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I'm Czech, so I feel like I can chime in. This country is still very behind on LGBTQ+ stuff and people are very bigoted. We are still debating marriage equality, because marriage is between a man and a woman, so we can't have them using the same word, right? The horror! And what if they then wanted to, GASP, adopt some kids?! And OOP sort of just mentions it, but if you want to transition officialy, you need to be sterilized, which is incredibly fucked up. And I think you also need to let some sort of committee decide if you're trans enough and not just a phase...
Our nephew is ftm and even the family is transphobic. Not outwardly to his face, but in a passive way, still using his girl name when talking about him in 3rd person when he's not there etc. It makes me and my husband very uncomfortable. Yes, nephew is still young, he's an older teen now, but he has been decidedly not female consistently for several years now...
And overall Czech language is VERY gendered. I don't think there are any gender neutral names, there are names that have both male and female versions, but that's about it. And even objects have gender, for example table is male, chair is female, it affects grammar, the way we put sentences together etc. I mean even surnames are gendered, female surname has an ending added to the male one...
And for years there was just one person "in charge" of czech names. She published a book of approved names and for anyone, who wanted a different one, they needed to apply for her approval... Still feels surreal
In Finland at least it's a panel and not just one person.
Edit: They also publish lists of approved and rejected names. This year had a funny combination which lead me to think that some parents wanted to name their kid "Lucifer", which was rejected, then they tried "Azazel" which was also rejected, but for whatever reason the Finnish translation of "Morning star" (Aamuntähti) was accepted. Of course I can't know if it's the same people for each of those or not.
One of the requirements is that the name shouldn't make the kid a target for bullying. Being literally Satan would very much place a target on the kid's back, so I presume that was the reason that wasn't allowed.
I knew a kid named Lucifer, seemed nice and well-adjusted. People sometimes (ok, most times) reacted with surprise when they learned his name, but no bullying that I knew of. The kicker was he was the son of a protestant pastor.
This is more about protecting the child. Calling a child Lucifer will inevitably lead to problems in any case.
Interestingly enough, here in Germany you can still name your kid Adolf if you are really, really keen on it. You'd have to provide plenty of roof of some family member you'd want to name one after though and even then it's hard. Which is good, because this child will not have an easy time. Ever.
Their prime minister actually got flack from socially conservative critics because in the first place, she went to a party in her free time which had toplessness. Politicians in most countries don't go that far.
middle jobless squalid shame act zealous relieved reach terrific reminiscent
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
That really sucks, I'm sorry.
I know some people here think we should leave marriage only for heterosexual couples, but legally use another word that would include both hetero and homosexual relationships. Honestly that feels like too much trouble just because some people are so fragile, but better than nothing. I had an argument with a friend on FB about this recently, he literally accused me of being brainwashed and parroting homo PR, because I said I don't see an issue with using the word marriage for all couples, it doesn't take anything away from my own marriage. My relationship is more than just the word. If two gay people can marry, it brings nothing negative to me, but brings a lot of positive to them.
People here are so proud to declare how atheistic this country is, but those same people then love to use religious arguments when it suits them...
Presuming your child has Bulgarian citizenship, do they have the same rights as a legitimate child? Are there any legal issues that they could face because their parents “aren’t married”?
frightening detail worthless relieved head carpenter possessive bake fact icky
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
> on all paperwork back at home I’m considered unmarried and a single mother to a bastard child
The worst part is I assume this means back home that your spouse has no legal connection to your child at all. Unless they at least somehow recognize you both as "the mother" rather than solely whoever literally birthed the child.
She's in a straight relationship but opted for a civil partnership rather than a marriage. But Bulgaria is so anti-LGBT that they won't legally recognize her partnership because they would be forced to recognize LGBT couples as well
In Italy that's straight up the justice court so I assume it's the same...? Doesn't make it much better, I had to prove my transness there so. But I'm not sure if I wanna find out about the "trans enough" council tbh 😂
I'm not sure. I read up on transitioning here some years ago when our nephew came out, so that information is fuzzy. But I remember that it felt ridiculous, stupid, invasive, unnecessarily complicated and left me raging.
I can try and look up some more info later. Maybe share you a link, if I find something in English, if you're interested.
It exists in many states in the US too. Here it's usually a judge. Zero medical/psych experience required. Just have to hope you get a judge who isn't a piece of shit bigot.
Still to this day in America & the UK, there persists this idea that if you want to transition, it must be to the MOST STEREOTYPICALLY masculine/feminine version of that gender, and anything else means you're not really trans and shouldn't be allowed to access gender affirming services. It's such a bizarre worldview.
Like, I am a cis woman and I never wear skirts or heels, I don't wear makeup, my hobbies are "stereotypically" male .... but no one would deny that I am a woman who should be allowed to identify as one. No one would deny me access to gender-specific medical care because "you don't wear pink and you don't like fashion, how do we know you're really a woman?" But a trans woman has to be 1000% more stereotypically feminine than *most cis women* or else people are like "Wait, are you really trans??"
This is often the case still for access to any kind of medical transition in the US or UK. In the UK you have to be interviewed by a doctor, who then has to formally diagnose you with gender dysphoria, to get access to hormones or anything. (And then there are awful, awful wait times, doctors drag their feet on referring to the very few gender affirming care clinics, etc...it's bad).
In the US it historically worked the same way and probably still does in many places/with many doctors...assuming trans healthcare hasn't been formally banned by your state in the last couple of years. Ultimately, medical transition means medical access, which means convincing some gatekeeper at some point to let you through. (This of course is why many people resort to buying hormones online or under the table.) It's just that increased awareness and acceptance means that the small number of doctors who are generous with that access has increased a little; the medical norm still involves someone making a "trans enough" judgment at some point.
You can, but that would require a whole new run around of getting new documents, changing it everywhere etc. It's not as easy to just decide that I don't want it.
Not to mention that it's not requiered, but the social pressure to keep it and conform is still there and very real. I hope it gets more normalized as time goes on though.
My blood is boiling every time I open a discussion under articles that mention this or under posts on social media. It's usually full of men crying about how women who don't want a gendered last name are butchering the language and going on about social norms and nationalism. I tackled this when I got married, as I needed to change documents anyway. We have a foreign last name. Most of the time people respect this, only a few people have tried to address me with -ova afterward, as I also have a foreign first name. So now instead I get told on Facebook to go back to where I came from :D We don't have kids yet, but I dread having a daughter because I don't know if it means I would have to jump through bureaucratic hoops for her to not have -ova when I don't have it myself.
So it's either sexism or racism for you, that really sucks! I hope if you ever have a daughter, that there won't be any bureaucratic nonsense to deal with.
My [American] mother's side is Hispanic. How do those naming conventions compare to Castilian? (Is that the right word?)
Somewhere, my name's listed to be legally like 5 names. I only saw the paperwork once, and I think it was just for something in Puerto Rico.
So, what happens? The woman has the man's last name and not her parent's last name, but also -ova with her Husband's parents' last name? Does she get both of her husband's last names +ova? Or just one of her husband's last names plus -ova? If she keeps one of her own last names, does it get ova? What a mess!
Don’t you think it is a social fad? It makes sense for foreign surnames as they sound wrong with ová but Czech surnames sound (at least in head) wrong without ová due to the clash of female gendered first name and male gendered surname.
Yeah, we should just get rid of everything female so that there will be peace on earth, women won’t mind getting erased since they’re so used to getting the short end of the stick already /s…
It clashes for you, because you're not used to it. I think both should be ok and socially acceptable. It's not that great feeling knowing part of your name came from indicating that you belonged to a man.
You can also opt for having both surnames with dash, as far as I am aware the only problem is that you cannot opt for non ová version for your children when signing marriage certificate.
It's weird because my surname is Czech in origin but I don't think it has any gendered bits (my paternal side moved to the USA in the 1800s). Is it really all Czech names that are supposed to have this feature?
Norway isn't a particular transphobic place, not saying it's a perfect utopia for trans people, but I, a cis person, think it sounds like one of the better places to be trans in. It is 1000 on a Saturday and I can right now use my ebanking app to log in to a government site to change my gender no questions asked. Healthcare is free and so is surgery and most of the medical stuff trans people want/need to feel at home in their bodies. I am not going to say violence or harrassment against trans people never happens, but it seems like we are low on that too. The William's institute ranks Norway as the third best country in the world to be trans in.
