New Post
Search
Help
ArchivesRe: Good laws I think
in reply to a message by Ylva
I think they're more likely to suffer if they get gender-neutral names ... and I was puzzled when Kim became popular for girls, partly because of the boy in Kipling and partly because it seemed to be short for Kimberley, which is a place name here in South Africa. This was before the Great Place Name Explosion!
Some years ago I met some people from Kiel who had their first child in Freiburg and had to argue at some length, they said, to persuade the registrar that the North German name they'd chosen really did exist. Can't recall now what it was - should have written it down; it wasn't a name I knew either. This wasn't a case of gender confusion; just a name the registrar hadn't heard of, didn't like the look of, and assumed was an invention. Luckily, the proud father was a professor of linguistics and could prove his point.
Some years ago I met some people from Kiel who had their first child in Freiburg and had to argue at some length, they said, to persuade the registrar that the North German name they'd chosen really did exist. Can't recall now what it was - should have written it down; it wasn't a name I knew either. This wasn't a case of gender confusion; just a name the registrar hadn't heard of, didn't like the look of, and assumed was an invention. Luckily, the proud father was a professor of linguistics and could prove his point.
1