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Ethics aside, is it legal (or even possible) to include a line break (newline) in my child's name? Preferably at the end of the child's first name, directly after the last letter. So instead of (for example) the name "John Doe", the name would always be written out "John
Doe". And then when the first name only is written out the line break would have to be included, such as "My child's first name is John
and his last name is Doe". If this is legal, how would I go about making sure the line break is included on the name section of the birth certificate?

Jen
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    Obligatory Little Bobby Tables – Peter M Oct 13 '22 at 16:34
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    It's interesting how technology has changed how we think about language. This question only makes sense if you start from a position where a name is a string of characters from some sort of character set. But originally (I won't say 'really') a name is a particular kind of linguistic unit; a string of characters is just a representation of that name ('Daniel', 'DANIEL', 'דניאל' etc. are all distinct representations). In all but the very recent past this question would be incoherent, like asking whether the ink colour or handwriting style you used on a form was part of the name too. – dbmag9 Oct 14 '22 at 10:31
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    Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat. – feetwet Oct 14 '22 at 17:23
  • Where is this for? –  Feb 06 '23 at 06:13
  • "How do you spell his name?" https://youtube.com/shorts/MyC4hrv-Vzc – BsAxUbx5KoQDEpCAqSffwGy554PSah Feb 09 '23 at 23:50
  • I’d go with the rarely-used convention that “ Brandon” means a line break and name my child John Brandon. – Philippe-André Lorin Mar 27 '23 at 10:35

10 Answers10

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In the US, any legal restrictions on names are implemented at the state level——although broad administrative restrictions exist on the federal level. Some states may restrict use of diacritics (ubiquitous in Vietnamese) or Arabic numerals (but not Roman numerals). At the other extreme, in Washington state, there is no requirement to include a name at all in the case of live birth of known parentage. In the case of delayed report of live birth, and "An individual requesting the delayed report of live birth of an individual under twelve years of age must establish the facts concerning full name, date, and place of live birth". But no restrictions are imposed on names that can be so reported.

Theoretically, one could attempt to register a child with the name (in the Dogra script), which would cause technical problems for the registrar's office. It is likely that the clerk taking in the form would respond something along the lines of "Huh?" and "How do you spell that". Similarly, one might try to register a birth name Hoàng Phủ Ngọc Tường, which would not be particularly difficult to deal with but might still stress the system (it depends on the county). In the latter case the name might be quietly converted to Hoang Phu Ngoc Tuong. In the former case, it is virtually guaranteed that the clerk would have no recourse but to insist on a romanization. Then the person registering would be insistent, they would file a lawsuit, and the courts would make some decision. It is most likely that the courts would be sympathetic to the practical concerns of the registrar and would not demand a huge overhaul of computer systems to allow any arbitrary graphic representation as a legal name.

The State Department has regulations regarding names at 8 FAM 403: Personally Identifying Information. 8 FAM 403.1-3(C) addresses punctuation, special characters and symbols, diacritical marks, and non-Latin alphabets. They do not prohibit anything in names, instead they acknowledge that not everything is supported, and there is a long discussion of "discrepancies" which would explain the passport name "Nyema" for . Passport names comply with the International Civil Aviation Organization standard. Social Security has a different set of rules where spaces, numbers, hyphens, slashes or any other special characters are not allowed for names, even including length limits where first, middle and last names can be maximally 10, 7 and 13 characters long (enter the first 10, 7 and 13 characters).

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    I don't think they're important for the answer, but I can't see any of the emoji? you used (I'm seeing squares with numbers inside). – Clockwork Oct 14 '22 at 11:22
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    @Clockwork Looks like they're characters from the Dogra block, which was added in 2018, so your font probably doesn't support them yet (neither does mine). – Radvylf Programs Oct 14 '22 at 13:08
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    Yeah, they are Dogra Takri letters – a case study of the hassle that gov't. computers would face. – user6726 Oct 14 '22 at 14:38
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    Bear in mind, the government systems are (usually) much, much older and less frequently updated than your web browser. Just because you can see these characters, that doesn't mean they can input them into their database. – Kevin Oct 14 '22 at 20:18
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    I see numbered replacement glyphs. Is that supposed to be the only reason they cause problems? Because I think there are much more interesting (generally malicious) things that can be done with Unicode than "some systems don't have glyphs for this text". – Karl Knechtel Oct 14 '22 at 21:59
  • The newline character is pretty ubiquitous. "John\nDoe" could be handled by the clerk, but the newline character won't always display as a newline. – Ben Alan Oct 14 '22 at 23:05
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Can I legally include a line break in my child's name?

