Word: courtelis
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...says these cases are rare: "Most people are reasonable and have the welfare of their children in mind." But now that the Constitutional Court has finally settled the issue of what adults can call themselves, many more Germans could be asking: What's in a name...
...court was upholding a law introduced in 1993, which banned multiple surnames in Germany. Before this legislation, triple- or quadruple-barreled names were rare, but they existed: there is an East German athlete, for example, named Simone Greiner-Petter-Memm, and a prominent pollster and political scientist who went by Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann-Maier-Leibnitz until she dropped the second half of her name after her husband died. And members of the German aristocracy often carry extremely long names. (See pictures of Berlin...
...endless name chains, which could cause intolerable administrative difficulties for German officials. In 1993, the ban was extended to couples who wanted to combine their names into a three- or four-pronged surname - but this is the first time that that ban has been upheld by the Constitutional Court...
...court, however, defended the verdict by saying that German law leaves spouses enough freedom to choose how to combine their names and thereby express their identities. It also added that Thalheim and her husband are free to continue using their original names for business purposes...
...referring to a case that recently made headlines in Germany about a boy from New Jersey named after the Nazi leader. The decision on which names to accept and which to reject is generally left to the local registrar, but that decision can be contested in court. And sometimes the court's ruling can seem rather arbitrary. While the names Stompie, Woodstock and Grammophon have been rejected by German courts in the past, the similarly creative parents of Speedy, Lafayette and Jazz were granted their name of choice. (See pictures of Hitler's rise to power...