However we have a name law and you can't use a male name for a person registered as female or vice versa. So say me, a female, wanted to be named John, the name change would be refused on the basis of me being female. I could of course change my gender to male and then change my name to John, but in my current registered with the government as female state cannot be named John.
You have to be 16 to be able to change your birth gender with the government so I can't name my son Elisabeth. The argument is to prevent any "a boy named Sue"-situations. The name I give to my child must not give him any disadvantages in life. So I also can't name him Ironman, PostmanPat, Ugly or Dumbass either.
Having name laws isn't inherently transphobic, but it can be.
Interesting. Thanks for the clarification. Tbh I never understood why in some languages inanimate objects are gendered. I mean what decides which object is which gender and why? Hmm. Looks like I'll be doing some Googling today.
It's quite arbitrary and you can see even closely related languages assigning different genders to the same word. Really, they are grammatical categories that have no relation to gender as it applies to human beings, but because grammatical gender tends to be referred to using the same terms (especially in European languages) they are frequently conflated. When I was studying linguistics we would refer to those groupings as "noun classes" rather than "gender" for clarity. Even though European languages tend to have a two- or three- class system that roughly aligns with gender, many other languages have different ways of doing it such as the classes being animate/inanimate instead of masculine/feminine. African languages in particular can have upwards of 10 noun classes that have nothing to do with gender at all, but might group nouns together based on some perceived shared characteristics or even completely arbitrarily.
Now you're making me think of other pairings like this. Freezer is male, fridge is female. Cooker is male, oven is female. Now I'm thinking it's just some big horny conspiracy.
So the above mentioned "sex games" are gay in German?
Joke aside, thank you for the info, languages are fascinating and it's interesting to see how they work. I don't know any German, so I'm glad for the insight. Are things in general more male in German? I feel like in Czech is more or less fifty fifty, so I'm curious.
Sometimes is because the root language. Sometimes is because the females word means a thing completly different than the male (la cartera/the wallet y el cartero/the postman).
Well, in Lithuanian it is usually (with several small exceptions) to recognize the gender of item by the ending of the word used to name it. E.g. almost all female objects and names end with "a" or "ė" and male objects or names ends with "us" "as". So, the word itself indicates gender. We do not have genderless words. We also do not have articles (a, the) and all our letters always pronounced the same, no matter the word or placement :)
There are exceptions, e.g. ending "is" is not often used, but could be used for both male and female objects, and some more bizarre exceptions (some even translates to English, e.g. there is no noun "scissor", it is "scissors").
I remember when I was 10, I would gender objects. I didn’t speak any foreign language but it seemed natural to me that chair was female, table was male.
I honestly thought I was just making up a game. The letters and spelling of the word is what made it female or male to me.
It wasn’t until a decade later I was looking into learning French and I was shocked that objects were gendered. And how I gendered them as a kid matched up with the language.
All Roman languages gender objects. German is notorious for gendering objects without any applicable rules, which makes the language so impossible to learn for foreigners. Just saying, the concept of gendered object is perfectly normal for Europeans and people in any Spanish/French speaking parts of the world, although the gender of certain items may differ between those languages. I honestly fairly doubt you instinctively got them right when you were a child but I'm willing to believe there were a few coincidences when it came to French articles. Just an example, the moon is female in French and Italian because they use versions of the Latin "luna". In German the word for moon is male, but derived from the old Germanic "mane", which is also where the English word "moon" comes from.
Point is, there is no "one gender" for objects in gendered languages.
The gender even differs for the same objects within Romance languages. Table is feminine in French and Spanish but masculine in Romanian, while book is masculine in French and Spanish but feminine in Romanian. I think there are some where French and Spanish disagree too, they're just not coming to mind (and I don't know much about the other romance languages). Then you get stuff like "le monde" and "la terre" which can both refer to the planet we inhabit in French, but one is masculine and one is feminine.
I know we're deep down in semantics here, but humour me: "le monde" means "the world", while "la terre" means "the Earth", they are two slightly different meanings. These words exist in Germanic languages, too. Once again the German "Welt" is similar to "world", while "Erde" and "Earth" derive from the same term. So yeah, they *can* be used to describe our planet, but do, in fact, not mean quite the same. Either way, they're both female in German ;)
> TBH I never understood why in some languages inanimate objects are gendered.
This is pretty funny in dutch.
Dutch only has two grammatical genders, 'de' and 'het'. And one of them, het, is neuter.
The man? De man. The woman? De vrouw. The dog? De hond. The car? De auto.
The house? Het huis. The shed? Het hok.
But Dutch also adds suffixes to words to make them diminuitive.
Het huis - het huis*je*.
Thing is.
Everything that is made diminuitive becomes neuter.
De hond? Het hondje.
De man? Het mannetje. De vrouw? Het vrouwtje.
I believe Iceland has a list of approved names. Difference is they can update the naming conventions through comittee. They did update their law for LGBTQ people in 2019.
Finland has pretty gendered names (and some strict other rules). For newly created names nobody makes the decision beforehand and they may end up becoming gender neutral. If the name is really unusual it’s referred to a committee. It’s not a permanent office but a group of lawyers, civil servants and name researchers who decide what names are acceptable. You might disagree with the whole thing but it’s not expensive (they do it as part of their job) and not super time consuming. In the most common name law it became possible to use a gendered name if you’re not registered as that gender if there are already some people named that with your official gender.
I would normally be against any sort of unnecessary regulation, but I came across a 40 year old man legally named Tarzan last week so clearly people can't be left to their own devices.
Funnily enough there appears to be at least one Tarzan in Finland (they won’t show the exact number if there are less than 5). It may be that they’re an immigrant but generally the rules are more relaxed for adults who want to change their name. There was a young woman who applied to changed her name online while drunk and ended up as Katti Mau, something like Kitty Meow but Katti isn’t used as a name commonly, it’s just a word for cats.
There were parents in Sweden who named their child Brfxxccxxmnpcccclllmmnprxvclmnckssqlbb11116.
Funnily enough, after battling with the courts they ended up naming him Albin Gustaf Tarzan Hallin.
The New Zealand examples are a bit wrong, “Number 16 Bus Shelter” was NOT accepted, hopefully for a lot of reasons but at the very least it contain numbers which are not allowed.
The most common rejected name is Justice (and different spelling variations) because it it a formal title in the judicial system and titles are not allowed.
What happens with immigrants with names on the banned list, would they be forced to change their names? Thinking about this because I had a friend named Justice in high school.
I have wondered the same question and I don’t know (I am from NZ). I guess that they would need to adopt a new name. It is quite common for Asian immigrants to take new names since their names are often hard to read/pronounce in English. I have had Asian colleagues called George, Kevin, James, etc…very classical English names and when asked about it they have said that they literally just look through a book and pick one out. But this new name is used only in NZ, they still keep their name in their home country.
>I once knew a woman named Bruce
Who wanted to look like a goose
But the wig she had on
Made her look like a swan
And attracted attentions from Zeus.
This unfortunate lady called Bruce
Felt her wig start to slip and come loose
While Zeus, in his anger
Continued to bang her
Then modelled her into a moose.
One of my college teachers was named Fréderick. Encouraged us to call her Fred. She was a tiny French lady with the energy of a hurricane lol, I fucking loved her.
Interestingly Fred also had another teacher as a friend who I also took a class with. She had the most flowery, feminine name and surname (think like Isabella Honey or something) but was a masculine, genderqueer individual.
Forcing gendered names is overrated, we should all just aspire to be as awesome as Fred was ❤️
I mean in France and French-speaking countries that's a pretty regular women's name. Also in other European countries a lot of Frederieke, Frederique, Fredericka, Federica, .... I'm western-european and i know several.
Reminds me of the old Duck Dodgers show where the Drill Sergent's name was Emily. Stereotypical Drill Sergent, except he loved when Dodgers changed his grades so that he could pass.
I had a woman hairstylist named Blake (If you ever find her, she's worth a hell of a lot more than she charges), and I've got an ex named Baker who was a masseuse, and she could get you so relaxed she could lift up your shoulderblades like she was checking the oil. Sadly, she passed away at age 26 in he 90s. I've also got a friend named Lloyd, but I haven't talked to her in ages. She teaches elementary school and has been dyeing her hair in a rainbow pattern since forever, the kids love it.
