ILLEGAL NAMES

Diana Geddes found that French law hampered attempts to name her son

Paris I WANTED to call my son Samuel. I asked his French father what he thought of the name. `Mais ga va pas!' he exclaimed in horror. 'What do you mean "ga vas pas"?' I demanded: 'It's a pretty name; it sounds good in both French and English; and I like the story of Samuel as a little boy in the Bible talking to God.'

`Mais c'est un nom juif!' he cried. Now, my baby's father is not anti-Semitic, but he is Catholic and French, and in French Catholic circles, as he explained to me, no name from the Old Testament is accept- able because in their eyes it automatically designates the child as Jewish just as surely as calling him Mohammed would indicate that he was a Muslim.

'Well, how about David?' I said. No, that was a Jewish name too. 'But that's ridiculous,' I protested: 'My Irish Catholic brother-in-law is called David and so is the Christian patron saint of Wales.' Too bad: David, for the French, is a Jewish name. `Well, so are Mary, Jesus, Matthew, John, Peter and all the other apostles. They were all Jews.' Silence.

We went through some other possibili- ties. How about Jules? No, that was the name used to designate a boyfriend, as in 'You can watch it all night if you want to, I'm turning in.' `Tu veux emmener ton Jules avec toi ce soir?' Paul? No, 'Po-Paul' was the friendly name applied to the male sexual organ (cf. Willie). Arthur? No, that was the euphem- ism for a woman's monthly period. Andrew? That was fine in English, but Andre in French was vulgar — the name of a hairdresser. Josselin? No, that was too BCBG (`bon chic, bon genre' = 'Sloane Ranger'). Well, what about the good old French names of Marcel or Gaston? No, they were lower class.

To hell with all that, I thought, I'll give him one of my grandfather's Christian names, 'Campbell' or 'Aukland', then no one could object. Oh, yes, they could. There is a law in France, dating from 11 Germinal of the year XI of the Revolution (1 April 1803), which stipulates that babies may only receive first names featuring on various calendars (notably the calendar of Catholic saints) authorised by the revolu- tionary leaders of the day, or names of historical figures provided they were real, rather than mythical, and lived before the Middle Ages. Thus Achilles, Nestor or Vercingetorix were all right, but not Jupi- ter or Apollo.

Under French law, also dating from the Revolution, all babies must be registered under their full name with the local officier de l'etat civil, (usually the local mayor or his delegate), within three days of his or her birth, under pain of a substantial fine. The registration has to be done by the mother or father in person, or someone who attended the birth, such as the doctor or midwife. Until as recently as 1919, the new-born baby also had to be present.

It is the officier de l'etat civil who vets the proposed first names. In the case of a rejection, the parents have a right of appeal to the local public prosecutor and then, if he also refuses, to the county court.

The law exists supposedly in order to protect a child against being given a ridiculous name. However, extraordinary names like Dodoline, Porcaire, and Or- ingue are permitted for girls, and Delcolle, Injurieux, Gobdelas, Quoamal and Ynsigo for boys, simply because they feature on a list authorised nearly 200 years ago, where- as until recently traditional Breton and

Basque names were forbidden. Similarly, such names as Cornebout, Chien, Saute- mouche and Fou are allowed because they are the last names of saints, which may be used as first names, but new names like Jade or Vanille are not allowed.

Over the last couple of decades, the law has been progressively relaxed and the latest circular from the ministry of justice, dating from last September, instructs the officiers de l'etate civil to be lenient in their interpretation of the law, allowing any first name in common use within the child's family or in accordance with local, nation- al, or foreign tradition, provided it is not 'against the interests of the child'.

Even so, apparently perfectly anodine names are sometimes rejected. The county court at Dijon, for example, last year authorised a couple on appeal to call their daughter Anne-Cerise, but only on condi- tion that the name was hyphenated, Cerise on its own having been rejected by the local officier de l'etat civil and the public prosecutor, both presumably oblivious of the fact that it had already been. accepted six years earlier by a county court in another part of the country.

Other names which have recently been refused include Orlane, Prune and Man- hattan, while 'Sue-Ellen' (of Dallas fame) just scraped through at the last hurdle. Yet other English names like Kevin, Marion and William are perfectly all right and indeed are now all the rage in France. The French, accustomed to what an Englishman would find quite unacceptable levels of bureaucratic interference in their private lives, go along with the law on first names, though most think it absurd. 'It's totally arbitrary and annoying,' one friend said. 'Why shouldn't people call their child Cerise if they like? It's a pretty name.' Monique, a play-group leader, aged 43, said she found the law appalling. 'My mother, who was Breton, didn't have the right to give us Breton names, for example. Nor could we be given Polish names, although my grandfather on my father's side was Polish. I believe all that has become much easier now, though.'

Jewish names, on the other hand, have always been allowed under the law. There has always been a substantial Jewish Population in France. Indeed, the Jews arrived in ancient Gaul before the first Christians did. Today, they total some 650,000 and constitute the third largest Jewish population outside Israel after the US and USSR. Tolerated and persecuted at different times, there is still a marked threat of anti-Semitism running through French society. It is said that the French would accept a Jewish prime minister (cf. Leon Blum, Mendes-France, and Laurent Fabius); but never a Jewish president.

Is that after all why I am not allowed to call my son Samuel or David? 'Yes, partly, of course,' a Jewish French friend ex- plained. 'But there is also the legacy of war. People remember the way children were pulled out of classes by the Nazis simply because they had Jewish-sounding first names. They never want that to happen again.'

So, after fighting my way through the jungle of legal complications and pre- judice, I finally settled on the good Catho- lic names of Thomas Joseph. No one seems to mind (or. remember?) that they were both full-blooded Jews too.