Russian State Duma adopts bill banning absurd names

Russian Legal Information Agency

MOSCOW, April 21 (RAPSI) – The State Duma adopted in the third and final reading on Friday a bill prohibiting the use of figures, symbols and obscene words in names, according to the official website of the parliament’s lower house.

The bill was submitted to the State Duma by Valentina Petrenko, member of the Federation Council, in April 2016.  The initiative was backed by the State Duma Committee on Legislation and State Building in January 2017.

The bill would prohibit registration of names containing figures, symbols, numeral adjectives or their combination, ranks, obscene words, which fail to meet the requirements of current legislation on acts of civil status.

Ban on the use of abbreviation in names was excluded from the bill by the second reading.

A child may be given double surname consisting of surnames of his or her parents. However, the surname must include not more than two words.

Current legislation gives full rein to parents in choosing names for their babies. Registry authorities are not entitled to deny registration of a child’s name because of its injuriousness, roughness, disharmony or difficulties in pronouncing, an explanatory note to the bill says.

At the same time, existing law does not include principles obliging parents to give their children only those names which do not violate their rights and interests.

The proposed bill will make it possible to ensure more efficient protection of children’s constitutional rights and statutory interests to a name.

According to the registry authorities’ statistics since 1998, Nikolay-Nikita-Nil, Christamrirados, Dolphin, Yaroslav-Lyutobor, Luka-Shchastye (Luka-Happiness), Summerset Ocean, are among the strangest boys’ names. The most unusual girls’ names registered during this period are April, Polina-Polina, Princess Daniella, Zarya-Zaryanitsa (“Dawn”), Alyosha-Kaprina, Oceana, Sophia-Solnyshko (Sophia-Sunshine).

“The biggest uproar, now over 10 years old, involves parents who named their child BOC rVF 260602, which loosely means “a biological object of the human species from the Voronin-Frolov family, born 26 June 2002.” Little BOC, as he is called, has no documents up to date because the court ruled in favor of a Moscow civil registration office that refused to register the child with this name to protect his interests,” Valentina Petrenko, member of the Federation Council, said earlier.