Let's rephrase that:

  1. Can I legally register my child's name in bold/italic/underlined/strike-through?
  2. Can I legally register my child's name in a specific color?
  3. Can I legally register my child's name in blinking text?
  4. Can I legally register my child's name with a spoiler cover?

More generally:

  • Is text formatting a feature of a person name?

I'm sure it is not, and you probably will conclude too it's not.

Simple reason: how to format the text name of a person when speaking? Could I file a lawsuit if my teacher doesn't speak my name in italic when checking student presence?

P.S.: stick to letters present in your language's alphabet. If it's not there, it's just a typograhical or other technological convention, not a valid letter.

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    So says "BsAxUbx5KoQDEpCAqSffwGy554PSah" – CGCampbell Oct 14 '22 at 14:19
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    What if you sue the teacher for not speaking your name in italics, but the court's computer systems don't support italic names? – Someone Oct 14 '22 at 15:51
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    A line break is a character like any other, not formatting. – tralph3 Oct 15 '22 at 06:00
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    No a line break is not a character like any other. It might be implemented as an 7 bit code in a computerized document. But it is not a character. – James K Oct 15 '22 at 06:21
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    Lots of things are "characters" in computers that are not characters in language. This is arising because people are mixing two similar but unrelated concepts. How would you write an ASCII BEL on a piece of paper? There are lots of characters in computer character sets that are explicitly for formatting and arranging text. If your name is too long to fit on one line and it wraps to another line, does that mean your name is legally changed? No, of course not. THAT is a line break. – barbecue Oct 15 '22 at 20:18
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    I like the idea of registering my child's name with a spoiler cover -- it would give him something to look forward to on his 18th birthday. – Jeremy Friesner Oct 16 '22 at 06:52
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    In Italy we have an italic pronunciation, it was invented in tiktok in 2022 – gurghet Oct 16 '22 at 07:38
  • If I ever have a daughter, I'm going to name her M̵̳͖̫̳̹͑́̐̋̈́̐̌̑̌̃̚̕ȩ̸̳͚͛̓̎̈́l̴̨̢̨̢̰̠̤͔̟͇̳͚̯̊̎́̓̓͑̏̅̕͜ḯ̴̢̫̹͓͎̗̅̍̏̊̅͆̏̓̑̂̏̊͜s̸͎͇̞̪̗̰̗̜̲͈̯͙̊͗̈̅̈́͗̀̈́͐̿̋̿͋͝ͅs̶̨̼͓̩̤̜̗͔̭̼̙̮͓̔â̵̛̤̺̱̻̺̖̫̹̊̇̌̅̓̀͆̾̔̄͋̽͘ͅ, because s̴̨̻͙͉̔̋̀̉̄ḩ̸̘̫̻̆́̑̈̿e̷̻̮̒͠ ̷̧̖̼̻̐c̵͙̀̃͘̚ǫ̴̯̝̮̒͛͋m̸̙̙̳̩̝̏̔̔͘͠e̸̠̖̐̍s̵̩̗̏́̇. – Robert Columbia Oct 16 '22 at 22:21
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    @tralph3 A line break is a control code character, not a letter character. Just like the BEL (from "bell") control code keys on teleprinters, it's not a valid letter just because you found it on your keyboard. If a specific character is absent of your language's alphabet, then it's just a technological convention and not a valid letter. How would someone speak your son's name if it was just a sequence of bell rings and emojis? – BsAxUbx5KoQDEpCAqSffwGy554PSah Oct 17 '22 at 13:27
  • @barbecue My name would be legally changed by line breaking only if it had a "nowrap" HTML tag around it, right? joking – BsAxUbx5KoQDEpCAqSffwGy554PSah Oct 17 '22 at 13:31
  • @CGCampbell Unfortunately StackExchange did not let me register my username using punctuation, let alone line breaks, emojis, or bell rings. So, yeah, my username only uses valid letters (upper an lower case)... and numbers! This brings the next (and far more valid) OP question: 'can I legally include numbers in my child's name?'. – BsAxUbx5KoQDEpCAqSffwGy554PSah Oct 17 '22 at 13:51
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    @BsAxUbx5KoQDEpCAqSffwGy554PSah Numbers: I know this isn't what you are really referring to, but I am legally Junior, it's on my birth cert. My son is legally III (the third), as in first-name middle-name last-name III. – CGCampbell Oct 17 '22 at 16:24
  • I seem to remember a case where someone legally changed their name to a number... – barbecue Oct 17 '22 at 16:46
  • @BsAxUbx5KoQDEpCAqSffwGy554PSah But I never said it was a letter, you added that in. I explicitly said it was a character, and I'm right, it is a character, a character that by convention is rendered as a newline, just like by convention, the character 65 in the ASCII table is rendered like so: A – tralph3 Oct 17 '22 at 18:41
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    King Æthelstan was the very first "King of the English" making Ash (Æ) firmly a valid English letter, but it's not California English and so Elon Musk couldn't proceed with X Æ A-12 Musk's name – user662852 Oct 20 '22 at 05:03
  • @JeremyFriesner Registering on blinking text is cool too. The child would be VIP/admin automatically on every RPG server, without needing to pay for a Gold account. Overpowered since birth! – BsAxUbx5KoQDEpCAqSffwGy554PSah Jan 24 '23 at 11:29
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    @tralph3 Names are made of letters, not of characters, so it isn't important what kind of control character or whatever else a newline is. – Gábor Jan 24 '23 at 13:44
  • @Gábor Hyphens are not letters either, yet some names include those, notably hyphenated family names. Also what if your name is L'Hospital or de l'Hôpital? At lest including an apostrophe as required by the origin language seems OK by convention. – Brandin Jan 26 '23 at 16:09
  • @Brandin Fair enough, that's true in a strict sense but just as we accept hyphens and apostrophes as parts of normal words in the same languages, I'd say that for the purposes of this discussion, those are letters as well. :-) – Gábor Jan 26 '23 at 17:09
  • The argument of line-break’s supposed unspeakability is wrong. It is not uncommon for speech to lose information present in writing, and vice versa. For instance, multiple spellings of “Siobhan” exist with the same pronunciation. The rest of this answer provides no information about law or technical constraints, and is thus off-topic. – Philippe-André Lorin Mar 27 '23 at 10:15
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In general, you can name your kid how you want, but there are limits in practice, due to technical and legal constraints.

