A couple have been told that they are unable to register their newborn son with the name they chose for him because it includes the use of a diaeresis, the parents told Times of Malta.
A French woman and her Italian partner, who are Maltese citizens and have lived here for many years, last week welcomed their first child, a baby boy whom they decided to name Gaëtan.
However, when they went to the public registry to register their son’s birth, they were told that the name Gaëtan could not be accepted as diaeresis marks are not recognised in neither the English nor the Maltese alphabet.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, the parents have been left upset and surprised that Malta is refusing to recognise their son’s name spelt accurately.
“My son was born on August 13 and the birth did not go well and it took some time to recover,” Gaëtan’s mother said.
“When we came back to the hospital two days later to register the birth, we were told there was a problem with the name Gaëtan. The only way it would be accepted is if we signed a form that said we understood that the accents would not be included in our son’s name, which, of course, we did not sign.
“It’s very upsetting. Nobody wants to have administrative problems registering their newborn,” she continued.
“It’s hard to understand this policy, considering that Malta is part of the EU, the name is French and the character exists in various other European languages.”
The couple were told by the French Embassy that, while it would not be possible to spell Gaëtan’s name with a diaeresis on his Maltese birth certificate, the characters can be included on his French passport.
Malta’s civil code was amended in 2020 to allow the public registry to register a name that includes the use of Maltese diacritic letters from the Maltese alphabet.
A baby boy named Ġanni was the first child to be registered with a name that makes use of Maltese spelling after an IT system upgrade allowed for the characters to be used in ID cards, certificates and passports.
Maltese diacritic letters include the dot on the letters ċ, ġ, ż, a stroke through the letter ħ and a grave accent on the vowels à, è, ì, ò, ù.