Baby Names
Few decisions are more personal than the naming of offspring.
Yet laws regulating the choice of
both first names and surnames
are common around the world.
Denmark expects new parents
to choose from a register of acceptable names;
Portugal lists banned and approved ones.
In Iceland a committee of language specialists
must rule on any unusual name.
German registrars prohibit
the use of most nouns and place-names,
and also frown upon any that do not clearly imply a gender:
bad luck, Kim.
Experts at a German-language society run a helpline
offering advice to puzzled parents (at a cost).
Governments argue that these rules prevent children
being saddled with preposterous names (Sinbin)
that may cause them problems in later life.
They also aim to block names
that might cause offence to others (Jesuswept).
Even where registrars have no power of prohibition,
worrisome choices can be referred to judges
or to child-protection agencies.
In 2009 a couple in New Jersey lost custody of a boy
they had named Adolf Hitler.
Less noble concerns play a role, too.
First names that imitate lofty titles
remain the most frequently disallowed in New Zealand.
Registrars often frustrate enterprising parents
trying to name their infants Justice, King, Prince,
Baron and Duke.
Strict laws in Sweden once aimed to stop people
creating family names that imitated those already in use,
says Staffan Nystr?m at Uppsala University.
Requests to change a last name
must still pass through the patent office there.
Patriarchy remains entrenched in countries like Italy
that refuse to allow married women
to pass their maiden names on to their children,
even in a double-barrelled surname.
Over time, the rules have eased.
France scrapped its saint-strewn list
of acceptable names in 1993.
Two years later Iceland
stopped requiring immigrants to adopt local names.
The new constraint is technological, not bureaucratic.
Government databases may struggle with long names:
New Zealand allows 100 characters for all first names;
the state of Massachusetts has a limit of 40 for each.
Chinese face a particular difficulty:
their language has tens of thousands of characters,
but a name that uses archaic or rare ones
can mean computer problems.
Japanese parents with a penchant for the arcane
face similar difficulties.