Det umuliges kunst. Lovregulering af personnavne i det 21. århundrede set fra Danmark

Sammendrag

The article evaluates the impact of the Danish Personal Name law-code from 2006. The law-code was inspired by the Norwegian legislation from 2012. The new law-code has been received well by the Danes and it has had a marked effect on the frequency of most surnames. The impact on first names is hard to evaluate. Only the lists of newly approved first names are available. In total 800-900 new first names are added to the list every year. It is predicted that transgender issues will be the main a challenge for a future revision of the law. Regarding name legislation in regard to a cultural heritage aspect on name traditions, it is suggested that the Nordic countries should include standardized spelling of names as a possibility in the public sphere, so the straight-forward spelling is always acceptable, for instance in rendering Michael Lerche Nielsen as Mikael Lærke Nielsen.