I have wondered what would happen if Elizabeth Sonnenstein-McGillicuddy marries Christopher Eberhardt-Schwarzwalder: will the child be known as Katerina Sonnenstein-McGillicuddy-Eberhardt-Schwarzwalder? And how will they ever get the name on a drivers license. Well, according to todays NY Times this urgent question has arisen in Germany where the Constitutional Court has forbidden last names of three or more parts. What is most striking to me is that the namng of children in Germany appears to be tightly regulated by the government:

Germany takes a highly regimented approach to naming. Childrens names must be approved by local authorities, and there is a reference work, the International Handbook of Forenames, to guide them. Jrgen Udolph, a University of Leipzig professor and head of the information center there that provides certificates of approval for names that have not yet made the official list, said that "the state has a responsibility to protect people from idiotic forenames."That responsibility is often tested in court. In 2003, an appellate court ruled that a boy could not be named "Anderson," because it was a last name in Germany. And the Constitutional Court ruled in 2004 to limit the number of forenames a child could have, capping at five the number a mother could give her son, to whom she had tried to bequeath the 12-part "Chenekwahow Tecumseh Migiskau Kioma Ernesto Inti Prithibi Pathar Chajara Majim Henriko Alessandro," to protect the child.

This reminds me of a dispute that arose at Vatican II between John Courtney Murray and some European defenders of religious freedom. Murray built his case in part on the limited role of government which, he said, had no more authority or ability to decide which religion is true than it did to pass judgment on the validity of a scientific hypothesis or the merits of a work of art. The Europeans, in many of whose countries one can find Ministries of Culture, thought that this was reducing the role of the state to that of a gendarme, and so werent enthusiastic about this part of Murrays argument. The French, I believe, regulate what French words may be used in advertisements.Actually, I think the Brussels bureaucrats of the European Union should take over this task, too. After all, the "responsibility to protect people from idiotic forenames" should surely not be left to the nation-state.