A man has won a partial legal victory in his six-year battle to correctly register his surname, which includes a foreign letter.

Michael Debono Mrđen changed his name after marrying his Croatian wife in 2017 but soon realised he was unable to register it in Malta.

The public registry argued that it did not have the software to transpose the Croatian letter dyet (đ), leading Debono Mrđen to launch a legal challenge.

In a judgment delivered last month, Madam Justice Joanne Vella Cuschieri ruled in his favour, declaring that his surname is the one written in his marriage certificate, meaning Debono Mrđen.

However, the court did not order the public registry office to change his name to the original Croatian spelling.

Instead, it directed that the name should be changed from “Mrden” to “Mrdjen”,  which is phonetically equal to “Mrđen”, according to a court-appointed translator.

In the event that it becomes possible for the public registry system to allow foreign characters, the public registry should officially change his surname to “Debono Mrđen”, the court ruled. It did not specify a time frame.

“The court declares that it understands the frustration of the appellant that he cannot be listed with his correct surname but the court must also consider the effect of what he is asking in terms of the public interest,” the judge said. 

The request of including one letter from the Croatian alphabet can seem to be a small one but it has been proven that even including Maltese characters was a long process and not without problems, she added. 

Debono Mrđen described the court decision as a “major milestone in the journey to bring the systems of the public registry into the 21st century”.

“After repeated requests to the public registry to recognise my surname were being denied, I was left with no choice to protect the integrity of my surname but to take the matter to court,” he told Times of Malta.

“What the decision lacks is the order to the registry to upgrade their system within a defined time frame, leaving me with further inconsistencies with my surname than when I started,” he said.

Debono Mrđen has since communicated formally with the public registry asking whether they will be including the Croatian character in his official name in Malta.

“Should they not do that, I will be appealing the court judgment,” he said.

He said that he has had to deal with administrative issues because of his name.

Having graduated in Germany, his diploma is listed under “Debono Mrden” as he had no valid Maltese passport or ID card that stated his name to be “Debono Mrđen”, he told the court.

Debono Mrđen’s lawyer argued that his client’s fundamental rights to a private and family life and to be protected from discrimination were being violated.

But the public registry office argued that it was not obliged to reproduce letters from other Latin alphabets as Malta’s official languages are Maltese and English.

It said the entire IT system would need to be overhauled should the public registry start accepting foreign characters.

In his testimony, public registry director Vincent Sladden said that recognising the letter ‘đ’ is not “simply a matter of pressing a button on a keyboard” but involved a complicated software change.

Even introducing letters from the Maltese alphabet required a substantial change in software, he explained.

Identity Malta only allows letters in the Maltese and English alphabet to be written in official documents, with Maltese characters like ċ, ġ, għ, ħ and ż only introduced to the system in 2020.

Last August, Debono Mrđen and several others with foreign names and surnames spoke to Times of Malta expressing their frustration at Malta’s name policy rigidity.

Daniëlle Duijst, from the Netherlands, said she could not keep the name her parents had given her because of an outdated system that does not cater to different alphabets.

Others shared their concerns over the lack of gendered surnames in Malta.

Tomasz Balicki, a Polish man living in Malta, said that his daughter took his exact surname instead of the surname’s female version “Balicka”.