I don’t think Europeans generally see Americans as having any more “freedom” than we do.
Each country in Europe has its own culture (or often more than one), its own systems of government, of justice, its own norms of social behaviour. While these are all different to each other, and to what you are accustomed to in the US, it’s not clear that any one is, in overall terms, better than any other. They’re just different.
I suppose many Europeans are somewhat bemused by the tendency of some Americans to regard any difference from the American system as being tantamount to slavery, and their inability to comprehend that people of other countries and cultures may choose to organise themselves in alternative ways, not through ignorance or coercion, but because they happen to prefer it.
The government certainly should not protect citizens from self-inflicted ridicule, but it definitely should protect them from ridicule inflicted by other people who have complete authority over them. To take an extreme example (and not that extreme, actually) , you’ve every right to kick yourself in the head with a hammer. But parents don’t have the right to do that to their children. And they don’t have the right to name their daughter “bitch” either (and some do try).
Once again the parent’s rights are irrelevant here. Parents are only an “agent”, sort of, of their child. If they stop acting in his best interest, someone else must take over. A child isn’t a pet or a thing. He has rights. And it’s these rights that must be protected.
Besides, the state in already heavily involved in naming issues. Did your parent get to choose what your family name would be? Following the logic of some posters, isn’t it “facist” too if Mr and Ms Smith can’t name their daughter “Butterfly”, “FordEscort”, “PresidentBush” or “Fuckmehard” instead of “Smith”?
In this case, I would say that american children don’t have enough freedom. Or rather, not enough rights. Stop thinking about parents’ rights. I’m sorry to use this sentence, but : “think of the children”. In this case, it’s very appropriate.
Interestingly, the INS used to do something like this and decide not just the first name but the surname of immigrants. If you pitched up at Ellis Island with a tricky name, they just wrote simething simpler on the official paperwork and lumbered you and your entire family with whatever amused them at the time. The US has moved on a bit since then, and while some would say it has now gone to an extreme, I’m sure the situation will soon be corrected by a few giant personal-injury lawsuits for emotional distress brought by vengeful children. Then people will have to get their name choices approved by their attorney instead, which is much more in keeping with the american spirit…
I wasn’t sure how many would follow the link or understand ‘dottir’ straight away, so I thought Anglicizing would help. I guess it didn’t - my bad.
I think alphaboi’s correction wasn’t of the spelling of ‘dottir’, but the turning it into a matronymic rather than a patronymic. (IE, it’s ‘Bobdottir’, not ‘Suedottir’.)
I am not European (visited a few times, but born and live in the US). However, from what I have read, I would make two points:
There is no single “Europe” in terms of culture. They appear to be moving toward a united Europe in many ways, but now and in the past there are many different cultures in Europe with different ways of doing things. So there is no European way. (Not that I have to belabor the obvious with Dopers-sorry).
People in the various countries of Europe do not have the skepticism of Government that people in the US have. They tend to view Gov’t as part of the solution, not part of the problem. Hence it isn’t such a bad thing to ask the Gov’t to protect children from abuse-defined by their culture in this case as saddling the child with a weird name. People in the US feel it is up to the parents and the parents families (if that) to protect the child from such an occurrance and we wouldn’t trust the Gov’t to get involved. But both societies are equally concerned with protecting the children. In Europe it is apparently OK to get the Gov’t to help in what all cultures feel is a worthwhile goal (protecting children). In the US it isn’t that we are more individual, we fear or distrust our Gov’t more. Perhaps with good reason, perhaps the Europeans would do better to trust their Gov’t less, or perhaps the US needs to learn from Europe, but those are subjects for another topic.
Actually, it’s my understanding that here in the States, it is possible for the parents to choose the surname of their child, which can even be very different from the parents’ surname(s). It doesn’t happen often, mainly because of tradition, but there aren’t any laws prohibiting, either.
In the US, there are examples of very strange names that would be prohibited in other countries. One big example is a woman named Ima Hogg. (Contrary to urban legends, she did not have a sister named Ura.
There are also stories about non-English speaking women naming their daughter /fay-ma-lay/ because that’s what the maternity nurse wrote on the card after the baby was born (Female). While I don’t know of any confirmed instances of this, it’s certainly not out of the realm of probability.
However, having grown up with a very popular name for my generation, I can say that it’s pretty much “luck of the draw” as to whether most names or good or not. I hated having two or three other Kim’s in my class, and always wished my parents had used something a little more unusual. (Not to mention that virtually every other Kimberly within ten years of my age seems to have the middle name Ann.) But my mother swears she thought it was original at the time they chose it. They did choose something a little more unusual for my younger sister, but she hated that because she could never find her name on store souvenirs, and everyone always misspelled it.
Well, my mother went to school with a girl named Godzilla, and knew more than one girl named Female because their parents couldn’t be bothered to give her a proper name. I don’t see the big deal in at least monitoring what you name your children in order to protect them. What’s the big deal?
Good luck with that - my name IRL is the first female name mentioned in the Old Testament, and believe me, I got plenty of ridicule over it. Especially the year in grade school that there were an Adam and a Noah in my class. Any name can be ridiculed if you try hard enough.
Actually, Andrea (emphasis on the second syllable) is a perfectly legitimate boy’s name - in Italy. I have a good friend (Italian) named that. When he finished his MBA in the U.S. and was job-hunting, he joked that when received job rejection letters, he was frequently mortified when they addressed the letters to Ms. Andrea [LASTNAME].
My ex-stepgrandfather was a Jew of German origin named Adolf. Poor guy - not too many Jews name their kids Adolf these days. Oddly enough, he went by Bunny.
