Defending non- New Yorkers -there are a lot of things that NYC does differently than everywhere else.For example, in the rest of NYS records (birth, death, marriage, divorce) are maintained by the state Dept of Health. And it would not surprise me if NYC was the only city in the entire country that issued its own birth/death/marriage certificates rather than relying on the county/state to issue them (but then again, I’m pretty certain it’s the only city that contains five counties - it would be ridiculous to have five separate agencies handle what are county functions in the rest of the state)
“My name is Raymond J. Johnson Jr. Now you can call me Ray, or you can call me J, or you can call me Johnny, or you can call me Sonny, or you can call me Junie, or you can call me Junior; now you can call me Ray J, or you can call me RJ, or you can call me RJJ, or you can call me RJJ Jr, but you doesn’t hasta call me Johnson!”
Someone did a something similar to this for an election in Arizona. A guy named Scott Fistler changed his name to Cesar Chavez and ran for Congress in a heavily Hispanic district. Fortunately, he didn’t win.
St. Louis, MO birth certificates are also city issued - at least at the time mine was issued, but since that’s been more than a half century things might have changed. No county can issue St. Louis birth certificates because it’s not in any county. It’s an “independent city” and this also applies to Baltimore, MD and Carson City, NV in addition to a couple dozen others located in the state of Virginia.
This has, very rarely, caused me some issue with Federal forms what want to know the county of my birth. I don’t have one.
Other potential issues can arise, of course, Wikipedia has a list.
Harry (Parkyakarkus) died spectacularly. It happened at the Friars Club in Hollywood, of all nights on the one where a tribute to Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz was being held, significant enough in that Ball was a woman being honored into the exclusively up to that point male domain. Harry was trying to revive his career as a comedian and he gave the next to last introduction speech, one which is renowned as an all time feat of comedy. When he was done Harry sat down, then slumped over as the result of a massive heart attack. Doctors present in the audience desperately attempted to save his life, even cutting his chest open with a pocket knife and attempted to restart his heart with a shock from an electric cord.
Though I’ve never seen proof the next day’s Variety headline is reputed to have been “Parkyakarkus kills, dies, at Friar’s Club”.
There was a recent Supreme Court case in which the plaintiff argued that they had a right to obtain a trademark on the name “The Slants” (“slant” being a pejorative name for Asians) for their Asian-American band. The SC decided in their favor.
If the SC supports the right to use a racial epithet as a trademark, it seems likely they would support the right of an individual to legally change their name to just about any other constitutionally protected phrase.
There was a case about ten years ago in which a white supremacist nutjob named his kid Adolf Hitler. He caught a lot of social grief for it, but no legal problems (he had plenty of other legal problems though).
Further web searches led me to this Dope thread from a couple of years ago, telling of the arrest of a man named Beezow Doo-Doo Zopittybop-Bop-Bop.
Yes, this was the problem–it said “City of New York” at the top, and then “Borough of Manhattan” somewhere else, and the clerk said, “But it has to be issued by a state or a county.” (The backwater Colorado town was Denver, and the clerk was wrong, and was overridden.)
The boroughs of New York City are counties. That’s what they didn’t understand.
A 64 year old gentleman in Illinois changed his name to “Led Zeppelin II”. Apparently no one objected to the change. The linked article says “Occasionally a request for a legal name change of this kind is denied, … [but] there has to be ‘good cause’ to deny such a petition, at least in California”.
Even if they did understand, the certificate is not issued by the borough/county and that’s what generally causes problems. NYC issues the certificate, which also lists the borough of birth ( not county, it says Brooklyn , not Kings). This is the opposite of most birth certificates which are issued by the state/county and may also list the city/town/village of birth.
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You are correct. NYC has an interesting form of government with some functions handled at the city level and others through the boroughs which are counties. Until recently there must have been people alive with certificates issued by the state or counties that correspond to the boroughs since they weren’t merged until 1898, and the boroughs were still issuing birth certificates until 1909. The confusion won’t stop there, apparently other cities like Buffalo issued their own birth certificates as well. My mother may have my father’s birth certificate, born in 1922, Brooklyn I think, I wonder what that will say.
Hope they don’t need to see the Birth Certificate of anyone from Louisiana. (They have Parishes instead of Counties.)
First a correction to one of the follow-ups on the Cecil quote. Quebec civil is not based on the Napoleonic code, since France had lost it to the English before Napoleon. It is actually based on the old Roman civil code.
I do not know about California or other Spanish law states, but in Pennsylvania where I grew up you could use any name you liked so long as it was not for fraudulent purposes. My father changed his name to one that didn’t sound Jewish around when I was born but put the original name on my birth certificate. This was the depression and he hoped it would help him get a job (it didn’t). But by the time I started school, the old name was long gone and it never appeared on any official record save for the birth certificate. That was fine until I needed to get a passport. I was supposed to get two people who had known me under both names to make a sworn statement that I was one and the same person. My parents signed it and they accepted it. What would have happened if one or both parents were no longer alive? There would have been literally no one who had known me under both names. Be that as it may, when I needed the BC to prove my age in order the set the retirement annuity amount, someone in the commonwealth registry office, noting that the name on the check and letter differed from that on the requested BC, told me that if I could send them photocopies of documents showing I had been using that name for at least ten years, they would issue the BC in that name. I sent them copies of college diplomas, expired passports and they issued the BC with no fuss. Since I have moved to Canada, I have never used any other name. In the process I have violated Quebec which insists that your name is the one you got at birth and no other may be used officially.
As far as legal changes, they are possible, but can be denied at the whim of the judge. My wife’s stepmother and her first husband tried to change their name after emigrating to the US. It was a difficult name, especially because it had a “c” in the middle, pronounced “ts” according to the German rules. And neither of the other pronunciations of that “c” sounded right. The turned them down and the only reason he gave was he, the judge, had an even harder name and he hadn’t changed it. They did not realize that they could have just changed it and asked no permission from anyone.
Here’s another funny story. Someone I know was an immigrant from Yugoslavia. His first name was Andrej and he had no middle name. When he became a citizen, the judge asked him if he would like to change his name at the same time. Yes, he would like to be known as Andre J. The judge said a single letter name was not permitted. “But Harry S Truman did it.” The judge said that’s as may be, but he wouldn’t allow it. But then the judge added that if he knew that much, he wouldn’t test him on his knowledge of American history.
There was an episode of Barney Miller where they arrested a guy who had stopped using his name and went only by a number, and they had to spend the whole episode trying to identify him. The only ID they could find on him was a library card with his number: “They were the only ones who understood!”
A local nut, er, person that has been running for political office in the Seattle are for years legally changed his name to Mike the Mover. And that’s exactly how his name shows up on the ballots.