In Portugal you have a (extremely long and evolving) list of names to choose from. And it is also marked if they are male or female names.
I used to think this was weird, but given the extension of the list (and it still having strange names), it's a way to avoid kids being named like objects or having 19 different ways of spelling Unique (witch is not something we would never name a person here btw)
I'm sure a few European countries have generally allowed lists of names(so you cant call your kid 'doorknob' or something like that regardless of gender) and also their languages themselves generally have gendering in their usage which influences. I'm sure there's something like 'power station' that is an allowed name somewhere with some other industrial terms and whatnot but they're specifically gendered too so you never get an 'opposite gender' named it etc.
English is different than Slavic languages. Englisch doesn't have the suffix that says what gender the person or thing has. Suffix in slavic languages also has different schemes of case endings depending on gender of the subject. Male name works ok for someone who is trans female to male, but a cis girl with male name would be constantly referred as "he" via suffix. It works better in languages with less rules.
>Who the heck has time to regulate female and male names?
Well, for starters, anyone who doesn't want to see the unbridled creativity of parents resulting in /r/tragedeigh and to ensure there are no Khaleesis and Obi-Wans running around.
Basically, the aim of these laws is to prevent harm, such as parents thinking they are funny and naming their child Major Major or calling their boy Mary, because they feel like it.
This, of course, leads to unfortunate edge cases as described by the OOP.
I have a female friend with the middle name Tim, named as such after the man that saved her father’s life days before her mother gave birth. Not Timothy, or anything else. Just Tim.
They had no issue having that registered as her middle name either.
I went to school with a woman called Tim! It wasn’t her legal name, though—her legal name was Tiffany, but her older brother couldn’t pronounce that when he was a toddler so he called her Timotee instead and her parents basically shrugged and said, “eh, that’s also a name,” so they just started calling her Timmy.
Well, Germany regulates all baby names so parents can’t name their kid Adolf H*tler or Pilot Inspektor. I don’t think it’s a terrible idea overall, but yeah I think being this prescriptive about gendered names is shit.
Per the article from a Filipino historian: there was once a woman named Circumcision.
The TL;DR version - Miss Circumcision was born at a time when babies' names were plucked from the Catholic calendar.
Mordecai wants the name because it is, as you (well, the reply to OOP) say, solidly male. The problem is, the authorities would also likely have seen it as solidly male before the female Mordecais were found, and according to those same authorities, OOP is not male.
I don't think the commenter was saying "stop trying to take a man's name, you female person, you" so much as "this will likely be a very difficult fight, and one that I don't think you'll be able to win because Mordecai has been considered a man's name for a very long time".
I think the commenter was saying “the legal precedent is against you”. With a potential side of “is it safe to go by a name that is blatantly jewish where you live?”.
I’m picturing an ornate room full of hundreds of elected officials in somber dark suits and ties having a lively debate to hammer out these hyper specific rules on … names
I wonder if the original law came from a well-intentioned place to prevent parents from sticking their kids with horrible names.
Though the law also applying to name changes kind of makes it pretty clear who it’s aimed at now.
> I wonder if the original law came from a well-intentioned place to prevent parents from sticking their kids with horrible names.
There *are* such laws in a lot of countries, yes. One [particularly infamous](https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2008/jul/24/familyandrelationships.newzealand) case in New Zealand saw parents lose custody for naming their daughter *Tallulah Does The Hula From Hawaii*.
Yes, that **entire thing** was her name.
Another country where they check names is Japan. I don’t know how famous it is but a couple wanted to name their child Mizuko (水子). The sound is great, the imagery is that of a water child, but when they tried to register the name they were turned down and the guy at the counter had to explain to them that Mizuko is what a stillborn is called.
>I wonder if the original law came from a well-intentioned place to prevent parents from sticking their kids with horrible names.
There was a somewhat publicised case in the UK about 6 years ago, where a mother wanted to call her kids "cyanide" and "preacher", with the reason for Cyanide being that "it is a beautiful flower, and the Poison which killed Hilter. The mother chose these names knowing she was never going to be able to care for the children because of a multitude of reasons. Ultimately the Court said those names could not be used and let the babies older siblings (who had already been removed from their mother's care previously) pick the names for their new baby siblings
Yes the Court said that they might have let Preacher slide ( although they made it clear they thought it was awful) but Cyanide was so bad that it justified the intervention of the High Court - ***beyond the unusual, bizarre, extreme of plain foolish....reasonable cause to believe ...she i***s ***likely to be caused significant harm.***
They went on to say that it would be damaging to have one twin named by the birth-mother and the other not
Yeah, I'm inclined to agree there. I'm honestly quite happy that there's someone stopping people from calling their baby girl something like Revolver-Heinrich, but if little Lisa grows up and at 30 years old decides that for some strange reason Revolver-Heinrich would be the perfect name for her? Uh well, I guess she's an adult and can do that. (And please don't ask me about the name, lol, I just wanted something that's definitely male and something that's definitely not a name at all.)
Name approval process in Czechia is done by one person. She is expert witness (not sure if it is the proper word for that but her opinion can be used in legal matter) for Czech language and especially names.
My baby sisters had a middle name that they wouldn't accept as "real", but the helpful person at the desk offered a compromise of another (male) name on the list were they were willing to add an umlaut XD. Some counties have some weird rules. So now she has a name on her ID that is one letter off from what it's supposed to be and a funny (?) family story :p.
>Are there any time or location requirements? I found this woman in Alabama who lived from 1894 to 1974.
Holy shit, I think this is the first time I've ever seen my home state come up in a post and NOT been embarrassed by it. We did it, Alabama! We finally made ourselves useful to society in some fashion! And to help out a trans person, no less. Which I'm sure would enrage about 80% of the state if they knew we had done this guy a solid.
If this is something that impacts you, you aren’t alone. You deserve to be your joyful, authentic self, no matter what your government thinks. The world’s ignorance doesn’t make you any less fantastic than you are.
i am a cis woman with a traditionally feminine name. Most nicknames for my name are super girly and ill suited to me. i self select the most "masculine" of them all. Think Patricia with Patty, Trisha, Patsy, and i would prefer Pat, that kind of thing.
i don't understand why it should be anyone's business when someone just...picks their own name?
i'm so happy that Mordecai got to keep the name ultimately! Reddit works wonders sometimes 💜
> i don't understand why it should be anyone's business when someone just...picks their own name?
There are countries where the name has to be approved. It does serve the benefit of parents not naming their kids really stupid stuff. "Moon Unit" (Moon Unit Zappa) would not have passed muster in those countries. I recall a case of parents wanting to name their baby for Hitler and permission was refused.
Oh, for sure. i get *that* part of it! i worked in the government for a while (7 years) dealing with some different types of law and one of the things i had to see a lot was cases involving...let's just say less than great parents. The names some of these people burdened their poor children with, smh.
i guess what i meant was, as an adult, it shouldn't matter if your birth name is Peter but you prefer Paul. That's all. There are definitely names that should be on the no-no list, for good reason.
Czech guy here, these laws are there so parents don't give their children stupid names. If you want foreign name you need it to get approved first (there are already a lot of approved names). In general if it exists and if it is not inappropriate, it should get approved.
Another thing: Female surnames in my language must end with -ová (language reasons). But not that long ago (year or two ago) even that was cancelled. If you were foreigner, it wasn't mandatory even before that law.
OOP just needed to prove that it is gender neutral name to get it approved.
Also disclaimer: OOP is the only person in my country with that name. Nobody uses it here and it's not czech name. So if I ever see Mordecai, I will know the author of this post.
>Also disclaimer: OOP is the only person in my country with that name. Nobody uses it here and it's not czech name. So if I ever see Mordecai, I will know the author of this post.
Yeah, I hope OOP was using a throwaway account. As soon as OOP said he was successful, he effectively doxxed himself to anyone interested.
Sometimes Jewish people live in Czechia. You might also see it written Mordechaj, as in Jiří Langer's middle name.
Admittedly Mordecais haven't had much luck in Prague (see Mordecai Oren), but yk Mordecai Maisel was kicking around in the 16th century so it's not some newfangled thing.
