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I am applying for a US passport as a natural-born US citizen. On my passport application, I listed the city and state I was born in. I was just looking at my birth certificate however, and it lists the county I was born in, rather than the city. Will this cause the Post Office or the State Department to deny my passport?

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    There are plenty of inhabited parts of the US that are not part of any city or town, so sometimes county is the best you can do.
    – Darrel Hoffman
    Commented Mar 10, 2023 at 15:38
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    @DarrelHoffman And there are some incorporated cities (every incorporated city in Virginia, plus St. Louis, Baltimore, and Carson City) that are not part of any county, so sometimes you don't have a county to put there.
    – shoover
    Commented Mar 10, 2023 at 23:08
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    @DarrelHoffman Not really. You two are overthinking it: If you live in an unincorporated area and something asks your city, you put down your post office city... what goes in the city spot on your mailing address.
    – user71659
    Commented Mar 11, 2023 at 5:41
  • It can also happen that the exact place of birth can be in a different city from where it was at the time of birth, if city borders have changed. As an example, one of my friends lives in what was once unincorporated land in Texas which had "Leander" as the city in their address, and then the boundaries of the neighboring city of Cedar Park expanded so their home was now part of it and their address changed to say "Cedar Park".
    – gparyani
    Commented Mar 11, 2023 at 22:44
  • @gparyani or the postal routes cross municipal borders and the house is served by the post office of the neighboring town, so the postal address is in a different incorporated municipality from the one where the house is. A childhood friend of mine lived in such a house; his sister still lives there.
    – phoog
    Commented Jul 5, 2023 at 21:01

2 Answers 2

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The passport application asks for the city, you put the city. It does not matter that the city is not specifically listed on your birth certificate but rather the county. The US Dept of State will not expect you to change the laws around birth certificates for your state just to get them to add the city to your birth certificate. Do not worry about it, you provided what they asked.

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    What if city boundaries change and the place of birth is in a different city today from the one on the date of birth? (Example: unincorporated land is annexed by a city.)
    – gparyani
    Commented Mar 11, 2023 at 22:45
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Came back to answer this decisively: the passport was granted, so it doesn't look like they need to match, at least for the jurisdiction I was born in.

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    Marking your own answer as correct, when someone else spent the time 4 months ago to give you a perfectly correct answer, really isn't how things are supposed to work...
    – Doc
    Commented Jul 5, 2023 at 20:03
  • Agreed, it's kind of messed up to do that
    – travel
    Commented Jul 19, 2023 at 11:37
  • Fair, I went ahead and marked the other answer correct. Don't know why I didn't do that months ago.
    – Rob Rose
    Commented Aug 3, 2023 at 14:58

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