In Denmark you cannot name your children anything you want. Well, you can, but the government will reject the birth paperwork if the name is too exotic or silly.
This is a good example of a fundamental difference in the perspective of Americans vs. Danes, because Americans would never accept the government having a role in something so fundamentally personal. Most Americans would consider this an outrageous violation of personal freedom.
The Danes see this quite differently. They say it’s a good thing because it protects children from being ridiculed their whole lives just because their crazy parents named them “Adonis” or “Vanity”. They also don’t really seem to understand the need to name your child something unusual in the first place, so it’s a non-issue for them.
Apparently this rule applies even if you’re from another culture. A woman at work told me that a friend of hers from Africa had a tradition in her family where you name your child after their material grandparent. The name wasn’t approved, so she was unable to name her child what she wanted, and therefore broke centuries of uninterrupted tradition in her family. That seems unnecessarily inflexible. Very much so.
I’m told that the list of approved names is actually quite comprehensive, and that it’s pretty rare that a name is rejected. But, given the fact that there are really so few names in use (I know at least five men named Søren and five women named Pernille) I suspect the list isn’t actually all that comprehensive.
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