I get the feeling most of them are taking the piss. My favourite example is Channel Islands/UK dual citizenship, which lets you use UK universities and hospitals while maintaining the ability to opt out of paying them via membership of your own little statelet. Isn’t it just a way to get the benefits of two citizenships while maintaining the ability to opt out of the disadvantages of one of them? I’m sure it’s nice for people who have it, but I can’t see why the rest of us should be welcoming about it.

The Social Security administration has never recognized any of these. It has not until now been a problem; SSA, of all organizations, doesn’t need to identify me by name. But I just moved to California, where I must get a CA driver’s license; and the DMV requires that my DL info match my SSA info. I’ve filled out the paperwork for a ($300) legal change of name, in which I have to use my old name as my “present name” – and I’m afraid I’ll get to the courthouse and be asked for ID in my old name.

It seems like an ideal case for removal of governmental intrusion (the analogy I’m thinking of is US anti-miscegenation laws), but on what grounds? Making it a “human rights” case seems to me to either blow out of proportion the inconvenience or to diminish the concept of human rights (on an intellectual level) and also to sow the seeds of resentment at a solution imposed from outside. Recall also Mearsheimer’s thesis (no, not that one!) that nationalist wars aren’t due to fear or “deep-seated hatreds” but resentment at the loss of what seems unique and important about one’s country.

I suspect that a few narratives of “they tried to take my child at the border!” would go a long way!

I think one does have to look at this in terms of efforts to create a homogeneous nation-state and control the inhabitants. It goes back a long way – the reason so many Jews have Germanic names comes from laws mandating that Jews have last names. They resisted because Moses didn’t have a last name, so people like E.T.A. Hoffmann just assigned them – after all, who would voluntarily pick a name like Wieseltier or Fischbein?

Of course, if the Dutch and Belgian authorities weren’t so bureaucratic, it would all be easier. But I know from doing the paperwork for our marriage, that trying to undertake some international acts can be a bureaucratic nightmare.

Marcel’s point is taken; I agree that I might even be too restrictive in the legal changes that I propose. I guess I’m allowing my thinking to be constrained by political feasibility…

Scott Martens is right about the piranas in Belgium. What may look like ‘normal legislation’ or in fact the actual leglisation in many other western countries, seems impossible to have a chance of becoming Law in Belgium.

Frances rightly points out that there have been proposals to change the surname legislation in Belgium in the last decade—female parlimentarians of most parties made a joint proposal, but it did not get the support of the male parlimentarians and coalition partners.

While I feel really sorry for Belgium and the Belgians, I also think there are lesssons to be learnt not just for Belgium, but also for other countries—for example, in the Netherlands one is not allowed to give double names (both parents), which creates problems for children who are Dutch and also Spanish, Portugese or from one of the Latin-American countries. I simply think there is no valid argument to allow governmemt interference in this area.

We blame Straatsburg.

To the best of my knowledge, in Belgium the husband of a married couple is always the legal father of the child, even if both of them know that he is not the biological father.

And this until nine months after they separated, or so I’ve been told.
Another perversion is the case of unmarried couples. When a father is registered, a child will automatically get his name. So to be able to give the mother’s surname, you need to have an “unknown father” on the birth certificate.
At least it’s better than the even darker ages when the father in said unmarried couple actually had to adopt his own child. Reason: only within a marriage there is certainty of who fathered the child. (Which of course is the kind of logic that is not.)

The regulations Ingrid proposes at the end of her post, are actually the ones that were meant to pass parliament a couple of years ago, but never made it—I think on grounds of (gasp) tradition and amateur genealogical research. How would one be able to make a family tree if we all give out names like we choose? That’s what the records are for, I guess. The Icelandic way of namegiving kind of undermines this argument (name of father/mother with dottir/son added, e.g. Björk Gudmundsdottir).

The “silliness” test is explicitly the law in Germany
Belgium has a similar regulation, but it isn’t used that much. The official didn’t object when a father gave his new-born daughter the second name Stella after too much beer.

My sister reverted to her maiden name after her divorce. Her older children bore her first husband’s name and her youngest bears that of her second, which can prolong introductions somewhat.

There would be a certain sense, in a truth-in-advertising sort of way, if boys reliably carried patronyms and girls matronyms: here’s your Y chromosome, here are your mitochondria. Of course it’s a wise child who knows its own father … but it’s usually easier and often more useful to track the father who takes responsibility.

So: bestowing paired names on kids may turn out to be as useful to your future neighbors as it may be gratifying to your relatives.

Coming back to Ingrid’s post, the emergence of the EU makes the current situation untenable, without providing an obvious and immediate way out. Past experience suggests that some way of muddling through will be found. Perhaps, for example, some aspect of Belgian law will be found to violate human rights, and require change.

At this point, I realise I was going to write “and so the Belgian Parliament can change the law and blame Brussels”, but that seems kind of unlikely. In Australia, State governments blame “Canberra”, and the Territory government blames “the Feds”. What’s the Belgian analog?

And, in Belgium it is nearly impossible to legally change your name, including for women who want their husband’s name. Until recently, it required a bill to be introduced in Parliament specifically changing your name. My wife is confronted with this problem. She still had her pre-marriage US passport when we moved here and has not been able to change her legal name since the first time the immigration authorities entered it into the computer.

This is dumb, and it’s a holdover from the dark ages. But try passing family and personal status legislation in practically any country in the West and you’re wading into a pool of piranas. So nothing gets done.