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From: pardoej@lonnds.ml.com (Julian Pardoe LADS LDN X1428)
Subject: Re: Query: Given names & sex
Message-ID: <DvEyHG.FKI@tigadmin.ml.com>
Sender: usenet@tigadmin.ml.com (News Account)
Reply-To: pardoej@lonnds.ml.com
Organization: Merrill Lynch Europe
References: <31FBB0C9.492D@netvision.net.il>
Date: Wed, 31 Jul 1996 15:17:40 GMT
Lines: 81

In article <31FBB0C9.492D@netvision.net.il>, Avi Jacobson <avi_jaco@netvision.net.il> writes:
-->Julia A M Simon wrote:
-->
-->> There are also some names that are ambiguous in German (Heike, Kim, and
-->> Kai are the ones that come to my mind right now), and if I'm not
-->> mistaken, there is some law in Germany that forces parents who want to
-->> give their child one of those ambiguous names to give the child a
-->> second, unambiguous name, as well.
-->> 
-->> BTW, German parents *are* allowed to call their son "Maria", but only if
-->> that name is preceded by a clearly male name. With the other ambiguous
-->> names it (AFAIK) doesn't matter whether the ambiguous name comes before
-->> or after the unambiguous one(s), as long as everybody has at least one
-->> given name from which you can derive the sex of that person.
-->> 
-->> But there are some exceptions to those rules for children of foreigners;
-->> for example, Italian parents living in Germany are allowed to call their
-->> son "Andrea" because that's a men's name in Italian, even though it's a
-->> women's name in German (and therefore *German* parents cannot call their
-->> son "Andrea").
-->
-->This seemingly benign legislation, if it really exists, has horrible 
-->implications -- particuarly given Germany's recent history.
-->
-->Julia, are you saying that Germany is still discriminating between "real" 
-->Germans and "foreigners" in matters that have nothing to do with 
-->immigration or citizenship law?  What is a "foreigner"?  If your family 
-->has been living in Germany for ten generations, but has guarded its 
-->Italian heritage to the extent that all family members speak Italian and 
-->have Italian names, is it illegal for you to name your son "Andrea"?  If 
-->you are a first-generation German citizen of Italian descent, and your 
-->next-door neighbor is a fully certified Aryan German, and both of you 
-->show up at the Ministry of the Interior at the same time with your 
-->respective newborn sons, wishing to name them "Andrea", will the law turn 
-->you away because you are not as German as your neighbor?

No!  The law will turn the German away.  Now, you can read that as giving
non-Germans special privileges or denying non-German children the same
protection as German children as you wish -- and whatever the Germans
do they will be damned.  (I'm speaking as a Brit who thinks that the
"ius sanguinis" stinks.)

The German law (and similar laws in other countriew) are designed to
protect children.  In this country people can name their twin daughters
"Syphilis" and "Gonorrhaea" and get away with it.  I can see why some
people think that laws on permissible names are a good idea.

Of course no list of allowed names can encompass all names from all
ethic and religious groups so any such law is likely to restrict
the rights of minority parents[*].  Any such discrimination is probably
not intended.  Bretons who live outside Brittany cannot give their
children traiditonal Breton names since they don't appear on the list
at the lcoal mairie.  Though the French state has a poor record of sup-
porting minority languages I don't think this is all some dastardly and
chauvinistic French plot, just bureaucratic indifference.

-- jP --

[*] Actually, I can imagine that a British law could do this.  British
(I mean English/Welsh) law still has a concept of the "reasonable man"
and judges still have some power to speak as the representative of the
"reasonable man" (so that some cases that progress in the US would be
laughed out of court here).  Thus it would be possible to frame a law
that forbade unusual names, taking into account the background of the
parents: Would the name "Andrea" strike the "reasonable" person of Italian
origin as unsual?  Sadly, I can also imagine that such a law might be
passed here.  It used to be something of a principle of British life
that state interference in the life of the individual should be kept
to a practical minimum but this is dying.  Names are still an area
where British people take for granted a freedom that others don't always
have.  In English law your name is what you are usually called, basically
what you want -- the only restriction is that it is an offence to use a
false name with the intention of deceiving somebody.  I had a Czech friend
who married a German.  As the only child she wished to keep her family name.
The problem was that under German law she could be "Mrs Kaufmann" or
Mrs "Vanczura-Kaufmann" ("cz" stands for c-hachek); under Czech law she
could be "Mrs Kaufmannova" or "Mrs Vanczurova" (or was it vice versa).
To a Brit this is just outrageous!



