hamilton101

USCIS will use the name you enter under "current legal name" for all communication.

Your birth name is your current legal name unless it has been changed by a court order, through marriage, or through divorce.

So unless you've changed your name when you were married or you got a court ordered name change, then the application is correct and your legal name is what is shown on your birth certificate. If you want to change that, you can ask for a legal name change at the interview, which will require a judicial ceremony. Strongly advise you to take your birth certificate to the interview (you'll need your old passport too). Take your passport to the biometrics appointment too in case they ask about the name discrepancy. My legal name is different from the name on my green card too and I didn't have any issues at biometrics.

If you hadn't listed your birth name, this would have come up at the interview. The interviewer would have noticed the discrepency between the passport and the green card and asked for the birth certificate. He would then have corrected your application to show your birth name and asked you if you want to change it.

If you do have some document showing that your name legally changed, then take that to the interview so that you don't have to do a legal name change.

More information here:

http://www.visajourney.com/forums/topic/549894-information-on-name-change-during-naturalization/?p=7638749

Thank you very much for your very detailed response, I will bring everything I can with me and try to explain as clearly as possible.

You can write down the right version of your name (and probably explain it) when doing biometrics. When you come to the office they'll give you a form where you should fill our your height, weight, eye and hair color, all the names you previously used.

Thank you, I hope that's all I have to do. There was an issue ( the situation was inverted last time when I was going to get my Green Card, my passport didn't match the name on the biometrics letter ( this time no maiden name) and I was stuck waiting for an INS agent for two hours and I got all the anxiety and was bawling and I'm a grown woman and I just don't want a repeat of this again.

Thanks again!

I applied for citizenship and I have my appointment for the biometrics soon. Looking at the letter I noticed that my mother's maiden name was attached to my family last name. My mother's name does not appear on my ID, Driver's License or my green card, only on my birth certificate and on my-very expired- brazillian passport. Anyways I realized that the person who filled out my N-400 made an error and she put my mother's name where my legal instead of under "names you previously used" or whatever. I mean the only reason I ended up giving it to her was because she was like " It's only for background checks" and I just did not realize the error until now.

I went to talk to the people who filled out my stuff and they told me it shouldn't be a problem, but knowing how sensitive these things are...is this going to be a problem when I show up to biometrics?