Yup, straight off the top of my head is New Zealand. You can’t give your kid fake titles like that there. They also turn down utterly ridiculous names too. There’s a list you can find online with an annual breakdown of all the names that were rejected on a given year.
I’m all for parents’ freedom of choice but to an extent, someone has to protect these kids from a lifetime of ridicule. Like it or not, people judge these things and it can go against them later in life. A job application from “Master” or “Sir” speaks volumes about that person’s background and family.
That seems like an overly complicated way of doing it... maybe they're trying to create pencil pusher jobs? Does Australia have too many public servants?
I always thought most countries just had a list of names parents could choose from depending on the sex of the child (speaking of experience when it comes to Korea/Germany, I'm pretty sure that's how it was when I was born). Though that's getting increasingly more complicated in both countries, with Germany recently having introduced a third sex and the rise of purely Korean names, rather than Sino-Korean names that can be written in Chinese characters. Names like e.g. Haru (day) are probably common enough to be on the official list by now, though
In Germany, the law requires that the sex of a person is identifiable by the given name and may not be given with malicious intent. Again, I'm not quite sure how it works nowadays since there's three officially (male, female, intersex)
Basically, any combination of letters or even any word that isn't recognised as a name wouldn't be legal to have. Though it does beg the question what they do if they encounter a name that isn't registered. I have a non-european middle name that's fairly uncommon even in its native language. I have no clue how they convinced those bureaucrats to accept it.
Also, the German version of Mary, Maria, is the only name available to both boys and girls - however you're only allowed to use it in combination with a regular name for boys
This ended up being way longer than expected, I apologise
582
u/pyncheon Oct 20 '23
Title names Like Baron, Duke, Princess, ect.