Baby Name Laws

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Susan Whaling. I’m from Valdosta, Georgia.

Hi, Susan. Welcome to the show.

Hi, Susan.

Well, I have a student from the Czech Republic, Lusinka, and she has now returned to the Czech Republic, and she’s had her third baby.

And she wrote me a message asking me to find an American dictionary, an English dictionary, that would verify her son’s name.

She wants her baby to be called Lysander, and the Czech government doesn’t allow her to use the name unless she can prove its existence.

So she thinks the name already exists in the U.S., and I’ve asked colleagues in the English department and also in my own department in the Spanish department.

And everyone refers to examples in plays and literary references, but no one has been able to tell me whether it’s a real name in a dictionary.

And what the name of the dictionary is if they can find it.

I don’t even know how you look for the validity of a name, actually.

Good question.

And what’s the name?

Lysander.

Can you spell that?

L-I-S-A-N-D-E-R.

And I think at this point she’d even take Lysandro.

So it’s for a boy.

Yeah.

And what were you teaching her when she was your student?

Okay, Spanish.

Spanish.

Okay.

Yeah.

And have you run across the name in Spanish Lysandro?

Yes, I’ve heard it, but again, I don’t have any, I don’t know, I’ve never seen it verified, except in literary works, I’ve never seen it verified in an etymology dictionary.

People have referred me to the Greek spelling with the Y, but she doesn’t want the Y.

Oh, she doesn’t want the Y, so she wants it with an I.

Yeah.

Well, it definitely exists in Spanish.

In fact, there’s Lisandro Sandoval who wrote a whole Guatemalan dictionary.

But she wants to name the child with the English version of the Greek name, Lysander.

Yes, and I think it has something to do with the Game of Thrones.

I’m not sure.

And the back story for this is that the Czech government tightly controls names of babies, right?

Yes. And you cannot name it your child unless you have a letter from a linguist verifying that that’s an actual name or a reference from a dictionary.

Wow. And so it has to be from a dictionary like Shakespeare doesn’t count, like Midsummer Night’s Dream and Lysander in that play?

No.

No?

No.

Well, there is a book of names of characters in Shakespeare where they are all explained.

Meaning that I just look for this book called The Book of Names of Shakespeare?

Let me find the title for you, and maybe that will get you and your student.

What is your student’s name?

Lucinka.

Lucinka, and Lucinka started.

So what’s really interesting as we’re looking here, the story behind this is that the Czech government, like a lot of governments, controls the names of children.

And partly this is to maintain social cohesion and kind of cultural traditions, right?

The French used to be more tightly controlled about this too, but they relaxed quite a while ago.

And there’s a story that when Dances with Wolves came out and Kevin Costner became well-known worldwide for that movie, that suddenly there were all these baby Kevins born in France.

And it was very kind of upsetting to the traditionalists who didn’t like this very obviously non-French name.

And showing up in the baby registers.

And then in the kindergartens and the grade schools.

So she wouldn’t be okay, Susan, with L-Y-S-A-N-D-R.

No.

Oh, that’s too bad because it’s right here in the Merriam-Webster dictionary.

Would the Spanish version be okay or no for her?

Well, we’ve been trying this for like a month and a half now.

And she said if she couldn’t find anything else, she would try to go with whatever Spanish version our linguist here would send.

Okay.

Verification of that.

All right. So the book is the Shakespeare Name Dictionary is what it’s called.

It does have the name Alisander in it.

It does not have Lissandro in it.

So it’s A-L-I-S-A-N-D-E-R.

Of which then she could use Lissander as like a nickname?

Well, the Czech government doesn’t allow you to record nicknames, but you could actually, obviously, call the kid anything they wanted around the house.

So it’s in Love’s Labor’s Lost.

Okay.

And so the book is the Shakespeare Name Dictionary.

It’s by J. Madison Davis and A. Daniel Frank Forter, F-O-R-T-E-R.

Okay.

And so it’s a really interesting book that talks about the names, where they appear, a little bit of history, if there is some.

It talks about different versions of the name as they appeared in different versions of Shakespeare over the centuries.

It’s 1995 from Rutledge.

Oh, gosh, that’s so helpful.

Okay.

I will certainly pass that on.

Well, you just mentioned that other countries.

So how many countries do limit names?

Quite a few of them.

Yeah, quite a few.

Yeah, I think Germany, at least they used to have a rule where you couldn’t use a name that didn’t specify the gender of the person.

Interesting.

Oh, that is so interesting.

Okay.

It varies by country by country.

And some of them have the rule or the law, and they don’t enforce it.

And some of them have the custom but not really the law.

And even in the Czech Republic, I understand that a lot of it is really as much custom and tradition as it is law.

Like if you can persuade somebody, like you said, with a letter from an authority, then you can get the name that you want.

But you really have to work for it.

And as a matter of fact, there’s a well-known book.

I don’t know if you Googled this at all.

There’s a well-known book of baby names that is updated every few years by a linguist.

And I don’t know how to pronounce this name.

But the book’s title is What Is Your Child Going to Be Called?

And it is a list of baby names.

And this is the book that most Czech people pick their names from in order to get around this difficulty.

Wow.

Yeah.

Oh.

It’s really interesting.

Another place where they get their baby names is something we don’t really do very much of in the United States.

They have name days.

So there are names assigned to each day of the calendar.

And if you’re born on that day, perhaps you will get one of those names.

Yeah, it definitely happens in Latvia.

Yeah.

Is that like the Catholic tradition of naming children saints days?

Yeah, like the saints days.

Yeah, you celebrate your name day rather than your birthday.

Or both if you’re lucky.

But yeah, if you’re born on a particular day and there’s a saint who is closely associated with it, you might just get that name, the feminine or the masculine version of it.

Well, we’re pulling for her in any case.

Yeah, let us know what she comes up with.

It’s weird to come up against a bureaucracy for a name, at least to an American.

Yeah, that’s just crazy.

I could name my child Scooby-Doo if I wanted.

And then nobody’s going to stop me.

Right.

Thank goodness you did.

And so that’s been everyone’s response is like they’ve just been, none of us knew that there were places that existed that limited you in your naming of your child.

Yeah.

Fascinating, right?

I can’t imagine that happening in Spanish.

Susan, thank you so much for your call.

I really appreciate it.

Well, thank you.

Thank you for your help.

All right.

Have a good day.

Thanks.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Well, we know that naming is interesting wherever you happen to be, whether you’re a junior or a senior or you come from another culture where one name or three names or nine names are common, tell us the story, 877-929-9673.