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...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...
...merely illegal to pass multiple surnames on to a child. Legislators worried that, should a child later marry someone who also had a long surname - and if their children did the same and so on - the result would be 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...
...Critics of the verdict - dubbed the "Hadschi Halef Omar ban" by the German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung, in reference to a character invented by the popular adventure-story writer Karl May called Hadschi Halef Omar Ben Hadschi Abul Abbas Ibn Hadschi Dawuhd al Gossarah - say it does not necessarily prevent long names, since it applies only to names conjoined by a hyphen. A name like Schulze zur Wiesche-Meyer auf der Heide would still be allowed, notes Götz, even though it's seven words long...
...only surnames that are subject to regulation in Germany - first names are too. According to German law, parents can choose any name for their child as long as it does not go against order and decency. The name must be in accordance with the child's gender and must not expose the child to ridicule or discrimination. The number of first names generally should not exceed five...