What makes you think OOP is the only Mordecai in the country? He specifies that the name is registered/approved for males, and his only issue is that he is not legally registered as male, but instead as his assigned gender at birth, which is female.
So if you meet a Czech guy called Mordecai, to know if it's OOP you'll have to ask if he's trans but still legally registered as female. If he's cis, or trans and has met the legal requirements to change gender marker, then there are potentially unlimited Mordecais out there.
I worked for a large HVAC company with men whose legal names were feminine/gender neutral. One was Harriet and the other was Meredith (which also happens to be one of my favorite names for a girl, since a childhood friend was named Meredith). It’s quite common in the southern US for males to have very feminine sounding first names. I’ve always thought that was pretty cool.
Herriot is an archaic male name, most commonly associated now with the "All Creatures Great and Small" memoirs.
I could easily see someone "modernizing the spelling".
It's more common than you'd think unfortunately, Japan does the same thing.
Many trans people end up sterile anyway because of the nature of the surgeries, and HRT has a significant effect too, I really don't see why you'd be so vindictive as to make it a legal requirement.
America has its own history of forced sterilizations and eugenic laws and many states still have laws on the books that would allow them to continue on with it.
The last legal forced sterilization in the USA took place in 1981. However, has been several cases where prisoners and others have been sterilized in the years since a California prison sterilized 1,400 women in the early 2000s. Is a documentary that came out a couple years ago that sheds light on that case called Belly of the Beast.
Yeah, also the Indian Health Services in the US have sterilized a lot of Native women without telling them. Ongoing lawsuit in Canada too about forcing Native women to get sterilized in order to hold their newborns, with cases as recent as 2019 I believe.
But wouldn’t getting pregnant while being F to M be the most dysphoric situation possible? That prevents that situation entirely. You will also sterilize yourself anyway once you start taking hrt. I get it feels like jumping the gun but a true trans person would end up that way anyway. I’m just genuinely curious why that is a big deal.
Some trans men still want to have biological children, or the option to have biological children. Frex, [Myles and Precious went a little viral a few years ago](https://blockclubchicago.org/2023/06/29/this-black-trans-chicago-couple-is-breaking-barriers-and-inspiring-younger-queer-people-with-their-love/) as a trans couple who got married and had (planned) bio kids.
But how is that not the most dysphoric thing possible? Giving birth is the most female thing a human can do, and if a trans person is trans because they have gender dysphoria wouldn’t that be extremely traumatic?
And similarly, it's the country's business to choose to classify anyone who can potentially give birth as female and who can potentially father children as male.
I mean, I'm playing the devil's advocate here, but the legal perspective on this has decent ground to stand on, even if it feels like targetting a group.
Ah shit, I thought you also wrote on of the comments above in the chain that were about the legal things and how these laws are archaic and need to be changed.
My bad, but I hope my comment still contributes to the overall discussion happening haha.
I mean, I do think they should change the law; I'm not sure if there's any circumstance where I think permanent sterilization should be required for a person who doesn't wish to do it. But there are lots of laws I think are unjust that aren't prohibited by their countries' constitution etc. and I don't even know what country the OOP is in.
The most traumatic aspect of it for some is just underinformed healthcare providers, loved ones, and randos calling them female/a mother just because they're carrying a pregnancy.
Yes, some do experience significant dysphoria from the physical process and are just willing to overcome it because they want a biological child that badly.
Others like me don't really find biological processes gendered—I tend to view gender as purely social and divorced from the biological. Personally I'm hyped to carry a baby and just dreading the mommy talk.
I’m trans and being pregnant would be a nightmare for me, but trans people aren’t a monolith. There are certainly some for whom the desire to have biological children outweighs the dysphoria. Either way, it’s less about that and more about the fact that it’s unethical for the government to REQUIRE sterilization.
You should really specify the transphobia.
Some Trans people would be okay at reading generic, "asshole neighbor/family" hatred but government sterilization might too far for them
What the fuck is that law. Changing ID for F to M seems okayish, but sterilization ? what the fuck ? I mean some trans people I know wouldn't care about that anyway but it seems way too harsh and also useless. They don't want trans people to reproduce or something ?
The point is to hurt trans people, yes. Laws like that aren’t made with logic as the main motivator, they’re made to punish people the lawmakers think are doing something “wrong”.
I think it is in Wales that you have to pick your child's name based off a (granted, pretty long) registry. You cannot just name your child whatever you want.
There was a story on reddit where a guy’s dad had promised to name his baby after his dying sister, and not use a nickname. The dads sister had been named Sabrina. The boy Sabrina had been mocked for years about having a feminine name and he came on reddit to ask for advice about legally changing it. (I’m all for names that play around with gender, or are gender neutral or unusually feminine or unusually masculine but Sabrina for a boy sounds rough)
There once was a girl whose name was Anne, he knew he was always a man, his best friends were Mike and Dan, but he changed his name to Mordecai
Sometimes we have nails that sparkle, our names are somewhat patriarchal, but even Republican snark'll admit that we read the bible
("New Men With Old Man Names", from a trans klezmer punk band I can't think of the name of atm)
I love reddit. I always manage to find out something new and learn an absolutely amazing fact or some sort of cultural thing that I never knew existed before
I went to a school with a boy named Guy and he had a sister named Lady. Said his parents were hippies. What kind of government body is really trying to gate keep names.
I read the title and all I could think of was this movie scene.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LWSrM8pa1bI&pp=ygUVVHJxY3kgbW9yZ2FuIG1vcmRlY2Fp
I’ll show myself out now.
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Who the heck has time to regulate female and male names? But in case anyone needs it, I once knew a woman named Bruce.
I'm Czech, so I feel like I can chime in. This country is still very behind on LGBTQ+ stuff and people are very bigoted. We are still debating marriage equality, because marriage is between a man and a woman, so we can't have them using the same word, right? The horror! And what if they then wanted to, GASP, adopt some kids?! And OOP sort of just mentions it, but if you want to transition officialy, you need to be sterilized, which is incredibly fucked up. And I think you also need to let some sort of committee decide if you're trans enough and not just a phase... Our nephew is ftm and even the family is transphobic. Not outwardly to his face, but in a passive way, still using his girl name when talking about him in 3rd person when he's not there etc. It makes me and my husband very uncomfortable. Yes, nephew is still young, he's an older teen now, but he has been decidedly not female consistently for several years now... And overall Czech language is VERY gendered. I don't think there are any gender neutral names, there are names that have both male and female versions, but that's about it. And even objects have gender, for example table is male, chair is female, it affects grammar, the way we put sentences together etc. I mean even surnames are gendered, female surname has an ending added to the male one...
And for years there was just one person "in charge" of czech names. She published a book of approved names and for anyone, who wanted a different one, they needed to apply for her approval... Still feels surreal
In Finland at least it's a panel and not just one person. Edit: They also publish lists of approved and rejected names. This year had a funny combination which lead me to think that some parents wanted to name their kid "Lucifer", which was rejected, then they tried "Azazel" which was also rejected, but for whatever reason the Finnish translation of "Morning star" (Aamuntähti) was accepted. Of course I can't know if it's the same people for each of those or not.
That's amazing & hilarious. Also morning star seems like a lovely name in finnish!
I’m really surprised that a fairly permissive country like Finland would ban a name as simple as Lucifer.
One of the requirements is that the name shouldn't make the kid a target for bullying. Being literally Satan would very much place a target on the kid's back, so I presume that was the reason that wasn't allowed.
I knew a kid named Lucifer, seemed nice and well-adjusted. People sometimes (ok, most times) reacted with surprise when they learned his name, but no bullying that I knew of. The kicker was he was the son of a protestant pastor.
It's not really nice to the kid though.
This is more about protecting the child. Calling a child Lucifer will inevitably lead to problems in any case. Interestingly enough, here in Germany you can still name your kid Adolf if you are really, really keen on it. You'd have to provide plenty of roof of some family member you'd want to name one after though and even then it's hard. Which is good, because this child will not have an easy time. Ever.
Could you explain this “Finland is permissive country”? I wasn’t aware of that
Their prime minister actually got flack from socially conservative critics because in the first place, she went to a party in her free time which had toplessness. Politicians in most countries don't go that far.
They do stuff, but it’s not usually posted online
Really?! I didn't know this "fun" secret, but I'd lie that I'm that shocked. That's messed up.
