Chinese man ordered to change daughter's 'unusual name'

A father in China who sued police over their refusal to register the birth of his daughter because of her "unusual name" will have to start thinking of a new name for the child.

The Lixia district people's court in Jinan, capital of east China's Shandong province, on Friday ruled that Bei Yan Yun Yi was not a legitimate name, Xinhua news agency reported.

Chinese names are usually two or three characters long and include either the maternal or paternal family name.

However, Bei Yan Yun Yi, six, has no given surname, which is why three public security bureau substations in Jinan refused to register her birth.

Her father, Lyu, said his daughter's name was poetic: Bei (meaning north) was chosen because Shandong is in the north of China; Yan (wild goose) and Yun (cloud) are words frequently used in poetry; and Yi was a character from China's first collection of poetry, the Shijing.

The court ruled that the name was chosen for personal reasons and was not a serious decision. The name, the court said, was against social customs and ethics, and was not good for maintaining social order.

Lyu filed a lawsuit against Yanshan police on December 17, 2009, on the grounds that he had the right to choose his child's name, and the police had not fulfilled their legal obligation to register her birth.

The Lixia district people's court in Jinan suspended the hearing in March 2010, citing difficulties over which legal clause applied to the case.

The civil law stipulates citizens are entitled to decide, use and change their names according to regulations, as long as they do not "impair the public interest of society".

A judicial interpretation of the law, passed last year, determined that the surnames of offspring may differ from their parents if they use the surnames of other relatives, if they take the surname of their adopted parents or if they choose a surname that is "not against social order and custom".

This interpretation enabled the case to reopen on Tuesday.

A similar case occurred in 2009 after parents in east China's Jiangxi Province named their son Zhao C, with the English letter "C" as his given name. A court ruled they must change his name.

In Lyu's case, the judge told Xinhua that the girl was still not legally registered, although Lyu said he had registered his daughter's birth in another province.