Baby Names That Are Banned or Restricted Around the World

Why Governments Regulate First Names

In much of the world, naming a child is not a purely private act. Registrars in many countries hold a legal power to refuse a name, and the reasoning behind that power is fairly consistent wherever it exists. Officials are asked to protect children from names likely to attract ridicule, to keep civil registers legible and searchable, to prevent official titles and trademarks from being used as names, and to ensure a name can be written in the national script.

English-speaking countries sit at the permissive end of this spectrum, which is why the whole idea can come as a surprise to American, British and Australian parents.

Countries That Keep an Approved List

Iceland runs the best-known system. A personal names register lists names already accepted, and a naming committee considers applications for anything outside it. The criteria are largely linguistic: a name should be writable in the Icelandic alphabet and should take Icelandic grammatical endings properly. The most widely reported case involved a young woman registered only as "Girl" for years because her name, Blær, had been classified as masculine; she took the matter to court and won the right to use it.

Denmark maintains a list of approved names with an application route for anything else, and Portugal's civil registry publishes its own list of admissible forms. Where such registers exist they work as a default rather than an outright prohibition, since each system also provides a route for parents to apply for something new.

Registrar Discretion Instead of Lists

Germany has no official list. Instead, the local registry office decides, and may seek an opinion from a language institute in Leipzig when a case is unclear. The governing principle is the welfare of the child, which is why names associated with notorious historical figures have been refused.

France liberalised its rules in the early 1990s, replacing a narrow Napoleonic-era framework with broad parental freedom. A registrar who considers a name contrary to the child's interest refers it to the public prosecutor, who may take it to a family court. The most-cited modern example is a court in northern France refusing the name Nutella and directing that the child be registered as Ella instead. Sweden requires approval from the tax agency, which in the 1990s rejected a famously unpronounceable string of consonants submitted by parents protesting the law itself.

New Zealand and the Question of Titles

New Zealand's registrar may decline a name that is unreasonably long, includes characters that are not letters, or resembles an official rank or title. This is why submissions such as King, Prince, Duke, Royal and Justice appear repeatedly in the country's published refusal records. The name 4Real was refused because it contains a numeral; the parents reportedly settled on Superman instead.

The most striking New Zealand case involved a child registered with a long joke name, whom a family court judge placed under guardianship specifically so that the name could be changed. The judgment argued the name exposed the child to ridicule without any means of self-defence — the clearest statement anywhere of the welfare principle these laws rest on. Parents drawn to regal-sounding options are usually better served by names that mean royalty rather than names that are titles, which is the territory covered by names meaning king.

Scripts, Characters and Spelling

Some restrictions have nothing to do with taste. Japan limits the characters usable in given names to defined lists of standard and name-approved kanji. A widely reported case in the 1990s concerned parents who wished to name their son with the characters for "devil"; the registry initially accepted it, then reversed course, and the dispute went to court before the child was renamed.

Even in the United States, where naming is otherwise close to unrestricted, some states limit the characters that vital records can store. California's system accepts the twenty-six letters of the English alphabet without diacritical marks, which means accented spellings common in Spanish, French and Vietnamese cannot always be recorded exactly as parents intend.

What This Means for International Families

If your family has ties to more than one country, check the rules where the birth will be registered rather than where you happen to live.

The reassuring part is that mainstream choices pass everywhere. Names in wide international circulation, of the kind gathered in our overview of top baby names for 2026, are unlikely to trouble any registrar, and the same is true of most entries in our selection of unique girl names. The risk sits almost entirely with invented spellings, punctuation, numerals and words borrowed from commerce, so parents drawn to rare baby names should think about registration a little earlier than everyone else.

If a Name Is Refused

Refusal is rarely the end of the process. Every system described here has an appeal route, whether to a committee, a prosecutor or a court, and outcomes have gone both ways. Two habits reduce the trouble considerably: ask the registry office before the birth rather than after, and have a second choice you would genuinely be happy with. Naming law is not designed to frustrate parents, but it does treat a child's name as something the child will have to carry alone, long after the decision has been forgotten by everyone else.