Family Names
A child's family name, until recently, was inherited from the father unless the father was unknown, in which case it was inherited from the mother. A recent law allows couples to choose which name they would use for all their children. Typically it is the father's surname, but parents may also opt to use a double-barrelled name, separated by a hyphen.
The ratio of the number of family names to the population is high in France, due to the fact that most surnames had many orthographic and dialectal variants (more than 40 for some) which were registered as separate names around 1880 when “family vital records booklets” were issued. According to the French Institute for Statistics INSEE, more than 1,300,000 surnames have been registered in the country between 1891 and 1990, and about 200,000 disappeared meanwhile (mainly orthographic variants). It is believed that the number of family names at any time since 1990 hovers between 1,200,000 and 800,000. However, not all family names are of French origin. According to different estimations, 50 to 80 percent of French citizens would be the bearers of rare family names (fewer than 50 bearers alive at the census time).
In France, until January 1, 2005, children were required by law to take the surname of their father. From this date, article 311-21 of the French Civil code permits parents to give their children either the name of their father, mother, or a hyphenation of both - although no more than two names can be hyphenated. In cases of disagreement, the father's name applies. This brought France into line with a 1978 declaration by the Council of Europe requiring member governments to take measures to adopt equality of rights in the transmission of family names, a measure that was echoed by the United Nations in 1979. Similar measures were adopted by Germany (1976), Sweden (1982), Denmark (1983) and Spain (1999).
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Famous quotes containing the words family and/or names:
“Our society is not a community, but merely a collection of isolated family units.”
—Valerie Solanas (b. 1940)
“Every man who has lived for fifty years has buried a whole world or even two; he has grown used to its disappearance and accustomed to the new scenery of another act: but suddenly the names and faces of a time long dead appear more and more often on his way, calling up series of shades and pictures kept somewhere, “just in case” in the endless catacombs of the memory, making him smile or sigh, and sometimes almost weep.”
—Alexander Herzen (1812–1870)