Germany has a list of allowed characters in names because the Bundesdruckerei does not support every character. Format characters are not on the list, as are many other non letter characters, such as brackets. Neither is þ (thorn), which is still in use as a typical character in Icelandic and would be transliterated into th. Even typical Danish alphabet extensions are not available.

On top of that, German officials can deny names to be put on the birth certificate if they are made up, can't be properly expressed, or in other way or form would negatively impact the child. An example would be a clear negative connotation. How strict are they? Well, depends on the name and clear ideology: You can not ever name your kid Satan, Stalin, or Lenin and you might trigger the block with Adolf, but you won't get scrutiny if name your kid Adolphus. Oh, and you are limited to 5 first names, of which at most pairs can be combined with a hyphen.

However, even old names can get this treatment. Among the people I know, the father of an Oke had to prove that it was a typical Friesian name, and the parents of a Merlin were urged to add a second name.

Not in

The 戸籍法 (Family Register Act) contains this paragraph:

第五十条子の名には、常用平易な文字を用いなければならない。
Article 50(1)For the given name of a child, characters that are simple and in common use shall be used.

２常用平易な文字の範囲は、法務省令でこれを定める。
(2)The scope of characters that are simple and in common use shall be defined by Ordinance of the Ministry of Justice.

The list of characters on the Ordinance is Hiragana, Katakana, common Kanji, and a list of uncommon ones. None of them is a linebreak, or a Latin character (Romaji), or an Indian number.

Consolation prize: Numerals in Japanese script are available for naming, and are actually somewhat common. For example, Ichigo with the "ichi" written as 一 is literally "first ..." and some of those are rather common names, especially the combinations meaning "first child."