Okay, so prohibiting parents from naming their children something that’s vulgar or embarassing has a logical purpose, whether it’s ethically correct or not. Is there any logical reason for prohibiting them from giving them names that are foreign or original? I couldn’t imagine a girl getting ridiculed much for being called Capri after the car, for instance.
Whereas here in the US you may use any name you wish provided it is not for fraudulent purposes and with the exception of certain legal documents and requests for identification.
Thus, if choose, I can ask people to call me “Sally Smith” on a daily basis, even if my given name is completely different. On legal documents, however - such as tax forms - I will still need to use the name that is legally mine, but that is indicated by the instruction “use legal name”. There is also frequently a place on these forms for “please indicate any other names you use”. This allows the use of things like pen names, stage names, and for some of my immigrant co-workers with names virtually unprononcible to the average born-here American, to go by “Bob” in daily life - thus, we have something we can pronounce and they don’t have to hear their given name mangled on a daily basis
Mind you - this is only OK if no fraud is involved.
And sometimes you have to ask the nice government official “Do you want my usual name, or my legal name?”
As for changing your legal name - pretty easy here. It’s basically filling out some paperwork and going in front of a judge. Usually no problem at all, espeically if you have no criminal background. Does cost some money, but it’s not outrageous. In some cases - marriage or divorce - the paperwork and charge for name change is already part of the deal.
Now, changing your social security number - THAT’s difficult, and normally does not change over a lifetime. Which is why US folks are so anal about not giving them out, because that’s where the nasty identity theft comes in.
This is further complicated by the fact that not everyone in the US is required to have a social security number … (just the vast majority)
In the US there is absolutely no requirement or compulsion for the parents to give their children the same surname, and in fact some choose not to do so. It’s rare - there’s a strong force of tradition for the parent-child surnames to match - but certainly in urban areas the odds are high the average person is going to encounter at least one family doing that at some point in their life.
Situations where this occurs include families where the parents don’t share a surname, so when the child is born they choose one or the other to bestore, hyphenate the name, or make up a surname for the children to share in common that may or may not be based on either one the parents have.
Another instance is a child born out of wedlock where there is some question of paternity - the mother may give the child the alledged father’s surname.
And there are some folks who are just strange.
But yes, in the US the parents decide on the surname, even if that decision simply consists of following tradition.
If they choose a surname at all.
I’d need to check on this, but I’m relatively sure that I don’t need to give my child a surname at all. If I had a kid and I wanted to call her “clairobscur,” I could.
She’d have a horrible time filling out forms, and I’m sure I would (and later, she would) have to answer certain questions ( including “why doesn’t she have a last name?”) over and over and over again. But she definitely wouldn’t have to take my surname nor her father’s.
On the good side, she can also change it with nearly no problem whenever she wants to.
I’m glad that someone else got the point I was trying to make last night, i.e., that it’s rather foolish to claim an absolute right to name one’s kid. You have an absolute right to choose what color tie to wear because this decision affects only you (maybe you look like a jackass, but that’s your decision). Choosing a name for a kid necessarily means making a decision for someone else, applying a certain degree of power over someone else, affecting someone else’s lives in definite ways (perhaps major, perhaps minor)…and no, you don’t have an absolute right to make choices that affect others, especially, others who are completely vulnerable and powerless, like the proverbial newborn babe. Kids are people, not the property of their parents, and as people, they have rights.
Another thing: I wonder why it’s important for some American parents to come up with “original” or “creative” names for children. It’s almost as if they fear that their kids will have no personality, so the parents must artificially produce an interesting one for them by saddling them with a name that no one’s ever heard before. “We mustn’t give the kid a ‘boring’ name, like John or Bill…let’s name him Napoleon…” I don’t understand this attitude of expressing one’s own “individuality” through naming a child. It’s appropriate, perhaps, for naming horses, but bizarre, I think, for naming children. And since we’ve got this tendency of looking at newborn nameless children as opportunities to be “creative,” I think it’s not such a bad idea for the state to have a say here. (Not exactly the most urgent problem that the government should address at this time…but in principle, I mean, I’m not opposed to it…)
The Danish laws on naming and record-keeping are, and I’m speaking as a Dane here, bizarre. The authority rests with the Ministry of Ecclesiastical Affairs because the records of births, baptisms, weddings and burials have been kept by the parish priest since, well, forever. When lawmaking meets up with that sort of tradition, sometimes weird laws result.
However, the idea that official authorities won’t take part in naming a child Dogfart Number Four Henriksen doesn’t seem completely out of whack to me. It seems pretty obvious that it’s not in the child’s best interest, and I think you’ll find that US and Danish law both allows intervention when parents do not act with sufficient forethought in matters of their children - the difference is one of degree, not of substance. (Surnames are a different matter. In a small country, some family names carry with them a certain recognition factor, and obviously the families who carry the name would prefer not to have that “diluted”, so to speak. I for one think that’s completely reasonable. A family name is a pretty serious heirloom.)
Every country carries some baggage in the form of laws that are sort-of-weird but not considered important enough by the electorate to bother with. I could of course counter with some examples of US laws that constitute what I’d consider unreasonable intrusions into citizen’s personal lives, but then again, that’s the point: What you’re used to seems, on the whole, fair and normal. What’s unfamiliar seems unreasonable.
I’ve never once heard anyone think of the US as a place with “too much freedom”, but freedom is a word with many definitions. Some perhaps do see the US as a society where the fortunate are “free” to not care too much about those less fortunate. And some do not consider that sort of freedom too important. But we’re getting into GD territory, here.
I can’t think of any law that could be interpreted to mean “children have the right not to be given a stupid name.” The notion that a government bureau( whether you view it as an agent of society or an agent of the government) has the capability to determine what names are okay and what names aren’t okay is the crazy thing here.
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