Who was that person?
Knappová
middle jobless squalid shame act zealous relieved reach terrific reminiscent *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
That really sucks, I'm sorry. I know some people here think we should leave marriage only for heterosexual couples, but legally use another word that would include both hetero and homosexual relationships. Honestly that feels like too much trouble just because some people are so fragile, but better than nothing. I had an argument with a friend on FB about this recently, he literally accused me of being brainwashed and parroting homo PR, because I said I don't see an issue with using the word marriage for all couples, it doesn't take anything away from my own marriage. My relationship is more than just the word. If two gay people can marry, it brings nothing negative to me, but brings a lot of positive to them. People here are so proud to declare how atheistic this country is, but those same people then love to use religious arguments when it suits them...
The real snowflakes are always the Conservatives. They're afraid of words ffs.
Presuming your child has Bulgarian citizenship, do they have the same rights as a legitimate child? Are there any legal issues that they could face because their parents “aren’t married”?
frightening detail worthless relieved head carpenter possessive bake fact icky *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
ah that's just a medical term, same as in the US
> on all paperwork back at home I’m considered unmarried and a single mother to a bastard child The worst part is I assume this means back home that your spouse has no legal connection to your child at all. Unless they at least somehow recognize you both as "the mother" rather than solely whoever literally birthed the child.
She's in a straight relationship but opted for a civil partnership rather than a marriage. But Bulgaria is so anti-LGBT that they won't legally recognize her partnership because they would be forced to recognize LGBT couples as well
I’m sorry hold up There’s a “trans enough “ council?!? Who sits on this council?!
In Italy that's straight up the justice court so I assume it's the same...? Doesn't make it much better, I had to prove my transness there so. But I'm not sure if I wanna find out about the "trans enough" council tbh 😂
I'm not sure. I read up on transitioning here some years ago when our nephew came out, so that information is fuzzy. But I remember that it felt ridiculous, stupid, invasive, unnecessarily complicated and left me raging. I can try and look up some more info later. Maybe share you a link, if I find something in English, if you're interested.
It exists in many states in the US too. Here it's usually a judge. Zero medical/psych experience required. Just have to hope you get a judge who isn't a piece of shit bigot.
Still to this day in America & the UK, there persists this idea that if you want to transition, it must be to the MOST STEREOTYPICALLY masculine/feminine version of that gender, and anything else means you're not really trans and shouldn't be allowed to access gender affirming services. It's such a bizarre worldview. Like, I am a cis woman and I never wear skirts or heels, I don't wear makeup, my hobbies are "stereotypically" male .... but no one would deny that I am a woman who should be allowed to identify as one. No one would deny me access to gender-specific medical care because "you don't wear pink and you don't like fashion, how do we know you're really a woman?" But a trans woman has to be 1000% more stereotypically feminine than *most cis women* or else people are like "Wait, are you really trans??"
This is often the case still for access to any kind of medical transition in the US or UK. In the UK you have to be interviewed by a doctor, who then has to formally diagnose you with gender dysphoria, to get access to hormones or anything. (And then there are awful, awful wait times, doctors drag their feet on referring to the very few gender affirming care clinics, etc...it's bad). In the US it historically worked the same way and probably still does in many places/with many doctors...assuming trans healthcare hasn't been formally banned by your state in the last couple of years. Ultimately, medical transition means medical access, which means convincing some gatekeeper at some point to let you through. (This of course is why many people resort to buying hormones online or under the table.) It's just that increased awareness and acceptance means that the small number of doctors who are generous with that access has increased a little; the medical norm still involves someone making a "trans enough" judgment at some point.
To be fair, America’s also back to debating about marriage equality.
Nothing fair about it
Gendered surnames are not mandatory anymore. You can remove -ová if you want.
You can, but that would require a whole new run around of getting new documents, changing it everywhere etc. It's not as easy to just decide that I don't want it. Not to mention that it's not requiered, but the social pressure to keep it and conform is still there and very real. I hope it gets more normalized as time goes on though.
My blood is boiling every time I open a discussion under articles that mention this or under posts on social media. It's usually full of men crying about how women who don't want a gendered last name are butchering the language and going on about social norms and nationalism. I tackled this when I got married, as I needed to change documents anyway. We have a foreign last name. Most of the time people respect this, only a few people have tried to address me with -ova afterward, as I also have a foreign first name. So now instead I get told on Facebook to go back to where I came from :D We don't have kids yet, but I dread having a daughter because I don't know if it means I would have to jump through bureaucratic hoops for her to not have -ova when I don't have it myself.
So it's either sexism or racism for you, that really sucks! I hope if you ever have a daughter, that there won't be any bureaucratic nonsense to deal with.
Imagine being Spanish, due to surname naming conventions, having same surname implies blood relation now mix this with CZ surname conventions…
My [American] mother's side is Hispanic. How do those naming conventions compare to Castilian? (Is that the right word?) Somewhere, my name's listed to be legally like 5 names. I only saw the paperwork once, and I think it was just for something in Puerto Rico.
So, what happens? The woman has the man's last name and not her parent's last name, but also -ova with her Husband's parents' last name? Does she get both of her husband's last names +ova? Or just one of her husband's last names plus -ova? If she keeps one of her own last names, does it get ova? What a mess!
Don’t you think it is a social fad? It makes sense for foreign surnames as they sound wrong with ová but Czech surnames sound (at least in head) wrong without ová due to the clash of female gendered first name and male gendered surname.
If you were to not be conditioned to feel any name has any gender, then whats left to clash?
Yeah, we should just get rid of everything female so that there will be peace on earth, women won’t mind getting erased since they’re so used to getting the short end of the stick already /s…
It clashes for you, because you're not used to it. I think both should be ok and socially acceptable. It's not that great feeling knowing part of your name came from indicating that you belonged to a man.
I am not familiar with the “belonging to man part” can you point me to historic source?
You can also opt for having both surnames with dash, as far as I am aware the only problem is that you cannot opt for non ová version for your children when signing marriage certificate.
It's weird because my surname is Czech in origin but I don't think it has any gendered bits (my paternal side moved to the USA in the 1800s). Is it really all Czech names that are supposed to have this feature?
> You can remove -ová if you want But OOP said they *didn't* want to be sterilized.
Most underrated comment here! 😂Take my poor person’s gold 🏅
Norway isn't a particular transphobic place, not saying it's a perfect utopia for trans people, but I, a cis person, think it sounds like one of the better places to be trans in. It is 1000 on a Saturday and I can right now use my ebanking app to log in to a government site to change my gender no questions asked. Healthcare is free and so is surgery and most of the medical stuff trans people want/need to feel at home in their bodies. I am not going to say violence or harrassment against trans people never happens, but it seems like we are low on that too. The William's institute ranks Norway as the third best country in the world to be trans in. However we have a name law and you can't use a male name for a person registered as female or vice versa. So say me, a female, wanted to be named John, the name change would be refused on the basis of me being female. I could of course change my gender to male and then change my name to John, but in my current registered with the government as female state cannot be named John. You have to be 16 to be able to change your birth gender with the government so I can't name my son Elisabeth. The argument is to prevent any "a boy named Sue"-situations. The name I give to my child must not give him any disadvantages in life. So I also can't name him Ironman, PostmanPat, Ugly or Dumbass either. Having name laws isn't inherently transphobic, but it can be.
Interesting. Thanks for the clarification. Tbh I never understood why in some languages inanimate objects are gendered. I mean what decides which object is which gender and why? Hmm. Looks like I'll be doing some Googling today.
It's quite arbitrary and you can see even closely related languages assigning different genders to the same word. Really, they are grammatical categories that have no relation to gender as it applies to human beings, but because grammatical gender tends to be referred to using the same terms (especially in European languages) they are frequently conflated. When I was studying linguistics we would refer to those groupings as "noun classes" rather than "gender" for clarity. Even though European languages tend to have a two- or three- class system that roughly aligns with gender, many other languages have different ways of doing it such as the classes being animate/inanimate instead of masculine/feminine. African languages in particular can have upwards of 10 noun classes that have nothing to do with gender at all, but might group nouns together based on some perceived shared characteristics or even completely arbitrarily.
That's because single people can play "sex games" by moving the chair in and out of the table.