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    "if they are made up"? Every name was made up at some point. – phoog Oct 14 '22 at 00:52
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    @phoog Every other thing about language was made up at some point, too. And yet, "Alice" is clearly a woman's name. And "Xylopharm Forte", although I just made that up on the spot, is clearly an excellent medication for Xylophon phobia. But certainly not your neighbors kid's name. So, "must be a name" is a perfectly valid point, even though we made up all of these words. – nvoigt Oct 14 '22 at 06:02
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    @phoog The formulation is can deny, they don't have do. It happens only very rarely, if it sounds like it could be a name you will be fine. – quarague Oct 14 '22 at 06:12
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    @BЈовић Germany is the one country that feels very, very guilty about its past. The names associated with this guilty period are socially unacceptable in Germany, meaning that any child with such a name would be very likely to suffer bullying. Names that make a child likely to be bullied are not allowed. – UTF-8 Oct 14 '22 at 07:43
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    @phoog When we chose a rare spelling of a name for our child, the official was reluctant to approve it - even after we showed newspaper articles and pointed to another office halfway across Germany for reference. He still called us several times to try to change our mind before he finally allowed it. – user24582 Oct 14 '22 at 08:11
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    Adolf is apparently not generally forbidden. – Peter - Reinstate Monica Oct 14 '22 at 08:12
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    I'd really like to have a reference for the claim "Germany has a list of allowed characters in names". Reading through one of the relevant court decisions, the relevant principle is: "Bei der Wahl des Vornamens für ihre Kinder sind Eltern grundsätzlich frei". This general freedom of the parents has its limits when it imperils the child's welfare. That is where the administration (and, if challenged, the courts) come in, to protect the child. – Peter - Reinstate Monica Oct 14 '22 at 08:27
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    So probably the Icelandic alphabet (like other non-Latin ones) is generally inadmissible because it would cause unending problems for the child, starting with the inability to obtain a passport, or -- given that the Bundesdruckerei is unicode-enabled these days -- at least the inability of anybody to read or pronounce the name, which would hamper the child's welfare. The German law doesn't make it easy to change your given name as an adult, which makes the original name more important than in America. But which exact letter is admissible is a case-to-case decision, as in the case above. – Peter - Reinstate Monica Oct 14 '22 at 08:33
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    I believe Adolf is actually legal, and the last name has died out when his two nephews? died in the USA of old age, childless. – gnasher729 Oct 14 '22 at 09:42
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    @gnasher729 you'll find the name blocked unless you give a 2nd name to call the child by. E.g. Gustavus Adolfus would pass muster, just Adolf not. – Trish Oct 14 '22 at 10:10
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    I met a person whose father immigrated to Germany. After they had arrived, they applied for a new passport. The clerk could not properly decipher the last name on the damaged document. So they entered "Blake or Bloke" into the system, indicating that someone down the line should take a look at it. But no-one did. So they ended up with a passport identifying them as "John Blake or Bloke". Based on this anecdote, I would say: The only thing stopping this from happening is that entering a newline into a system is hard. With any other exotic, but keyboard-accessible character, you might get lucky. – Hermann Oct 14 '22 at 10:30
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    @Peter-ReinstateMonica the word 'grundsätzlich' in german law has a very different meaning than its mainstream usage. The law-text 'Es darf grundsätzlich geraucht werden' can mean anything upt to 'there is no conceivable real scenario where one is allowed to smoke' - depending on other, not necessarily colocated, laws... – bukwyrm Oct 14 '22 at 10:57
  • @bukwyrm ...and of course ordinances and internal, unwritten policy of the Einwohnermeldeamt. – Trish Oct 14 '22 at 10:59
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    @Hermann "or" or "oder"? – glglgl Oct 14 '22 at 11:17
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    @bukwyrm "Grundsätzlich" means exactly the same as its English equivalent "in principle" or "principally", in law and otherwise: It establishes the base of an argument. It is exactly as I said: Freedom of choice is the principle, and then you have restrictions based on the child's welfare. Those are fairly far-reaching but the court was pretty unambiguous in its wording and limited the administration's authority. Obviously, after a "Grundsätzlich..." you wait for the "... aber": But that's not different from any other language. – Peter - Reinstate Monica Oct 14 '22 at 13:11
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    @glglgl I took the liberty of changing the name (for anonymity) and translating the "oder" into English. – Hermann Oct 14 '22 at 17:11
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    @Hermann : I have heard of anecdotes where American family names are a transliteration of "I don't understand" in some other language, because when the immigrant 100-150 years ago was asked his name, he responded "I don't understand" in his native language. For example, the name "Nemerton" might have been a Hungarian who said "Nem értem" which sounds quite similar when pronounced in a specific dialect. – vsz Oct 16 '22 at 12:20
  • @Hermann Not quite the "only thing stopping it." Even if the clerk in your story had entered a newline, it would have appeared on the gentleman's passport as "John Blake" and then on a separate line, the words "or Bloke" and anyone reading that would unconsciously ignore that line break. If a name is long enough, a line break would even make sense logically if there's not enough room to write the entire part of the next name on the same line without adding hyphens or mid-name breaks. – Brandin Jan 28 '23 at 06:59
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Iceland has an explicit list of approved given names. If a child’s prospective name is on that list, then it’s fine. If it’s not on that list, then it needs to be approved by the Mannanafnanefnd (generally called the ‘Icelandic Naming Committee’ in English). Actually being approved has a couple of concrete requirements:

  • It can only contain letters in the Icelandic alphabet (A, Á, B, D, Ð, E, É, F, G, H, I, Í, J, K, L, M, N, O, Ó, P, R, S, T, U, Ú, V, X, Y, Ý, Þ, Æ, and Ö).
  • It has to be possible to decline it as a noun in the Icelandic language’s grammatical case system. This is a requirement because Iceland still uses patronymic and matronymic surnames instead of family names like most of the rest of the Western world does, which means that it must be possible to form a genitive form of a name (so that it can then be used as the first part of the patronymic or matronymic name of any future children).
  • In practice because of the above two constraints, it usually has to follow Icelandic phonotactics (that is, combinations of sounds that are not valid in Icelandic are typically not allowed).
  • Prior to 2019, the name’s grammatical gender had to match the physiological gender of the individual.

Additionally, the Mannanafnanefnd has to accept that the name is ‘compatible with Icelandic tradition’ (yes, it’s really that vague in the laws surrounding this), and is not likely to cause the bearer embarrassment (so, for example, something such as Rassinn would not be likely to be accepted).

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    Can you point out what is embarrassing about "Rassinn"? Maybe it means something naughty in Iceland? – Gregory Currie Oct 14 '22 at 02:19
  • @GregoryCurrie .... well, Bjork isn't allowed either. (Björk is. Adolf is). I wonder if you can just hit "Randomize Name" like in MMORPGs. – Harper - Reinstate Monica Oct 14 '22 at 03:29
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    @GregoryCurrie Google Translate suggests that it refers to the buttocks in Icelandic, so, yeah, "naughty", I suppose. I'm not sure what Bjork refers to, which Harper mentioned in his comment. – Cody Gray - on strike Oct 14 '22 at 05:11
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    @CodyGray Bjork is a misspelling of Björk (birch). Maybe spelling mistakes are embarrassing? – gerrit Oct 14 '22 at 07:35
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    @gerrit I would not call ö spelled as o misspelling. It is unfortunately common (at least in Europe) to stick to ASCII when faced with a glyph that is not readily available in the local language. Even worse, you would have French names, in France, that are added to some systems (usually in companies that are international) without the é, à, ë, ï etc. – WoJ Oct 14 '22 at 13:02
  • Could someone make a short (fitting of a comment) description of bullet two for a layperson not from Iceland)? I understand that the daughter and son of Gunnar would be Gunnarsdóttir & Gunnarsson, but I guess I don't know what genitive means. – CGCampbell Oct 14 '22 at 14:15
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    @CGCampbell Genitive means possessive. In English, that’s usually just add ’s to a name (except when it’s just ’ alone), but in other languages, the changes to a word to form the genitive/possessive can be more elaborate. In Icelandic, there are a few different forms for names, and they have corresponding (different) forms for the genitive. Since there isn’t one “universal” (ish) form for genitives like English has with ’s, if the form of a name isn’t properly formed, there isn’t a corresponding genitive form, which causes a problem with the formation of the patronymic system. – KRyan Oct 14 '22 at 14:23
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    @GregoryCurrie Leave off the "r" and you will spot the etymological relation to an English word. – user3067860 Oct 14 '22 at 15:51
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    @WoJ o, ó and ö are distinct letters in Icelandic, not letters with different diacritical marks, so substituting one of them for one of the others is a misspelling in the strictest sense. And given that in Iceland it is perfectly reasonable to assume that Icelandic people can type/write the correct letters when communicating in Icelandic, it is very much a misspelling in this context. – Austin Hemmelgarn Oct 14 '22 at 16:05
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    @AustinHemmelgarn: ah, this is interesting - for instance in France you have the first name Gaëlle but you can ask for Gaelle even if this is not technically correct. When you look at the Wikipedia entry (https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ga%C3%ABl_(pr%C3%A9nom) - in French), it explicitly states that the proper version is with an ë. Same goes for Michaël. – WoJ Oct 14 '22 at 16:40
