Naming Law

I am surprised by the strict naming laws in some Northern European countries.

> Parents are limited to choosing children's names from the Personal Names Register, which is a list of about 1800 names for each gender.[18] The Icelandic Naming Committee maintains the list and hears requests for exceptions.

> At present, the Names Act of 1985 requires that all Finnish citizens and residents have at least one and at the most four first names. Persons who do not have a first name are obligated to adopt one when they are entered into the Finnish national population database. Parents of new-born children must name their child and inform the population registry within two months of the child's birth. The name may be chosen freely, but it must not be

> Under the Law on Personal Names,[6] first names are picked from a list of approved names (18,000 female names and 15,000 male names as of 1 January 2016).[7] One can also apply to Ankestyrelsen for approval of new names, e.g. common first names from other countries. Names cannot have surname character, and must follow Danish orthography (e.g. Cammmilla with three m's is not allowed).[8]

> One naming law that some found restrictive was California's ban on diacritical marks, such as in the name José. For over 30 years, the Office of Vital Records in the California Department of Public Health required that names contain only the 26 alphabetical characters of the English language. The law, however, was amended in 2017 to require the usage of diacritical marks to be properly recorded by the State Registrar

This was because the software couldn't handle it, but what software engineer wrote software to handle names in California that couldn't handle Spanish names of all things!?

That article is seriously lacking in content. I know from personal experiance that some of those countries have much more complex rules. Others have rarely-used forbidden name lists (ie Quebec, canada) ussually couched in vital records or child protection rules. Try naming your kid "I Was Drunk" and you will quickly learn that wikipedia and google are not authoritative.

The BC law (also canada) creates several open-ended restrictions:

https://www.bclaws.ca/civix/document/id/complete/statreg/964...

"Registration of names 9 (1)Despite sections 4, 6 and 7, if the registrar general considers that a name that a person applying for registration of a birth or an amendment to a registration of birth seeks to give to a child

(a)might reasonably be expected to cause

(i)mistake or confusion, or

(ii)embarrassment to the child or another person,

(b)is sought for an improper purpose, or

(c)is, on any other ground, objectionable,

The registrar general must

(d)register the birth without the name applied for or refuse to amend the existing name on a birth registration, as the case may be..."

Sometimes the keyboard is all that is needed to put a stop to non-ascii names. I remember when I was traveling through Ecuador with a friend of mine named Jörg. We ended up renaming him to Jorge whenever we had to buy a bus ticket :-)