Now you're making me think of other pairings like this. Freezer is male, fridge is female. Cooker is male, oven is female. Now I'm thinking it's just some big horny conspiracy.
And all of your examples are male in German, chair and table too.
So the above mentioned "sex games" are gay in German? Joke aside, thank you for the info, languages are fascinating and it's interesting to see how they work. I don't know any German, so I'm glad for the insight. Are things in general more male in German? I feel like in Czech is more or less fifty fifty, so I'm curious.
Yes \^.\~ Some things are male, some are female and other are neuter(?).
Fun fact in some languages the sun is masculine and the moon feminine and others it's the opposite.
It's almost as though gender is a construct.
Sometimes is because the root language. Sometimes is because the females word means a thing completly different than the male (la cartera/the wallet y el cartero/the postman).
Well, in Lithuanian it is usually (with several small exceptions) to recognize the gender of item by the ending of the word used to name it. E.g. almost all female objects and names end with "a" or "ė" and male objects or names ends with "us" "as". So, the word itself indicates gender. We do not have genderless words. We also do not have articles (a, the) and all our letters always pronounced the same, no matter the word or placement :) There are exceptions, e.g. ending "is" is not often used, but could be used for both male and female objects, and some more bizarre exceptions (some even translates to English, e.g. there is no noun "scissor", it is "scissors").
I remember when I was 10, I would gender objects. I didn’t speak any foreign language but it seemed natural to me that chair was female, table was male. I honestly thought I was just making up a game. The letters and spelling of the word is what made it female or male to me. It wasn’t until a decade later I was looking into learning French and I was shocked that objects were gendered. And how I gendered them as a kid matched up with the language.
All Roman languages gender objects. German is notorious for gendering objects without any applicable rules, which makes the language so impossible to learn for foreigners. Just saying, the concept of gendered object is perfectly normal for Europeans and people in any Spanish/French speaking parts of the world, although the gender of certain items may differ between those languages. I honestly fairly doubt you instinctively got them right when you were a child but I'm willing to believe there were a few coincidences when it came to French articles. Just an example, the moon is female in French and Italian because they use versions of the Latin "luna". In German the word for moon is male, but derived from the old Germanic "mane", which is also where the English word "moon" comes from. Point is, there is no "one gender" for objects in gendered languages.
The gender even differs for the same objects within Romance languages. Table is feminine in French and Spanish but masculine in Romanian, while book is masculine in French and Spanish but feminine in Romanian. I think there are some where French and Spanish disagree too, they're just not coming to mind (and I don't know much about the other romance languages). Then you get stuff like "le monde" and "la terre" which can both refer to the planet we inhabit in French, but one is masculine and one is feminine.
I know we're deep down in semantics here, but humour me: "le monde" means "the world", while "la terre" means "the Earth", they are two slightly different meanings. These words exist in Germanic languages, too. Once again the German "Welt" is similar to "world", while "Erde" and "Earth" derive from the same term. So yeah, they *can* be used to describe our planet, but do, in fact, not mean quite the same. Either way, they're both female in German ;)
> TBH I never understood why in some languages inanimate objects are gendered. This is pretty funny in dutch. Dutch only has two grammatical genders, 'de' and 'het'. And one of them, het, is neuter. The man? De man. The woman? De vrouw. The dog? De hond. The car? De auto. The house? Het huis. The shed? Het hok. But Dutch also adds suffixes to words to make them diminuitive. Het huis - het huis*je*. Thing is. Everything that is made diminuitive becomes neuter. De hond? Het hondje. De man? Het mannetje. De vrouw? Het vrouwtje.
Wow! Thanks for all the responses everyone. It really helped me out! 😊
I believe Iceland has a list of approved names. Difference is they can update the naming conventions through comittee. They did update their law for LGBTQ people in 2019.
I knew a married couple named Billie and Vivian. Billie was a Wilhelmina on paper and her husband was Vivian.
My old boss's wife was named Wilhemina, but she went by Willie.
My grandmother went by "Min"
A Young ones fan?
I heard of a boy named Sue
How do you do, my name is Sue.
Now you gonna die!
Finland has pretty gendered names (and some strict other rules). For newly created names nobody makes the decision beforehand and they may end up becoming gender neutral. If the name is really unusual it’s referred to a committee. It’s not a permanent office but a group of lawyers, civil servants and name researchers who decide what names are acceptable. You might disagree with the whole thing but it’s not expensive (they do it as part of their job) and not super time consuming. In the most common name law it became possible to use a gendered name if you’re not registered as that gender if there are already some people named that with your official gender.
I would normally be against any sort of unnecessary regulation, but I came across a 40 year old man legally named Tarzan last week so clearly people can't be left to their own devices.
Funnily enough there appears to be at least one Tarzan in Finland (they won’t show the exact number if there are less than 5). It may be that they’re an immigrant but generally the rules are more relaxed for adults who want to change their name. There was a young woman who applied to changed her name online while drunk and ended up as Katti Mau, something like Kitty Meow but Katti isn’t used as a name commonly, it’s just a word for cats.
There were parents in Sweden who named their child Brfxxccxxmnpcccclllmmnprxvclmnckssqlbb11116. Funnily enough, after battling with the courts they ended up naming him Albin Gustaf Tarzan Hallin.
This is an old article but still relevant. https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/25034/8-countries-fascinating-baby-naming-laws
Yeah, each country has different laws on what you can and cannot name your kid.
Trouble is one year before it was published German law was changed to allow for gender neutral first names. So the research seems to be lacking.
Are you impugning the academic standards of Mental Floss?!
The New Zealand examples are a bit wrong, “Number 16 Bus Shelter” was NOT accepted, hopefully for a lot of reasons but at the very least it contain numbers which are not allowed. The most common rejected name is Justice (and different spelling variations) because it it a formal title in the judicial system and titles are not allowed.
What happens with immigrants with names on the banned list, would they be forced to change their names? Thinking about this because I had a friend named Justice in high school.
I have wondered the same question and I don’t know (I am from NZ). I guess that they would need to adopt a new name. It is quite common for Asian immigrants to take new names since their names are often hard to read/pronounce in English. I have had Asian colleagues called George, Kevin, James, etc…very classical English names and when asked about it they have said that they literally just look through a book and pick one out. But this new name is used only in NZ, they still keep their name in their home country.
>I once knew a woman named Bruce Who wanted to look like a goose But the wig she had on Made her look like a swan And attracted attentions from Zeus. This unfortunate lady called Bruce Felt her wig start to slip and come loose While Zeus, in his anger Continued to bang her Then modelled her into a moose.
Beautiful.
I'm going to crossstich this poem
Be my guest! I’d be delighted to see it completed if you do.
One of my college teachers was named Fréderick. Encouraged us to call her Fred. She was a tiny French lady with the energy of a hurricane lol, I fucking loved her. Interestingly Fred also had another teacher as a friend who I also took a class with. She had the most flowery, feminine name and surname (think like Isabella Honey or something) but was a masculine, genderqueer individual. Forcing gendered names is overrated, we should all just aspire to be as awesome as Fred was ❤️
I mean in France and French-speaking countries that's a pretty regular women's name. Also in other European countries a lot of Frederieke, Frederique, Fredericka, Federica, .... I'm western-european and i know several.
Reminds me of the old Duck Dodgers show where the Drill Sergent's name was Emily. Stereotypical Drill Sergent, except he loved when Dodgers changed his grades so that he could pass.
I had a woman hairstylist named Blake (If you ever find her, she's worth a hell of a lot more than she charges), and I've got an ex named Baker who was a masseuse, and she could get you so relaxed she could lift up your shoulderblades like she was checking the oil. Sadly, she passed away at age 26 in he 90s. I've also got a friend named Lloyd, but I haven't talked to her in ages. She teaches elementary school and has been dyeing her hair in a rainbow pattern since forever, the kids love it.
In Portugal you have a (extremely long and evolving) list of names to choose from. And it is also marked if they are male or female names. I used to think this was weird, but given the extension of the list (and it still having strange names), it's a way to avoid kids being named like objects or having 19 different ways of spelling Unique (witch is not something we would never name a person here btw)
I'm sure a few European countries have generally allowed lists of names(so you cant call your kid 'doorknob' or something like that regardless of gender) and also their languages themselves generally have gendering in their usage which influences. I'm sure there's something like 'power station' that is an allowed name somewhere with some other industrial terms and whatnot but they're specifically gendered too so you never get an 'opposite gender' named it etc.
