Also, that if you have dual citizenship and one of your countries allows you a name change, the other country is obliged to recognize the name change? Is that right?
What’s supposed to oblige the country?
In general it probably gives you a decent reason to request a name change in the other country as well. If you however search an unreasonable name you might still get denied.
I don’t know, I was asking whether I had understood the parent comment right. I don’t know much about name change legislation, and would like to find out more.
I was thinking along the lines of, well, it’s not as if any given country “owns” somebody’s name—it’s a property of the person, right? As in, you can’t have one legal name in one country and another in some other country. That’s what common sense tells me at least. But then again I’ve been surprised by law on several occasions in the past, to say the least...
I know it’s at least possible to have variant names; I am legally registered in different countries by parallell names analogous to “Venice” and “Venezia”.
Gee. Law’s weirder than I thought. But these facts open up some promising possibilities, now that I think about it… after all it’s the munchkin ideas thread. Thanks to everybody for clearing this up for me, and thanks to whatever higher power is least astronomically unlikely to exist for not giving me the suicidal idea to pursue law as a profession.
Nope. Your relationship to your name doesn’t fit most of the bundle of rights that the word “property” implies.
you can’t have one legal name in one country and another in some other country
Of course you can. Why not? Consider immigrants who acquired a new citizenship but did not renounce their old one—the names on their two sets of papers do not have to be identical.
I was thinking along the lines of, well, it’s not as if any given country “owns” somebody’s name—it’s a property of the person, right?
That’s a bad train of thought. You have to think about the institutions involved. There are certain things that international law guarantees to you, that your country is obliged to provide to you.
Things like “Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.”
“Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him.”
In this case also important:
“(1) Everyone has the right to a nationality.
(2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.”
You don’t really have an inane right for two nationalities. If a country allows you dual citizenship it’s a nice thing to do. As such I wouldn’t expect naming right to arise as a consequence.
As in, you can’t have one legal name in one country and another in some other country.
That’s certainly not the case.
If I remember right you can’t have the same legal name in South Korea as in Germany or New York.
In South Korea your name needs to be written in Hangul and the legal documents about you are addressed to the name in Hangul. In Germany your name has to be in the standard Latin alphabet (I don’t know how much accents it allows).
Quick Googling suggests that the case for China is similar. You get to choose between Simplified characters or Traditional Chinese ones.
There are certain things that international law guarantees to you, that your country is obliged to provide to you.
No, there are certain things that international law says are guaranteed to you, that international law says your country is obliged to provide to you.
You need the additional premise “if international law says a country is obliged to provide something, then that country is obliged to provide it”. I see no reason to believe that premise. It doesn’t seem to be true either as a statement about how countries should behave or about how countries actually behave.
What’s supposed to oblige the country?
In general it probably gives you a decent reason to request a name change in the other country as well. If you however search an unreasonable name you might still get denied.
I don’t know, I was asking whether I had understood the parent comment right. I don’t know much about name change legislation, and would like to find out more.
I was thinking along the lines of, well, it’s not as if any given country “owns” somebody’s name—it’s a property of the person, right? As in, you can’t have one legal name in one country and another in some other country. That’s what common sense tells me at least. But then again I’ve been surprised by law on several occasions in the past, to say the least...
http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/
I know it’s at least possible to have variant names; I am legally registered in different countries by parallell names analogous to “Venice” and “Venezia”.
Gee. Law’s weirder than I thought. But these facts open up some promising possibilities, now that I think about it… after all it’s the munchkin ideas thread. Thanks to everybody for clearing this up for me, and thanks to whatever higher power is least astronomically unlikely to exist for not giving me the suicidal idea to pursue law as a profession.
Nope. Your relationship to your name doesn’t fit most of the bundle of rights that the word “property” implies.
Of course you can. Why not? Consider immigrants who acquired a new citizenship but did not renounce their old one—the names on their two sets of papers do not have to be identical.
That’s a bad train of thought. You have to think about the institutions involved. There are certain things that international law guarantees to you, that your country is obliged to provide to you.
Things like “Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.” “Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him.”
In this case also important: “(1) Everyone has the right to a nationality. (2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.”
You don’t really have an inane right for two nationalities. If a country allows you dual citizenship it’s a nice thing to do. As such I wouldn’t expect naming right to arise as a consequence.
That’s certainly not the case.
If I remember right you can’t have the same legal name in South Korea as in Germany or New York.
In South Korea your name needs to be written in Hangul and the legal documents about you are addressed to the name in Hangul. In Germany your name has to be in the standard Latin alphabet (I don’t know how much accents it allows). Quick Googling suggests that the case for China is similar. You get to choose between Simplified characters or Traditional Chinese ones.
No, there are certain things that international law says are guaranteed to you, that international law says your country is obliged to provide to you.
You need the additional premise “if international law says a country is obliged to provide something, then that country is obliged to provide it”. I see no reason to believe that premise. It doesn’t seem to be true either as a statement about how countries should behave or about how countries actually behave.