Posted by VT_Syrup on 3/12/12 1:12pm
Msg #414605

Names and birth certificates

The Government Operations Committee in the Vermont Senate is considering a bill that totally revamps birth certificates. It's H. 454. A few issues notaries might find interesting is whether a suffix (Jr, III) is part of a name (this bill doesn't make it clear, but gives parents a chance to assign a suffix). Does the government have the right to force parents to name kids with the 26 letters of the English alphabet (US Representative from Indiana André Carson's name wouldn't be allowed)? Is there any difference between a given name and a first name (can Asian parents think of their family name as their first name)?

If you'd like to do some thing preventive, and maybe reduce the number of people with ID-document name mismatches, you could contact the committee chair, Jeanette White, [e-mail address]

The bill can be read at http://leg.state.vt.us/docs/2012/bills/House/H-454.pdf

Reply by FlaNotary2 on 3/12/12 1:15pm
Msg #414611

Many states no longer allow accent marks over letters

on birth certificates, as computer databases can't handle them. I think it's completely unfair.

Reply by ReneeK_MI on 3/12/12 1:32pm
Msg #414620

Ironic, never dawned on me ...

My Birth Cert includes an accent mark, my D/L does not. In the MANY, many 'legal' forms and/or notarized items I've executed in my life, it's never been a point of contention. Actually, it's rarely even noticed. I've always included it in my signature, though.

Reply by FlaNotary2 on 3/12/12 2:17pm
Msg #414637

And most people with accent marks in their names have

learned to deal with the accent mark not appearing on their ID or on official documents... even if they sign with it.

Reply by VT_Syrup on 3/12/12 1:34pm
Msg #414622

Re: Many states no longer allow accent marks over letters

A law professor at UC Davis, Carlton F. W. Larson, wrote a paper about this:

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1747858

He thinks that parents have a constitutional right to name their children whatever they want (14th amendment right to privacy and 1st amendment right to free expression) and any restriction by the government must pass "strict scrutiny", that is, the government needs a really good reason for the restriction. He thinks the fact that the government must keep track of people, and that people must communicate with each other, are good enough reasons to restrict non-latin alphabets (Chinese characters and Arabic letters are just too hard for most Americans). Extremely long names could be restricted for the same reason. But accented characters are manageable enough that there is a constitutional right to use them (says Larson).