Meine Frage ist davon inspiriert: https://www.rbb24.de/panorama/beitrag/2024/09/berlin-geburtsurkunde-diskriminierung-behoerden-verwaltung-vorschrift.html TLDR: Eine Berlinerin konnte keine Geburtsurkunde für ihre Tochter erhalten, da das Standesamt ihren vietnamesischen Doppelnamen nicht anerkennen wollte "Le Nguyen," sie daran gehindert wird, Kindergeld und Tagesbetreuungsgutscheine in Anspruch zu nehmen. Obwohl sie deutsche Staatsbürgerin ist, verweisen die Behörden auf Diskrepanzen zwischen Einbürgerungsrecht und Personenstandsrecht, was zu Verzögerungen und Frustration für die Mutter führt, die die Situation als diskriminierend empfindet.
Ich komme also aus den USA, wo es meines Wissens keine Gesetze bezüglich der Namensgebung gibt. Was ist nun der Zweck und Nutzen der Namensregelung im deutschen Namensgesetz?
Und wie geht das deutsche Namensgesetz mit amerikanischen Namen um? Gilt das für amerikanische Namen in Deutschland, weil die Amerikaner sich so nennen können, wie sie wollen? EDIT: Ich beziehe mich auf Amerikaner, die nach Deutschland ziehen, und NICHT auf Amerikaner, die in Deutschland gebären.
What is the purpose and benefit of regulating names with the German naming law?
byu/m608811206 ingermany
Von m608811206
24 Kommentare
The purpose is to protect children from crazy parents.
Obviously this case is pretty fringe and went wrong. They hopefully can resolve it, because this is not the use-case they had in mind.
In general the rule is so you don’t have people with random city or fruit names, or otherwise strong connotations that might hinder the person’s future by making it the laughing stock everywhere. Just imagine a person being called „Zwickau“.
The idea is to allow the children to have a normal life, despite their parents being idiots. You do not want to be named Gucci Icecream Müller, just because someone found that name funny.
As for American names getting a free card since you have no laws regarding names, that’s not how regulations work. If you have a child here, and want it to be a German citizen, then you’d have to follow the guidelines.
Apart from that, the laws aren’t that strict. A distant accaintance of mine named her daughter Katara, after the character from the Avatar series. No issues there.
Mainly to prevent anything happening on r/tragedeigh.
There used to also be a requirement to clearly identify the gender of the person, but I am not sure how it works now that transgender and non-binary people are recognized.
there are changing to the name law coming, that allow double surnames between other things.
either way, Germany allowing the parents to use „other country“ rules for names, is actually quite generous, not every country allows this.
The issue was just that she wanna to do something not allow on the two countries.
Names have meanings. A well chosen name is probably the most important gift (or the worst curse) you can give your child.
The general idea behind naming laws is to protect children from getting absurd names (X Æ A-12 for example) and to make it easier to handle naming data. After all the Germans like their norms.
But with the ongoing globalization the rules and norms have been opened quite a bit. Most European names are fine now. The system still struggles with radically different naming schemes. Most of them Asian.
I believe the German naming laws only apply to Germans. If you’re an American citizen giving birth in German i believe you can name your child whatever you want.
Simple, because naming your child Apple, Rainbow Cloud, Sunday, Clover Garden, or Abcde is ridiculous and borders child abuse. It’s a human, not a dog, give them an actual name, it’s not that freaking hard.
Sure this case is niche and should be resolved, but in general the law makes sense and should stay in place.
It’s probably to protect people from having to deal with crazy or weird names. Not sure what’s wrong with the last name you mentioned though. Google list with „namen die das Standesamt abgelehnt hat“. Think it’s best not to be named like in those examples 😂
I personally find American naming trends to be quite appalling. Misspelling (‚unique‘) names, last names as first names, names like ‚X Æ A-12‘ etc.
I am quite glad we have the law.
Idk how it is now but when my grandparents immigrated to Germany from the former Soviet Union they had to change their names to German ones. For example, my uncle is actually called „Oleg“ but in his passport his name is „Oliver“.
If one of the parents of the child has a different citizenship, naming laws of that country can be used for the last name at least.
But this case shouldn’t even be a problem usually. Yes in Germany you can’t usually have to last names, but the mother giving her last name to the child shouldn’t even be a problem.
