GitHub Education repeatedly rejects matching Turkish surname containing "Ğ"

[Yusseter]

Hello,

I am a high school student in Türkiye and I am unable to complete GitHub Education student verification because the automated verification system repeatedly reports a surname mismatch.

I have two given names, and my surname contains the Turkish character "Ğ".

My academic documents contain my full legal name, and I configured my GitHub billing information to match that legal name exactly. My GitHub public profile name was also updated to match.

However, GitHub Education repeatedly reports:

"Please ensure that your academic affiliation document contains your last name exactly as it appears in your GitHub billing information."

The surname shown in my academic document and the surname entered in my GitHub billing information are identical.

I have already tried the following:

• Updated my GitHub billing information to exactly match my academic document
• Updated my GitHub public profile name to match
• Logged out and back in after making the changes
• Used the required device camera instead of uploading a file
• Tried multiple current academic documents
• Used documents that clearly contain my name, school name, and a current academic date
• Tried providing an English translation alongside the original document

During some attempts, all other verification errors disappeared and the only remaining error was the surname mismatch.

Because the information in my billing profile and academic document matches, I suspect the verification system may be having difficulty with either:

1. The Turkish character "Ğ" in my surname
2. Correctly distinguishing my two given names from my surname

I also attempted to contact GitHub Education Support. The "Application not approved (student)" and technical bug support options did not allow me to create a support ticket and instead directed me to the GitHub Education Community.

Has anyone encountered the same problem with Turkish characters, other diacritics, or multiple given names?

Is there a specific name format that GitHub Education expects for names containing characters such as "Ğ", while still keeping the account information consistent with the legal academic document?

I would especially appreciate guidance from anyone who has successfully resolved this verification loop.

Thank you.

[github-actions[bot]]

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[hoangperry]

Turkish names hit two automated-matching traps at once, and your combination (two given names + "Ğ") has both:

1. The two given names must both live in the First name field. Billing (https://github.com/settings/billing/payment_information) splits into exactly two fields — put both given names in First name and only the surname in Last name. If one given name drifted into the surname field (or is missing), the surname comparison fails even though the full string looks right to you.
2. "Ğ" is an OCR problem, not just a matching problem. The comparison isn't between your billing text and the document's true text — it's between billing and what the OCR read, and OCR frequently reads Ğ as G (and Turkish İ/ı as I/i). So "matching exactly" can still fail when the machine saw a different string. Two things to try, in order:
   • Keep billing/profile with the correct Turkish characters, but re-capture the document with the surname region large, sharp and straight-on — good captures raise the odds the OCR keeps the diacritic.
   • If it still reports a surname mismatch after a clean capture, align to what the OCR likely saw: set billing and profile to the ASCII rendering (Ğ→G, ı→i, ş→s...) consistently, and reapply. Not elegant, but it's the workaround that has resolved these cases.

If neither pass works, escalate at https://support.github.com/contact/education with the application ID and state explicitly that the surname contains "Ğ" and the automated OCR appears to mis-read it — Turkish character handling is a known recurring issue in that queue, and they can adjudicate the match manually.

[Yusseter]

Thank you! Your suggestion helped a lot.

I changed my billing/profile surname to the ASCII version without "Ğ" and reapplied using the original academic document. The surname mismatch error disappeared.

After that, the only remaining issue was that GitHub could not detect my school's full name, so I displayed a clear English version of the school name next to the original document in the same camera frame and reapplied.

The application has now been approved and is currently "Awaiting Benefits".

So it looks like the combination of the Turkish "Ğ" character and OCR was indeed the main issue.

Thanks again for pointing me in the right direction!