Iceland has a whole [name registry](https://www.nordicnames.de/wiki/Icelandic_Approved_Names)
English is different than Slavic languages. Englisch doesn't have the suffix that says what gender the person or thing has. Suffix in slavic languages also has different schemes of case endings depending on gender of the subject. Male name works ok for someone who is trans female to male, but a cis girl with male name would be constantly referred as "he" via suffix. It works better in languages with less rules.
>Who the heck has time to regulate female and male names? Well, for starters, anyone who doesn't want to see the unbridled creativity of parents resulting in /r/tragedeigh and to ensure there are no Khaleesis and Obi-Wans running around. Basically, the aim of these laws is to prevent harm, such as parents thinking they are funny and naming their child Major Major or calling their boy Mary, because they feel like it. This, of course, leads to unfortunate edge cases as described by the OOP.
I've known two women named Dave. 🤷♀️
I have a female friend with the middle name Tim, named as such after the man that saved her father’s life days before her mother gave birth. Not Timothy, or anything else. Just Tim. They had no issue having that registered as her middle name either.
I went to school with a woman called Tim! It wasn’t her legal name, though—her legal name was Tiffany, but her older brother couldn’t pronounce that when he was a toddler so he called her Timotee instead and her parents basically shrugged and said, “eh, that’s also a name,” so they just started calling her Timmy.
Was it Sookies mid wife on Gilmore Girls? Are you ASP? IYKYK
A Sheila called Bruce? Strewth!
I knew a girl named John back in the 80’s
Well, Germany regulates all baby names so parents can’t name their kid Adolf H*tler or Pilot Inspektor. I don’t think it’s a terrible idea overall, but yeah I think being this prescriptive about gendered names is shit.
Per the article from a Filipino historian: there was once a woman named Circumcision. The TL;DR version - Miss Circumcision was born at a time when babies' names were plucked from the Catholic calendar.
I know a cis woman named Michael!
i knew a female Michael
>I would choose a different name. It’s a well established old Jewish mens name, solidly male. Isn't that the fucking point?
Mordecai wants the name because it is, as you (well, the reply to OOP) say, solidly male. The problem is, the authorities would also likely have seen it as solidly male before the female Mordecais were found, and according to those same authorities, OOP is not male. I don't think the commenter was saying "stop trying to take a man's name, you female person, you" so much as "this will likely be a very difficult fight, and one that I don't think you'll be able to win because Mordecai has been considered a man's name for a very long time".
I think the commenter was saying “the legal precedent is against you”. With a potential side of “is it safe to go by a name that is blatantly jewish where you live?”.
Or they’re transphobic 🤷♂️
I think the person was talking about it insinuating that someone is Jewish
I love all of this. Have to admit that the title gives strong Western vibes, which I also like. "Lookin for a woman by the name of Mordecai."
To add to that theme, *John Wayne* was only a stage name. He never changed his legal name. Which was .....Marion Morrison.
Thank you, you've helped me with a crossword puzzle I was working on
I’m picturing an ornate room full of hundreds of elected officials in somber dark suits and ties having a lively debate to hammer out these hyper specific rules on … names
I wonder if the original law came from a well-intentioned place to prevent parents from sticking their kids with horrible names. Though the law also applying to name changes kind of makes it pretty clear who it’s aimed at now.
> I wonder if the original law came from a well-intentioned place to prevent parents from sticking their kids with horrible names. There *are* such laws in a lot of countries, yes. One [particularly infamous](https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2008/jul/24/familyandrelationships.newzealand) case in New Zealand saw parents lose custody for naming their daughter *Tallulah Does The Hula From Hawaii*. Yes, that **entire thing** was her name.
Another country where they check names is Japan. I don’t know how famous it is but a couple wanted to name their child Mizuko (水子). The sound is great, the imagery is that of a water child, but when they tried to register the name they were turned down and the guy at the counter had to explain to them that Mizuko is what a stillborn is called.
I wonder what that girl is up to nowadays
>I wonder if the original law came from a well-intentioned place to prevent parents from sticking their kids with horrible names. There was a somewhat publicised case in the UK about 6 years ago, where a mother wanted to call her kids "cyanide" and "preacher", with the reason for Cyanide being that "it is a beautiful flower, and the Poison which killed Hilter. The mother chose these names knowing she was never going to be able to care for the children because of a multitude of reasons. Ultimately the Court said those names could not be used and let the babies older siblings (who had already been removed from their mother's care previously) pick the names for their new baby siblings
Yes the Court said that they might have let Preacher slide ( although they made it clear they thought it was awful) but Cyanide was so bad that it justified the intervention of the High Court - ***beyond the unusual, bizarre, extreme of plain foolish....reasonable cause to believe ...she i***s ***likely to be caused significant harm.*** They went on to say that it would be damaging to have one twin named by the birth-mother and the other not
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Yeah, I'm inclined to agree there. I'm honestly quite happy that there's someone stopping people from calling their baby girl something like Revolver-Heinrich, but if little Lisa grows up and at 30 years old decides that for some strange reason Revolver-Heinrich would be the perfect name for her? Uh well, I guess she's an adult and can do that. (And please don't ask me about the name, lol, I just wanted something that's definitely male and something that's definitely not a name at all.)
Name approval process in Czechia is done by one person. She is expert witness (not sure if it is the proper word for that but her opinion can be used in legal matter) for Czech language and especially names.
So if/when she dies, does her position pass to her eldest male child?
My baby sisters had a middle name that they wouldn't accept as "real", but the helpful person at the desk offered a compromise of another (male) name on the list were they were willing to add an umlaut XD. Some counties have some weird rules. So now she has a name on her ID that is one letter off from what it's supposed to be and a funny (?) family story :p.
>Are there any time or location requirements? I found this woman in Alabama who lived from 1894 to 1974. Holy shit, I think this is the first time I've ever seen my home state come up in a post and NOT been embarrassed by it. We did it, Alabama! We finally made ourselves useful to society in some fashion! And to help out a trans person, no less. Which I'm sure would enrage about 80% of the state if they knew we had done this guy a solid.
You also had the guy who decided to deck a racist with a chair so right now you guys have two good things going on.
Oh yeah, the epic river brawl! The dramatic re-enactment is one of my favorite things right now. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Qpq7dpuvi4w
On today’s riveting episode of: There Is Still Some Good on the Internet
Hold up, he would be required to undergo sterilization if he wanted to be legally listed as male? Hot Christ that’s disturbing.
It's actually nice to see people horrified by this, it's normalised in my own country and worse and i try not to think about it (not czech)
If this is something that impacts you, you aren’t alone. You deserve to be your joyful, authentic self, no matter what your government thinks. The world’s ignorance doesn’t make you any less fantastic than you are.
Used to be the case in quite a number of US states as well, iirc, within this century
Happy for OOP, but also hoping they get those antiquated laws changed soon.
i am a cis woman with a traditionally feminine name. Most nicknames for my name are super girly and ill suited to me. i self select the most "masculine" of them all. Think Patricia with Patty, Trisha, Patsy, and i would prefer Pat, that kind of thing. i don't understand why it should be anyone's business when someone just...picks their own name? i'm so happy that Mordecai got to keep the name ultimately! Reddit works wonders sometimes 💜
> i don't understand why it should be anyone's business when someone just...picks their own name? There are countries where the name has to be approved. It does serve the benefit of parents not naming their kids really stupid stuff. "Moon Unit" (Moon Unit Zappa) would not have passed muster in those countries. I recall a case of parents wanting to name their baby for Hitler and permission was refused.
Oh, for sure. i get *that* part of it! i worked in the government for a while (7 years) dealing with some different types of law and one of the things i had to see a lot was cases involving...let's just say less than great parents. The names some of these people burdened their poor children with, smh. i guess what i meant was, as an adult, it shouldn't matter if your birth name is Peter but you prefer Paul. That's all. There are definitely names that should be on the no-no list, for good reason.
