Or “Utah Johnny Montana”
It’s the place where you most want to be, eating breakfast or dinner…
So, a government can legally prevent parents from giving their kids names that might subject them to ridicule?
I’m amazed there are any legal names left, given what creative insult artists children can be.
I mean, if such laws existed her in the USA…
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You couldn’t name your son Richard, because other kids might call him “Dick.” You couldn’t name him William, because other kids might call him Willie. Peter is out, too, obviously.
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No kid could be called John, since that’s a synonym for toilet.
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No kid could be called Bruce, since that has gay connotations.
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Pretty much any name that Nicolas Cage made fun of in that old “Saturday Night Live” sketch should be outlawed, too.
In fact, we’d better abolish names entirely, because no matter WHAT you call a kid, the other kids in the schoolyard will find something nasty to call him or her.
Heck, we’d better just abolish speech entirely, to be safe.
The words used in the Norwegian law are “vesentlig ulempe” which translates to “serious negative consequences”. That’s pretty far from “might subject them to ridicule”.
The Norwegian law dates back to 1923, and was changed in -49, -64 and 2002. I don’t know about the earlier changes, but the last one made the law a lot more liberal (using “liberal” in the European sense here, ie. “more liberal” = “less restrictive”), made greater allowances for name customs from other cultures, and gave unmarried cohabiting couples the same possibilities as married couples with regard to surnames.
I haven’t seen the original law, but it wouldn’t surprise me if the “think about the children” clause was - and is - a very minor point of the law. Most of the emphasis is on surnames. My guess is that the name law has a lot more to do with identification, ensuring that each citizen has an unambigious legal name, not just “Ola the smith from East Valley”, or “Kari from Northhillside farm” (who was “Kari from Southhillside farm” before she and her husband sold that farm and bought another).
That’s actually a very good point. I wonder if part of the difference between Europe and America on this point is because in Europe historically it was more usual to have rights, claims and obligations stretching over long periods of time, and therefore it was necessary to be completely clear on who was related to who?
I.e. someone dies without issue, and you need to be able to prove that someone really is the great-grandson of their Great-great-uncles mother-in-laws brothers cousin or something in order for them to inherit the right to graze sheep on the wolding and the duty to fornicate with the dukes boarhound every St Quentins day.
Whereas in the US most people were new arrivals from elsewhere who had left all their ‘baggage’ behind in the old country. Whether they were the offspring of a serf or an alderman made no difference.
So names were historically more important in the old days, and if you’re going to make a song and dance about people’s surnames you may as well include their forenames too?
To be unambiguous, wouldn’t a name have to be unique? I would be surprised to learn that the government requires that each citizen (dead or alive) have a unique name.
Not really. It would just have to be reasonably unique in conjunction with the local records and consistent with others. John Smith of Palookaville, Madison County, son of Mary and William Smith. You would definitely have problems if there were several people who had the same name combination, but not nearly as bad as if they chose to name their son Jebadiah Fortesque, or if he took to calling himself Jeffrey Williams.
Most countries recorded all this stuff at the local parish church, which rarely dealt with more than a few hundred citizens. It’s only fairly recently that people have become so mobile that things like SSNs/citizen numbers etc were needed.
“Vesentlig Ulempe” - band name!
In Greece, they celebrate “name days” in addition to birthdays. I’ve always wondered how that works if you have an non-standard name.
I just watched Le Divorce, the 2003 movie starring Kate Hudson. In that movie, which is set in Paris, the character Charles-Henri de Persand (Melvil Poupaud) wants a divorce from his wife, Roxeanne de Persand (Naomi Watts). The couple has a daughter, Gennie, and Roxanne is expecting a second child.
Roxeanne resists Charles-Henri’s request for a divorce and Charles-Henri tells her that if she doesn’t agree to a no-fault, mutual divorce then the court will not let her keep her married name (de Persand). Roxeanne is upset at the suggestion, because she wants to have the same family name as her children.
Questions:
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Is this an accurate representation of French law? That a woman who challenges her husband’s request for a divorce would be required to change her name back to what it was before marriage?
