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pyuser583

I think this is totally fine.

Iceland is small. Its culture is perpetually endangered. And nobody gets to chose their birth name.

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The same rules apply for an adult changing their name: https://www.skra.is/english/people/names/name-changes/

As someone who spent half my life with a name I hated, to me this is more "human rights violation" than "fine".

I’m with you on this, it seems pointlessly fucking restrictive and incompatible with individual liberties.

For adults, yeah. For children the system is great. In Finland the rejected names are published and there are many really horrible ones. A child is a person.

Is the name you hated a regular name in your language and culture? If so, I’m curious what made you hate it (I mean this literally, not skeptically).

I think the assumption here is that kids named “Aquamann” or “Adolf Hitler Campbell” are likely to hate their name, but people named “Guðmundur” (in Iceland) much less so. I’m curious what you think about that assumption.

Many reasons to hate ones name. Have an abusive father and your name happens to be John Jr? I wouldn't want to have my fathers name either, even though there's nothing wrong with the name John.

This is basically how all Icelandic surnames work. They are patronyms or matronyms. Björk Guðmundsdóttir literally means “Björk, daughter of Guðmundur”, because that was the name of her father.

Rules like “mandatory name lists” only lessen the damage an abusive parent can do.

I love my name precisely because it is (almost) unique. On the other hand my wife dislikes her given name because it is common. Limiting the name to a list limits individuality.

> As someone who spent half my life with a name I hated, to me this is more "human rights violation" than "fine".

It sounds like you can change your name, though? Your new name just has to be in the list. Are you saying you hate every name in the list?

That's a bit like if the government said I had to put a crucifix on my front door, but it's OK because I can pick from over 100 different colors.

No, it's not. At least in that case you could be making a case that you hate every color (because the color is irrelevant to you, or whatever reason you might have).

You haven't made such a case here at all. Hence my question: do you actually hate every name on the list?

Sorry I wasn't clear: I don't hate my old name, I hated being named that. Likewise, I don't hate every name in the list, but I would hate to be called those because they aren't the name I think of as "me".

I mean, that's a fine argument for changing the law. By all means go ahead and try to gather support for your cause, nothing wrong with that. It just doesn't follow that the rest of society not being willing to customize its culture 100% to every individual's personal liking is a human rights violation.

I have a crappy name - illegal in several countries - so I use a nickname.

I know people with terrible, even abusive names. They do the same thing: find a cool nickname.

Is this something you can do?

>It's culture is perpetually endangered.

Iceland is it's own island. How could a culture be any less endangered than that? Every culture is at least as inherently endangered as Iceland's.

Globalization risks blurring cultural distinctions away. Among cultures we're aware of on the world stage, Iceland punches above their weight class—they have only one member for every thousand Americans. I have to think their success is due to specific measures to retain their identity. Even Canada which has a tenth the population of the US has laws mandating that 1/3 of what's broadcast on the radio must be Canadian.

Also the island is kind of trying to kill whoever lives on it.

Exactly right imo. It's frustrating to see people treat these few surviving cultures as if they are the only ones worth preserving, as if all the others are a waste of time. I think this results in a lot of resentment.

I think you mistake my point: Iceland's culture _is_ perpetually endangered, more than most. These steps appear necessary for them, they appear to work, and even 100x larger countries whose cultures would survive anyway do some amount of the same.

Iceland’s small population is what makes it vulnerable. 326k people. That’s about the size of Cleaveland, Ohio.

and thats like city-of-cleveland, not the greater metro area (which is like ~2 million)

but iceland == smol

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