The Surname Game

What's in a name? In France, plenty of legal trouble--if the name happens to be one that French law finds distasteful. Last week every Frenchman with an infelicitous name seemed to be protesting the case of Gerard and Paulette Tro-gnon, a middle-class couple from the town of Le Mee-sur-Seine southeast of Paris. Recently a three-judge court in nearby Melun ruled that the Trognons could not bestow their name on their three-year-old foster son Philippe. The court did not object to the couple but only to their surname, which means stump or butt end. A name like that, said Chief Judge Maurice Rousseau, would be "un handicap" that would make poor Philippe "a butt of jokes" for the rest of his life.

Names have been a matter of high national policy in France since 1539, when King Franc,ois I decreed that the names of all newborn children had not only to be registered but also submitted to priests for approval, which usually meant that the names had to be chosen from the saints' hagiography. Still, by 1803 the proliferation of names was such that a law was enacted strictly limiting the selection of first names to those of the saints or of Greek, Roman or biblical origin. Charles de Gaulle loosened the names policy somewhat in 1966, but French law still explicitly allows and even encourages Frenchmen to change surnames that are considered to reflect poorly on France and the French.

Sage Reminder. What sort of names? In 1967 the French Council of State set out some guidelines intended to help Frenchmen decide if they had a nom ridicule--a ridiculous, insulting or otherwise unappealing surname--that they could legally change. In the field of animals, from which a number of French surnames are taken, a Monsieur Duck, Cow, Camel, Ass or Snipe would be allowed to change his name, but a Monsieur Ox, Bull, Goat, Nightingale or Leopard would not. Nouns such as tripe, cheese, cemetery and cuckold, and adjectives like hideous and ugly were frowned on as surnames; but unaccountably, villain and pimp were acceptable. The council also suggested that people with Jewish-sounding names, even if they were not Jews, should be encouraged to change them, the better to avoid "a repetition of the events of the last war."

French courts rarely attempt to force a name change--evidently with reason. The Trognons, who are appealing the Melun decision, have become a cause celebre, rather than a butt of jokes. Gerard Trognon refuses to let Philippe keep his original surname. "How," he asks, "will he be able to answer the teasers who say he is not his father's son because of a different name?" Similarly Paulette stalwartly refuses to give up her married name; she loves to call Gerard "mon petit Trognon" at intimate moments. The couple has received letters of support from some 30 other Trognons throughout France in the past two weeks. France-Soir, the nation's largest daily, condemned the court decision as "inconceivable." Le Monde sagely reminded the judges that once upon a time schoolboys had made fun of the first name of a little Corsican named Bonaparte. He did not seem to find it un handicap.

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