Say my name is Tom Smith.
I never liked my last name, as Smith is way too common, and I want to give my newborn child a new last name, something with a little zip to it, just to help him stand out from the crowd.
Assuming my wife is on board, can I legally name my son Tom Buttafuoco? (or Tom Jones, or whatever.)
In the United States, you have the right to name your kid whatever the hell you want.
Just keep in mind that as soon as he’s 18, he has the right to change his name to whatever the hell he wants. 
Not in Germany, you can’t. Kid’s got to have either the mother’s or the father’s last name.
Yes, my kids have last names that differ from either mine or my husband’s (they are hyphenated). I just filled out the birth certificate, signed it, and we were good to go (this took place in both MO and CA).
I think it may depend on the state – and the mental condition of your nurse. I remember that I wanted to leave out the little guy’s middle name and the nurse seriously would not let me leave until I had filled out the middle name section. I was pretty pissed, considering it costs over $300 to fix it later.
It’s not unusual.
In the United States, you may use any name you wish as long as there is no intent to defraud. If the hospital didn’t allow you to pick the birthname you wanted, you could go see a judge afterward and change it.
…and just for the record, I have NO IDEA what made me think of “Buttafuoco”, of all the last names in the world.
Was Joey Buttafuoco recently in the news or something?
What if you are German but your child is born in the UK and you give him a different last name, then bring him home to Germany? Do Social Services workers show up on your doorstep with name change paperwork?
“If you do not change your child’s name willingly to one that is acceptable under German law, then we will take you to court and the Judge will select a name for your child.”
You can’t in Chile either, here we use 2 ‘last names’, your father’s and your mother’s (in that order).
And if you want to change your name the law is specific too, you can only change your first/middle name if:
-the name is cause of ridicule or other kind of damage
-you have been known by different name for at least 2 (or was it 4?) years.
And if you want to change your last names, you can only do it to make it match those of your parents ( for example: you want to use your stepfather’s lastname, or you were adopted, etc…)
You can only change your name once in your life.
Also civil registry officers have the liberty to reject names if they consider them to be cause of ridicule, or if it doesnt match the kid’s gender etc…
That’s “ButtaFOOco”.
Very good question. Foreign nationals can of course keep their names when they become German citizens. For German children born in the EU, the Court of Justice of the EU has ruled that “Article 18 EC precludes the authorities of a Member State, in their application of national law, from refusing to recognise the surname of one of its nationals as determined and registered in a different Member State in which he was born and resides.”
For German children born elsewhere, I don’t know.
In New Zealand it has to be the parent’s name - and even then I couldn’t give the kid her father’s surname without his signed permission as we weren’t married.
It got complicated as he insisted she had his name, but wouldn’t admit paternity without a test and delayed the test far beyond the 2 week birth registration limit, so legally the kid had to have my surname.
I was not at all upset by that.
For first names, it’s been on these threads before that NZ has had a couple of case where names have been rejected, I think one had numbers instead of letters and the other was “Tallulahdoesthehulafromhawaii” The first was rejected for spelling the second for potential ridicule.
Sorry about the double post, but the edit window closed on me. I’ve only just realized that I didn’t adequately address your question. The decision I quoted explicitly says “in which he was born and resides”, and you had asked what would happen if the child moved to Germany. I think that in the spirit of the court decision he should still be allowed to keep his name:
I don’t know how to reconcile that with the wording of the final paragraph, though. I think the kid needs a lawyer.
I thought it was more like “Line zem up against der vall und commerce mit der shooting.”
Not particularly funny.
Since we’re talking about various countries’ practices: in South Africa a child born to married parents can be given either parent’s surname or a double-barreled surname joining both. If the parents aren’t married, then the child must be given the mother’s surname unless the father acknowledges paternity and signs the notification of birth.
I get that a lot.
My father started using a shorter last name about when I was born. But the original name is on my birth certificate. Also on my brother’s though he was born nearly five years later. But when my sister was born 6 years after that, they put the short name on her birth certificate. This was in Pennsylvania.
A couple of followups. When I registered for the draft at 18, the registrar told me that to avoid confusion, the army would insist I choose a middle name (I have none) when I was drafted (which I never was) to avoid confusion. But when my brother enlisted in the AF they looked up his birth certificate and insisted he use the name on it. So do the army and AF have different rules about using the name on the birth certificate? When I applied for my first passport, the State Dept would issue me a passport under the name I had always used, but I had to find two people who knew me under both names to sign an affidavit to that effect. Well, my parents were still alive and they signed, but suppose there wasn’t anyone? Then my passport would be under a name nobody knew me by. Does that make sense. Final story. I needed a birth certificate when I retired and my retirement fund was turned into an annuity. So I wrote to Harrisburg stating my birth name and asking for a copy of the certificate and was not looking forward to long explanations to the pension office. But instead I got a nice letter from the Penna vital stats office offering to issue the certificate in the name I used if I could provide evidence that I had used it for at least ten years. No judge, no lawyer just a couple bucks extra postage. I sent them photocopies of university diplomas, expired and current passports and I got the certificate. It is not really a legal change of name but who would ever know. And, needless to say, the short name is what is on my marriage certificate, on my kids’ birth certificates (including one born in Switzerland, one in Illinois and one in Quebec).
My wife and I changed our name legally shortly after my first son was born (we combined our names by taking basically a syllable from each and forming a new name). We started the process while she was pregnant, but it takes a while. We put down the new last name on his paperwork. So his last name did not match either of ours on his birth certificate. He also has two middle names. None of that was a problem.
A note on changing your name. You can legally go by any name you wish, as long as you are not attempting to defraud anyone. But if you want the government (DOV, DOS, etc.) to use that name you need a judge to sign off on it. In California, that requires filling out paper work, putting an ad in a local paper (local is pretty loosely defined, we put ours in a Chinese paper from two towns over because it was cheapest), and then appearing before a judge. All the judge was concerned about was that you were not changing your name to hide from creditors or something like that.