Maltese font will start being accepted when registering baby names in the coming weeks, the government announced on Monday.  

In a statement on Monday, Citizenship Parliamentary Secretary Alex Muscat also announced that parents who wanted to make a minor correction to their child’s name to include Maltese orthography would be able to do so in the coming weeks. 

“A number of weeks ago I requested that this anomaly be addressed through the use of new IT systems,” he said. 

Last week, Opposition MP Ryan Callus told parliament that since the public registry makes no use of Maltese fonts, parents could not legally give traditional Maltese names to their children.

The Maltese alphabet includes letters not present in the English one, such as ċ, ġ, għ, ħ and ż. 

Callus said he had been prompted to raise the matter after seeing a Facebook post by a disgruntled parent.  

The post conveyed the frustration and anger of a young couple who named their son Ġorġ, only to be notified by the public registry that this was not possible.

The refusal was based on the grounds that the registry did not use Maltese orthography. 

Meanwhile, in his statement, Muscat said that Identity Malta had already upgraded its IT system, but alterations needed to be made to ensure digital continuity with other government systems. 

A collective overhaul across government IT systems was being done to ensure Maltese orthography is accepted across the board, Muscat said. 

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