepresentation ground, which is set out on the security and background questions.
If you got it wrong
You cannot edit a submitted DS-160. A wrong name, date of birth or passport number is among the errors worth fixing with a fresh form rather than hoping — see the DS-160 mistakes that actually matter, which also covers the deadline for updating the confirmation number in your appointment profile.
Frequently asked questions
Why does my visa say FNU?
Because your passport shows a single name. FNU means "First Name Unknown" and is the entry the FAM directs officers to use for single-name applicants. It is correct, not an error.
The name on my visa has no accents. Is it wrong?
No. The FAM states the data fields do not accept diacritical marks, hyphens, commas or asterisks. The visa will show a stripped form of the name in your passport.
Do I enter my name exactly as in my passport?
Yes. The officer is instructed to check your DS-160 personal data against the biographic data page of your passport before entering it.
Can a mistake on my printed visa be corrected by hand?
No. Handwritten alterations are prohibited. A data-entry error is fixed by reissuing the visa.
Do I have to list former names?
Yes, including maiden names and other transliterations. The field exists so records under a former name can be matched to you.
Can I put "Dr." in my name field?
No. Titles are not permitted in the data field, though they can appear in the annotation field where appropriate.
Official sources
- 9 FAM 403.9 — NIV issuances, read 21 September 2026; name and data entry are at 403.9-2(A)
- Consular Electronic Application Center (CEAC) — the form itself