China court asks dad to change kid’s ‘poetic’ name

Lyu who sued police over their refusal to register the birth of his child because of her “unusual name” will have to start thinking of a new name for his daughter after the Lixia district people’s court in Jinan, capital of east China’s Shandong Province ruled that Bei Yan Yun Yi, the name he gave to his six-year-old daughter was not a legitimate name.

Chinese names are usually two or three characters long and include either the maternal or paternal family name. However, Bei Yan Yun Yi, has no given surname, which is why three public security bureau offices in Jinan refused to register her birth, Xinhua reported.

Lyu defended his daughter’s name saying that it was poetic: Bei (meaning north) was chosen because Shandong is in the north of China; Yan (wild goose) and Yun (cloud) are words frequently used in poetry; and Yi was a character from China’s first collection of poetry, the Shijing.

The name, the court said, was against social customs and ethics, and was not good for maintaining social order. Lyu filed a lawsuit against Yanshan Police on December 17, 2009, on the grounds that he had the right to choose his child’s name, and the police had not fulfilled their legal obligation to register her birth.

The Civil Law stipulates citizens are entitled to decide, use and change their names according to regulations, as long as they do not “impair the public interest of society”. A judicial interpretation of the law, passed last year, determined the surnames of offspring may differ from their parents if they use the surnames of other relatives, if they take the surname of their adopted parents or if they choose a surname that is “not against social order and custom”.

A similar case came up in 2009 after parents in east China’s Jiangxi Province named their son Zhao C, with the English letter “C” as his given name.