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    @WoJ Interesting indeed. I know from experience that Germanic languages tend to be a lot pickier about this type of thing, because the types of vowel shifts you get by making such substitutions can completely change the meaning of a word. I unfortunately don’t know any examples in Icelandic (I know maybe a dozen words out of the entire language), but in Swedish for example ‘stad’, ‘städ’ and ‘ståd’ are three completely different words. – Austin Hemmelgarn Oct 14 '22 at 17:05
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    @WoJ It's akin to the o / ö in German - ö is not a diacritical of o, it is a ligature of oe. Same for ä (ae) and ü (ue). if you can only use 26 letters, and not äöü, you replace them by ae oe ue in German text. – Trish Oct 15 '22 at 22:46
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I assume you are asking whether it is legal or possible to include a line break character in the name used in the state administrative records referring to your child, since I am not aware of any restrictions on what you call your child or how you represent your child's name in your own writing. Here are some restrictions from around Canada.

Vital Statistics Act:

the given name and the surname must consist only of the letters "a" to "z" and accents from the English or French languages, but may include hyphens and apostrophes

Birth Registration (appears to be a practical, not legal constraint):

Names must use Latin alphabetic letters, and can contain apostrophes, hyphens, a period, and a standard set of French accents. Numbers, brackets (), slashes / or other symbols are not accepted.

Restrictions respecting personal names (it is not clear whether these are practical or legal restrictions):

All given and last names must begin with a letter and may contain non-consecutive hyphens, apostrophes and periods. The name must use the standard English alphabet of 26 letters.

Some punctuation marks are allowed, but "A legal name cannot contain just hyphens, periods or apostrophes without letters such as ('..-..')". Some accented characters can also be printed.

Vital Statistics Act: The Registrar has discretion to refuse to register a name that in the Registrar's opinion might reasonably be expected to cause confusion.

An aside. I think we all understood this question clearly, and it's been a fun research adventure! But I would avoid the framing about whether people's "names" are legal. None of this regulates names as such. It regulates what you can have the state to record and refer to you as. It regulates one's "legal" name—one's administrative name. I think this is an important distinction because calling one's name "illegal" can minimize one's identity. And highlighting the distinction between one's name and the name recognized by the government can help push the government to expand their capacity to different forms of names.

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The glyphs of a first name must be part of the French alphabet. The new line character/sequence is not part of it.

I did not find anything for the family name but I believe that in doubt it would follow the rules for the first name.

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    Also, just like Germany, the clerk can refuse the name is it may be detrimental to the child – user7327 Oct 14 '22 at 12:14
  • I was told that in the UK the clerk is not even allowed to tell you that you used a mis-spelling of a common given name. – gnasher729 Oct 16 '22 at 22:49
  • The état civil does not register glyphs, but characters. That is, “a” will be “a” regardless of the handwriting, font, colors, etc. used to write it at the time of registration. Also, spaces and hyphens are allowed in first names, while they are not part of the French alphabet. Both æ and œ orthographic ligatures are allowed, too. Rules regarding family names are the same as for first names. See Circulaire du 23 juillet 2014 relative à l’état civil, pages 1-2. – Philippe-André Lorin Mar 27 '23 at 10:52
  • Note that apostrophes, although in use in family names such as d’Ormesson or L’Écuyer, may pose difficulties. – Philippe-André Lorin Mar 27 '23 at 10:52
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Probably not in and

According to the Naming law in Sweden Wikipedia article:

The first paragraph does not give a person the right to acquire as a first name a name that can cause offence, can be assumed to lead to discomfort for the person who will bear the name, or is for some other reason unsuitable as a first name.