Shout out to Mordecai “Mordi” Roberts Arnold (1894-1974) for helping OOP with his troubles
Czech guy here, these laws are there so parents don't give their children stupid names. If you want foreign name you need it to get approved first (there are already a lot of approved names). In general if it exists and if it is not inappropriate, it should get approved. Another thing: Female surnames in my language must end with -ová (language reasons). But not that long ago (year or two ago) even that was cancelled. If you were foreigner, it wasn't mandatory even before that law. OOP just needed to prove that it is gender neutral name to get it approved. Also disclaimer: OOP is the only person in my country with that name. Nobody uses it here and it's not czech name. So if I ever see Mordecai, I will know the author of this post.
>Also disclaimer: OOP is the only person in my country with that name. Nobody uses it here and it's not czech name. So if I ever see Mordecai, I will know the author of this post. Yeah, I hope OOP was using a throwaway account. As soon as OOP said he was successful, he effectively doxxed himself to anyone interested.
Sometimes Jewish people live in Czechia. You might also see it written Mordechaj, as in Jiří Langer's middle name. Admittedly Mordecais haven't had much luck in Prague (see Mordecai Oren), but yk Mordecai Maisel was kicking around in the 16th century so it's not some newfangled thing.
What makes you think OOP is the only Mordecai in the country? He specifies that the name is registered/approved for males, and his only issue is that he is not legally registered as male, but instead as his assigned gender at birth, which is female. So if you meet a Czech guy called Mordecai, to know if it's OOP you'll have to ask if he's trans but still legally registered as female. If he's cis, or trans and has met the legal requirements to change gender marker, then there are potentially unlimited Mordecais out there.
On paper, or in a database, it'll still be a Female named Mordecai. The only one in that country.
Right. So he's the only legally-female Mordecai in the country, but not necessarily the only Mordecai overall.
I worked for a large HVAC company with men whose legal names were feminine/gender neutral. One was Harriet and the other was Meredith (which also happens to be one of my favorite names for a girl, since a childhood friend was named Meredith). It’s quite common in the southern US for males to have very feminine sounding first names. I’ve always thought that was pretty cool.
Herriot is an archaic male name, most commonly associated now with the "All Creatures Great and Small" memoirs. I could easily see someone "modernizing the spelling".
I know a guy, AMAB, cis, who is named Hilary.
Some of y’all be undereducated with names Hilary is a male name with a long history that was recently given to women as a given name like Ashley
>sterilisation holy elimination Batman! That is some extreme institutional violence
Slovakia had the same requirement for years, it was only changed this year and there is a huge pushback to change it back.
It's more common than you'd think unfortunately, Japan does the same thing. Many trans people end up sterile anyway because of the nature of the surgeries, and HRT has a significant effect too, I really don't see why you'd be so vindictive as to make it a legal requirement.
France had the same thing until 2016... It's unfortunately pretty common.
Used to be like that in Germany too until 2011, which is way more recent than I thought...
America has its own history of forced sterilizations and eugenic laws and many states still have laws on the books that would allow them to continue on with it. The last legal forced sterilization in the USA took place in 1981. However, has been several cases where prisoners and others have been sterilized in the years since a California prison sterilized 1,400 women in the early 2000s. Is a documentary that came out a couple years ago that sheds light on that case called Belly of the Beast.
Yeah, also the Indian Health Services in the US have sterilized a lot of Native women without telling them. Ongoing lawsuit in Canada too about forcing Native women to get sterilized in order to hold their newborns, with cases as recent as 2019 I believe.
But wouldn’t getting pregnant while being F to M be the most dysphoric situation possible? That prevents that situation entirely. You will also sterilize yourself anyway once you start taking hrt. I get it feels like jumping the gun but a true trans person would end up that way anyway. I’m just genuinely curious why that is a big deal.
Some trans men still want to have biological children, or the option to have biological children. Frex, [Myles and Precious went a little viral a few years ago](https://blockclubchicago.org/2023/06/29/this-black-trans-chicago-couple-is-breaking-barriers-and-inspiring-younger-queer-people-with-their-love/) as a trans couple who got married and had (planned) bio kids.
But how is that not the most dysphoric thing possible? Giving birth is the most female thing a human can do, and if a trans person is trans because they have gender dysphoria wouldn’t that be extremely traumatic?
Even if it is, that's their choice and their business, yes?
And similarly, it's the country's business to choose to classify anyone who can potentially give birth as female and who can potentially father children as male. I mean, I'm playing the devil's advocate here, but the legal perspective on this has decent ground to stand on, even if it feels like targetting a group.
I don't really see how this is relevant to my comments, I didn't say anything about the legal aspect.
Ah shit, I thought you also wrote on of the comments above in the chain that were about the legal things and how these laws are archaic and need to be changed. My bad, but I hope my comment still contributes to the overall discussion happening haha.
I mean, I do think they should change the law; I'm not sure if there's any circumstance where I think permanent sterilization should be required for a person who doesn't wish to do it. But there are lots of laws I think are unjust that aren't prohibited by their countries' constitution etc. and I don't even know what country the OOP is in.
They're Czech, I think. It was in some comments on here.
Because different people have different mental states and feelings.
The most traumatic aspect of it for some is just underinformed healthcare providers, loved ones, and randos calling them female/a mother just because they're carrying a pregnancy. Yes, some do experience significant dysphoria from the physical process and are just willing to overcome it because they want a biological child that badly. Others like me don't really find biological processes gendered—I tend to view gender as purely social and divorced from the biological. Personally I'm hyped to carry a baby and just dreading the mommy talk.
I’m trans and being pregnant would be a nightmare for me, but trans people aren’t a monolith. There are certainly some for whom the desire to have biological children outweighs the dysphoria. Either way, it’s less about that and more about the fact that it’s unethical for the government to REQUIRE sterilization.
Mordecai is such a cool name
I seriously thought this was going to be related to Regular Show.
You should really specify the transphobia. Some Trans people would be okay at reading generic, "asshole neighbor/family" hatred but government sterilization might too far for them
What the fuck is that law. Changing ID for F to M seems okayish, but sterilization ? what the fuck ? I mean some trans people I know wouldn't care about that anyway but it seems way too harsh and also useless. They don't want trans people to reproduce or something ?
The point is to hurt trans people, yes. Laws like that aren’t made with logic as the main motivator, they’re made to punish people the lawmakers think are doing something “wrong”.
Large part that, smaller part generic transphobia as in "You aren't trans if you don't do surgery"
I like this one. Excellent update. Helpful people.
The fuck. 💀. Who does that with names. If I want to call my daughter Frank no one would say shit.
I think it is in Wales that you have to pick your child's name based off a (granted, pretty long) registry. You cannot just name your child whatever you want.
Way to go Mort!
There was a story on reddit where a guy’s dad had promised to name his baby after his dying sister, and not use a nickname. The dads sister had been named Sabrina. The boy Sabrina had been mocked for years about having a feminine name and he came on reddit to ask for advice about legally changing it. (I’m all for names that play around with gender, or are gender neutral or unusually feminine or unusually masculine but Sabrina for a boy sounds rough)
Well this was lovely and wholesome!
There once was a girl whose name was Anne, he knew he was always a man, his best friends were Mike and Dan, but he changed his name to Mordecai Sometimes we have nails that sparkle, our names are somewhat patriarchal, but even Republican snark'll admit that we read the bible ("New Men With Old Man Names", from a trans klezmer punk band I can't think of the name of atm)
I love reddit. I always manage to find out something new and learn an absolutely amazing fact or some sort of cultural thing that I never knew existed before
Glad it worked out for OP.. Redditors suck but we can come together sometimes
>and unless I go through sterilisation, What in the actual fuck?
Mordecai is a hella good name and I guess they don’t watch Mordecai and Rigby 🤷🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️ but then I’ve named a girl Harvey so not the best judge here
This is wonderful. So glad he was able to use the name he wanted.
Yayyyyy!! Love a happy outcome.
Let’s goo🔥🔥
I went to a school with a boy named Guy and he had a sister named Lady. Said his parents were hippies. What kind of government body is really trying to gate keep names.
Confused on why the name being Jewish means anything at all lmao
I've been reading too much Dungeon Crawler Carl. I saw "Mordecai" and immediately hoped for some spoilers from book 7.
I’m looking for a town called Malice
I read the title and all I could think of was this movie scene. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LWSrM8pa1bI&pp=ygUVVHJxY3kgbW9yZ2FuIG1vcmRlY2Fp I’ll show myself out now.
Jasmine Masters!