Judgment of the District Court Midden-Nederland dated September 28, 2020

Applicants are parents of a son; they share joint custody. Their son is a few weeks old and born in the Netherlands.

Both applicants are of foreign origin, resulting in the child having two nationalities, namely Italian and Greek. Since the applicants themselves do not possess Dutch nationality, their son does not have Dutch nationality either. This complicates the procedure because the civil registrar, during the birth registration, must determine which law applies to the birth (especially regarding names). Dutch law contains specific provisions indicating which law should be applied to assess a name. If a person has Dutch nationality, Dutch name law generally applies. However, in this case, the court must consider Italian and Greek law.

According to Dutch law, either Greek or Italian law applies to the determination of the child’s given names. The municipality informed the applicants that Dutch law applied to the determination of their child’s given names. The applicants want to change their son’s name for the following reasons.

The child has two given names, with the second name being a tribute to the mother. It is also a common given name in Greece, but Greek name law differs from Italian name law. As a result, the child would have different names in the Netherlands, Greece, and Italy. The applicants do not want this; the situation is comparable to the Dutch variants of ‘Pieterszoon’ and ‘Arendszoon’. The applicants conclude that their child’s name should have been spelled differently. Since they cannot rectify this properly, they want to eliminate the tribute altogether.

This is important because in Greece, the child cannot be registered with the second given name, as it is not seen as a second given name there but rather as a reference to the father. For this reason, the applicants wish to change their son’s given name so that he will only bear one name in the future. Consequently, his second given name will be eliminated. The applicants believe they made a mistake during the birth registration and want to correct this error.

The court concludes that Greek law should be applied to the request. Initially, the court would seek advice from the Hague International Legal Institute on this matter, but through its own research, it has obtained sufficient information to assess the request. The court grants the parents’ request for a change of the child’s given name.