For example "Brfxxccxxmnpcccclllmmnprxvclmnckssqlbb11116" was not approved as a name.

Israel has a similar law regarding names.

BsAxUbx5KoQDEpCAqSffwGy554PSah
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Rsf
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This FOI request outlines the relatively permissive regime that governs the registering of baby names, but your chosen name would not be allowed as it is not a "sequence of letters".

Registrations of births in England and Wales are made under the Births and Deaths Registration Act 1953 and the Registration of Births and Deaths Regulations 1987. The legislation does not set out any guidance on what parents may name their child.

Our advice to registrars is that a name should consist of a sequence of letters and that it should not be offensive. The reason for limiting the registration of names to a sequence of letters is that a name which includes a string of numbers or symbols etc. has no intrinsic sense of being a name, however the suffix 'II' or 'III' would be allowed.

The only restriction on the length of a name is that it must be able to fit in the space provided on the registration page.

There are no leaflets or booklets available giving guidance on this matter. Where the registrar has any concerns over a name they will discuss this with the parents and point out the problems the child may face as they grow up and try to get them to reconsider their choice.

We have not had occasion to refuse to register a name.

In practice, the registrar would advise you that this name wouldn't be allowed and try to dissuade you from giving your offspring a stupid name, noting that none of the following characters appear in any UK registration on record;

Following a search of the data I can confirm that none of the relevant characters appear in the names published in the above releases.

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Richard
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  • Just as a point of order, there has been at least one occasion when a parent's choice has been refused as a name for their child by a registrar, which subsequently went to court (and the court found in favour of the registrar). AP News: British court rules woman can’t name her daughter Cyanide – GeoffAtkins Oct 15 '22 at 07:30
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    @GeoffAtkins - She wasn't refused by the registrar, she was found out by her social workers before she could formally register the names and they took out an injunction; https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-mid-wales-36045987 - "In June, a judge issued an injunction against the mother, forbidding her from formally registering the twins' forenames.". Had she been mentally well (and had a better explanation for why she chose that name), it would likely have been allowed – Richard Oct 15 '22 at 07:37
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TL;DR

Don't do this to your child. I feel like CPS could file an abuse report against you for the hardship you'd cause.

Setting aside both ethics and legality you are merely inquiring about the capabilities of computer systems.

Odds are sky-high that the field where the name gets entered is just a single-line text field which does not support newlines; by design.

Even if you could miraculously register the newline control character in your child's name it will simply trigger a life of hardship in every single web form which has to be filled out.

See https://jsfiddle.net/o1zthnwy/

MonkeyZeus
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There is a reigning characteristic amongst the existing answers that they all start from the idea that the person registering the name has the right to specify the name authoritatively in writing.

In fact, the authoritative specification of a name historically was the verbal form. A person's "name" is how they are called and to what call they respond.

The name registered in birth rolls is how the parents call the child and refer to it amongst the family and community (albeit there would not yet be response from the baby itself).

It is the registrar who is ultimately responsible for deciding how the written form translates from the specified verbal form, and for making the entry into the rolls accordingly. If they cannot coherently hear the name, or translate it into writing, they will not make an entry.

Whilst the registrar isn't likely to quibble with any plausible spelling offered to accompany a verbalised name, when it comes to things like a "line break", they would simply ask "how do you say that?" and "how do you spell that?".

Since the relevant concept has no sounding - it's a typesetting/type layout concept - it is by definition not part of any name by which a person is (or may be) called.

As it is not part of any name and cannot be spoken, it would simply not fall to be entered into the rolls by the registrar.

You could of course give the child a middle name like "Bobby Line Break Tables", but the name then consists of the words "Line Break" - the written form of the name does not however incorporate any line break.

Steve
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