Maybe used in racist circles as a joke, but the practice did exist. I’ve know at least two Fetnat, one being my cousin.’

Many apologies then: it looks as though I’ve been misinformed. I’ve only second-hand evidence that it was a racist joke (not moving in racist circles myself).

Is it a boy’s name or a girl’s name. Or – like Deniz, in Turkey – both?

“But divorce is extremely easy in Japan (you basically have to fill out a form to inform local officialdom and that’s it)”

What Why can’t we do that?

Mr. 6 is still around. He even has a Wikipedia page. My own research intersects somewhat with his, and I’m always tempted to err on the side of including references to his work just so I can have “6, P.” at the top of my bibliography.

Maybe used in racist circles as a joke, but the practice did exist. I’ve know at least two Fetnat, one being my cousin.

Onomastics in France have evolved quite a bit in recent years. Not enough that a couple was allowed to name their daughter Téléphérique as wished, but I’ve known quite a number of Gwenaëlle (and Anaël, etc…), one Nanami (absolutely not japanese must I say) and I’ve known a (idiot IMHO) couple (both teachers) who named their kids Aristote and Périclès (I kid you not… poor kids). Not to speak of numerous variation and bastardisations of foreign names of second generation immigrants.
The “in” names in lower middle-class in the last ten years seems to come from American sitcoms and tv shows (Kevin, Brendan, Dylan etc).

What I find fascinating with Toru Ranryu’s comment is how much it fails to acknoledge a part of Japans’s history; just think of Middle-Age (and I’m not talking the higher class Heian hell, anyone who tried to read the Genji will understand)practices: one name up till seven, another till you’re an adult, yet another when you become a monk, another used solely for when dealing in confuscianist circles, one for your buddhist death… Names used to be anything but static in Japan, and still are quite flexibles in some respects.

For example, it is much more common for the wife to take the husbands name, but in certain situations the husband will take the wifes surname.

Practice often used also if the wife’s name is prestigious and/or if her familly has no male heir.

It’s hard to see this as an urban legend, it sounds very probable. Here’s a similar one:

Getting a driver’s license in Japan can take the equivalent of thousands of dollars in lessons at approved driving courses, and people often fail the test. The system is set up to discourage driving, after all.

But the Japanese government quite freely awards licenses to those with valid foreign licenses, especially American licenses. I guess they figure people get plenty of experience driving in the US. I showed my US license and got a Japanese license without a written or a road test.

So during the 70’s, some Japanese got the idea of taking up a brief residence in the US, getting the US license while there, and returning to Japan to exchange it for a Japanese license. The total cost of the trip was still below the cost of obtaining the license at home, plus you get a vacation and you didn’t spend months at the driver’s range. A lot of college students did this because they had the time for it.

But eventually, when this move got too popular, the government changed the rules and closed the loophole.

So, the prevalence of this kind of jiujitsu performed on the legal system makes me think there’s something behind marriage/ divorce story.

self identity

People with sufficient level of ego and intelligence CAN, if culturally liberated to do so, consider binding a name to their personality by which they feel they are saying something about themselves [status, origins, interests…] and thus leap over the first step or two of acquainting themselves with others or otherwise connecting. There is a vibrant branch of this human capacity on display via spray paint on many walls in NYC and in the many monikers by which bloggers post.

And not being who you “really” are for the nonce has its own uses on the other hand.

Cattle get a barcode or an ear tag.

We are born with a history, perhaps a station in life but we all have a choice to forge an identity for ourselves and the name is a precious token of that identity if you can forge it as well. The comment of Toru Ranryu betrays a terrible need for stasis of role in society.

The way that I heard it was that he found out that internet searches for [symbol] weren’t doable, so he was losing publicity.

I wouldn’t be surprised if it was just a whole load of problems that triggered the ‘unsymboling’.

It’s true, you can’t. You aren’t allowed to invent names, either.

German registrars have a list of approved names, and if the name you want to give isn’t on it, you can’t give your child that name (unless you can prove that it is a known and accepted name in some other part of the world).

*Technically a deed poll is just a deed that only has one party to it, the opposite of an indenture (both names refer to the way they used to trim the parchment), but the term is used almost universally for these name change deeds.