My fiancé has 2 last names, because that is normal in the country that he is from. Our daughter has his 2 last names and nobody made it a problem. We didn’t even have to go the route of saying we want to use his countries naming law. It was just accepted as a simple case of the child gets the father’s last name
To avoid this; https://www.instagram.com/p/DAoDd4sxfZE/?img_index=1
so nobody would name their kid adolf /s
As far as I understood this case has nothing to do with the name of the child. They questioned the double last name of the mother and punished the whole family by denying identity to the child and monetary aid to the family.
The Standesamt is pretty infamous for overreaching like this. The victims are mostly migrants so the issues go unnoticed by the larger public. Great to see this issue come to light. Notice also how quickly the birth certificate was issued after the issue went public.
Reading this thread, I’m shocked at how many Germans are justifying it 😂 it looks like everyone is afraid of a potential weird name given to a child, something like how in the US they’re afraid of kids learning about trans in school.
I would say this is just another extremely bureaucratic rule of Germany that people have been conditioned to accept and defend, like closed shops Sunday, paperwork instead of digitalization, no air conditioning, etc.
This particular case is an edge case where naturalization laws and naming laws don’t work together. The naming laws for a child and the parents name on the birth certificate born to parents with a foreign nationality, even if it is just one of many, may not be against the naming laws in that country. Which makes sense, if they want to return to Vietnam the Vietnamese authorities would have to work with that document, so it must adhere to their laws. While for naturalization you can adjust your own name on the German passport to whatevery is fine with German naming laws, which include double names you gained by marriage. So both make sense here, to a degree, but they lead to opposing results. Her name is valid on the passport but not on the birth certificate.
It is to prevent you from naming your child Trashcan Jones.
The conflation here of a double barreled last name with first names that are just numbers is bizarre.
German Beamten deal with double barreled last names pretty frequently nowadays. Probably not every day but often enough. The woman in this article is being discriminated against because she is Asian and to be „acceptable“ she needs to reduce how different she is as much as possible. She challenges their understanding of Germanness, so they’re using state violence to try to force her conform better to their idea of what „German“ should be because it stabilizes their own identities. This is about the biopolitics of the „nation“.
It isn’t really the same logic behind „you can’t name your kid‘ Shithead‘.“ and the fact that they frame it that way is frankly also informative.
FYI Unlike the US you don’t get citizenship here for being born on German soil.
I’xe once read a book from some social worker working in Berlin, she had one case, where she needed to find some home for a girl, because her mother was, let’s say, not the brightest candle on the cake. The girls name never should have accepted by the „Standesbeamte“, who registered her.
Schackeline.
Invented from someone, who has heard the French name „Jacqueline“and mispronounced it. Her aunt, who zook the girl, called her „Lina“. Which is a name, contrary to her given one.
Imagine a kid bearing the same na— combination or letters and signs, as that poor kid from Melon Tusk.
Just to be clear, since it seems that nobody has specified this yet, foreign first and last names can generally be used. There is no requirement for the name to be German. Someone can give their child a name that is English, French, Arabic, or Hebrew, for example. It is just supposed to be recognizable as a name and not be something that will cause the child to suffer.
The benefit is obvious, in that it stops parents from choosing absolutely ridiculous names for their kids. IMO, it is a problem that parents in America can give their kids names like [Marijuana Pepsi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marijuana_Pepsi_Vandyck), for example. Realistically, nothing can be done about this in the US, but I don’t think that countries who have reasonable restrictions should drop these. (I do, however, think it is a problem when parents can’t give ethnic names, but that isn’t generally the case in Germany.)
The main thing that I think should change about German laws, however, is that one should always have the right to change one’s name as an adult, and it is ridiculous that one cannot.
The case you are referring to has nothing at all to do with German regulation of names. The Berlin civil registry office („Standesamt“) was doubting that the name this woman goes by in daily life is actually her legal birth name as recorded in the competent Vietnamese civil registry office.
Their (somewhat relatable) point is that birth records should unmistakably identify the parents, and match their names as listed in their own birth and/or marriage records. They have information about foreign naming laws, in order to help figure out how to interpret someone’s full name (e.g. split it into given name, patronymic, family name, etc., or not split it). For Vietnam, their information apparently says that a two-word family name is not possible. This is either inaccurate, or the affected woman is an exception. Still, I don’t believe the newspaper article is telling the whole story. After all, she could have irrefutably proved her name by providing her Vietnamese birth certificate. Granted, she would need to obtain it from the competent Vietnamese authority, and get it apostilled and possibly translated, so it would take some time, money, and effort. But that would have been the straightforward solution.
To prevent further r/tragedeigh