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What would be the policy reason be for such a rule?
This is an excerpt from this article about baby names in the United States, which is itself an excerpt from the excellent book Freakonomics. The following article, on where baby names come from, is also germane to this question and a fascinating read.
It’s an Orthodox custom more than a Greek one. Anybody who’s baptized into the Orthodox church is going to have a saint’s name, even if that’s not the name they use in everyday life. This means that most people in Greece have a name they can celebrate, but if by some chance one didn’t, then I guess it would make much sense to celebrate a namesday.
Legally Frenchwomen keep their maiden names when they marry, but they’re allowed to use their husband’s name for socially as a courtesy.
I would have to search for an accurate response since keeping your husband’s name after a divorce can be a little complicated, IIRC.
Under french law, a woman’s name is her maiden name. Customarily, she uses her husband’s name, though.
After a divorce, I think she can still use her former husband’s name as long as he doesn’t oppose it (except if the former wife can show that she has a peculiar interest in keeping this name. For instance, she owns a well-known business that she operated under her husband’s name. Reverting to her maiden’s name could result in a loss of notoriety, hence the courts will allow her to keep her husband’s name despite his opposition).
So, it might be that in this example, the husband is just stating : “If you don’t accept a no-fault divorce, I won’t allow you to keep using my name”. But I don’t know whether or not wanting to have the same name as your children would be a sufficient cause for courts to allow her to keep the use of her former husband’s name against his will.
In any case, the issue is only the ability to use a name. A woman’s name, once again, is her maiden’s name (on official forms, for instance, though there’s nomally also a second spot to fill with the husband’s name) and stays so until her death, married or not, divorced or not (weirdly enough, a number of married women don’t know that).
I googled quickly, and I found a reference to a law stating that in a particular case of divorce, the wife can keep her husband’s name. But it’s more specifical than just a no-fault divorce (besides, this is a very old law, so I’m not sure it’s still on the books).
In all other cases, she must be allowed to do so, either by her husband, or by the judge (or maybe, but I’m not sure, if she keeps using this name unoticed for a long time after the divorce). It seems that’s it’s normally mentionned in the divorce judgement.
As for the policy reason, by the way, it’s quite simply because it never was her name at the first place, as I mentionned in my previous post.
Actually, it seems that on this particular point, the jurisprudence is undecided. Some courts have stated that it was a sufficient cause, and others did not (it seems this latter case is more common nowdays, I suppose because with a high rate of divorces and second marriages, it became very usual for members of the same family to have different names, hence it can’t really be considered detrimental to the children anymore).
So, if the movie’s scenario was for real, the wife would have to either agree with her husband’s request so that he allows her to keep his name, or take her chances with the judge (preferably finding some arguments explaining why it would be particularily detrimental to her or her children otherwise).
My great grandfather was Izzy Kalchinsky. Ellis Island shortened his name to Kall. I assumed for years Izzy was short for either Isaac, or Isaiah. It’s actually short for Israel.
** Eva Luna** I find that rather sad. After everything else the Fuhrer took from him, he loses his first name.
Driver 8 Umm, Driver 8 was a woman.
What clairobscur describes is similar to what the conventions are in Latin America (and I pressume Spain too). Women do not take their husbands’ surname but use them socially (Carmen de Diaz, for example, where Diaz is the husband’s surname). Things are changing, it is only common in older couples nowadays. Here there’s no possible confussion because the kids carry both the mother and father’s surnames.
This is interesting. I knew about the Hispanic tradition of women keeping their maiden names after marriage, but I was under the impression that in the rest of Europe the tradition was similar to the Anglo-American one.
The tradition might be the same (wives are called by their husband’s name), it the law that is different…though actually…is it really diffrent? Does an american or british wife legally take her husband’s name when she marries him?
I ask because in France, many people mistakingly believe that a wife’s name is actually and legally her husband’s name, despite it being compltely false. They mistake tradition for law. So, it could be the same in the UK/USA.