🇩🇪 Baby Naming Rules in Germany
Germany has no naming act at all. What exists is a registration procedure, a duty to protect the child, and one constitutional court decision that removed the rule almost every guide still repeats.
- Legal basis
- Personenstandsgesetz (PStG); constitutional case law
- Authority
- The Standesamt of the district of birth
- Deadline
- One month from birth to determine the first name
- How many names
- No statutory limit
- Sex of the name
- Not required since 2008
- Approved list
- None
There is no German law of first names
This surprises people, so it is worth saying plainly. The German statute book contains no act governing which first names are allowed. What it contains is the Personenstandsgesetz, which regulates how a birth is reported and registered. The substance of what may be chosen has been worked out by the courts instead, which is why German naming rules are a body of case law rather than a list.
In practice the registry office takes the declaration, checks it, and can refuse a name it considers inadmissible. If parents and office disagree, the matter goes to court. The standard the courts apply is the welfare of the child.
The deadline and the count
If no first name was given when the birth was reported, it has to be supplied within one month of the birth date. Since May 2025 the same one-month period applies to telling the registry office what surname the child will carry.
No statute caps the number of first names. Individual registry offices publish their own working limits, and the City of Munich, for example, states a maximum of five. That is administrative practice at one office, not federal law, and it is worth knowing the difference if you are pushed back on.
What can still be refused
The line the courts draw sits at the welfare of the child. A name that would expose the child to ridicule, or that carries so negative a charge that giving it would harm them, can be refused. Registry offices also commonly reject surnames, noble titles and product names on the ground that a first name has to be recognisable as a first name, and they will usually object if siblings are given identical first names.
The rule that everyone repeats and that no longer applies
Search for German naming rules and you will be told that a first name must reveal the child's sex, and that a second, unambiguous name is required if it does not. That requirement was struck down on 5 December 2008 by the Federal Constitutional Court in case 1 BvR 576/07.
The case concerned a girl registered with the single Indian name Kiran. The registry office refused it because it left the child's sex open and demanded an additional name. The court held that the refusal violated the parents' rights under Article 6(2) of the Basic Law and the child's rights under Article 2(1) together with Article 1(1).
The reasoning was blunt about where the supposed rule came from: the legislator, the court wrote, has laid down no principle, either expressly or implicitly, that a first name chosen by parents must inform about the sex of the child. It added that the parents' right to choose may be limited only where its exercise threatens to impair the welfare of the child.
Some municipal information pages have never been updated and still state the old requirement. If a registry office raises it, the decision above is the answer.
Sources
Every statement on this page is taken from an official or judicial source. The links below go to the originals so you can check them yourself.
Last reviewed: August 2026. This page explains the rules in general terms and is not legal advice. Where a decision matters to you, ask the authority that will register the name.