German
In the past, German law required parents to give their child a gender-specific name. This is no longer true, since the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany held in 2008 that there is no obligation that a name has to be gender-specific, even if it is the only one. The custom to add a second name which matches the child's legal gender is no longer required. Still unisex names of German origin are rare, most of them being nicknames rather than formal names. Examples for unisex names derived from French: Pascal (sometimes as Pascale) or Simone (pronounced like Simon in German).
Read more about this topic: Unisex Name
Famous quotes containing the word german:
“Immanuel Kant lived with knowledge as with his lawfully wedded wife, slept with it in the same intellectual bed for forty years and begot an entire German race of philosophical systems.”
—Stefan Zweig (18811942)
“The German mind, may it live! Almost invisible as a mind, it finally manifests itself assertively as a conviction.”
—Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)
“I don’t want to shoot any Englishmen. I never saw one ‘til I came up here. But I suppose most of them never saw a German ‘til they came up here.”
—Maxwell Anderson (1888–1959)