On Wed, 7 Apr 2004, Jean-Marc Lasgouttes wrote: > But all these new fancy names are not recognized by the danish > administration, are they? Or do you mean that the Church _is_ the > administrator of the country?
There is a ministry which maintains an enumeration of "preapproved" first names. You can find it on the internet at Girls names: http://www.hum.ku.dk/navnef/godkpige.htm Boys names: http://www.hum.ku.dk/navnef/godkdren.htm The law gives you the right to change your first name to any one or more from this list. If you want to have a first name not on this list, you can apply for it, and if you can demonstrate that you have a relation to this name according to certain criteria, you might get it. Depending on whether you pay church tax or not, you can apply for such name changes at the church or at the administration (the Rådhus, which I forget the English name for). It is optional to pay church tax. The Danish state is not secular in a strict sense in the terms of legislation - for instance, by definition the Queen is a Protestant Christian. There are also problems with lack of proper Mosques in Denmark - there has not been built Mosques yet, which is a shame because that helps alienate Islam in some parts of the population. But beyond such comparatively minor things, Denmark is for all practical purposes a secular place to live, and religion is mostly a social thing: You baptise your children at the church, you marry and you are burried there. Basically, most people only go to the church at such occasions, although some might go for Christmas. Only a minority goes regularly to the church, as I guess is the same in most other European countries these days. And the same applies to the church office that handles the name changing stuff: It is not something you do every weekend, eventhough you could ;-) Best regards, Asger
