Germany launches plan to relax rigid family name system

Couples will be allowed to take double-barrelled surnames and pass them on to their children

By AP

  • Follow us on
  • google-news
  • whatsapp
  • telegram

Top Stories

German Justice Minister Marco Buschmann arrives for a Justice and Home Affairs Council at the EU headquarters in Brussels on Monday. — AFP
German Justice Minister Marco Buschmann arrives for a Justice and Home Affairs Council at the EU headquarters in Brussels on Monday. — AFP

Published: Tue 11 Apr 2023, 4:29 PM

Last updated: Tue 11 Apr 2023, 4:30 PM

Germany's justice minister on Tuesday launched plans to relax the country's strict restrictions on family names — for example, allowing couples to take double-barreled surnames and pass them on to their children.

The current system “is about as up-to-date as a coal stove and as flexible as concrete," Justice Minister Marco Buschmann said in a statement as he published the draft legislation.


As it stands, one partner in a married couple — but not both — can add the other partner's name to his or her surname, but their children can't carry both surnames.

The reform will allow both partners to take on a double surname, with or without a hyphen, and for their children to take that name too. Even if the parents both keep their original names, they will be able to give their children a double-barrelled surname, regardless of whether they are married. The new system still won't allow names that are more than double-barrelled.


Buschmann also foresees making it easier for stepchildren or children of divorced parents to change their family names. And he wants to allow the use of gender-adjusted forms of surnames for people with names from languages in which that is common — a change that would, for example, benefit the Sorbs, an indigenous Slavic minority in parts of eastern Germany.

The legislation, which is supposed to take effect at the beginning of 2025, still requires the approval of the Cabinet and parliament.

It is one of several social reform projects that Chancellor Olaf Scholz's socially liberal three-party governing coalition agreed to embark on when it took office in December 2021.


More news from World